TRAWLERS AND THE ARTIFICIAL 
FERTILIZATION OF FISH OVA. 
Resulting from our experiments on the artificial fertilization of 
fish ova, we have some progress to record. A conference was held 
at North Shields with the owners, captains and other members of 
the crews of trawling steamers under the chairmanship of the late 
regretted Alderman J. F. Spence. At this meeting a committee was 
formed to endeavour to arrange that certain of the captains and 
others should attend at the Cullercoats laboratory to receive 
instruction upon the subject. It was decided in the first instance 
to ask these men to perform the work according to instructions at 
sea, and to bring a sample to the laboratory and to watch the 
progress of the ova at successive visits. We thus proposed to 
accomplish the very desirable work of persuading these men to return 
the ova after fertilization to the sea without taking them away from 
their duties. 
The results in the way ofattendance, however, do not encourage the 
idea of pursuing this plan in the future. Only three of the captains 
attended once, while one attended on four occasions. We were told 
that this was because the men had very little time ashore. These 
men, however, saw certain stages in the development of plaice ova, 
and the opportunity was taken to give some information in an 
informal manner as to the life -histories of the more important fishes. 
The little embryos forming in the ova, exhibited with the aid of 
the microscope, served to convince those who did attend that the 
work required of them was amply justified. And that the work was 
done in a satisfactory manner was shown by the fact that among the 
large quantity of ova sent me, especially by Captain Cappelman, not 
one was found to be unfertilized. 
A pamphlet on the subject, with directions, was also circulated 
amongst those whom we wished to interest. 
We began late but we have pleasure in stating that Captain 
Cappelman dealt with over 40 cod and 12 plaice. At a modest 
estimate we may say that the 40 cod yielded say 120,000,000 ova 
and the 12 plaice 2,000,000 ova. Captain Cappelman said that a 
number of the other captains had also been carrying out this work. 
