The National tribune., 1902-03-13
Can the Sea Be Fished Out?
Harper's Weekly

Can the sea be fished out? An effort
is being made to work out this problem
by an international committee of biologists
appointed for that and other purposes this
| Winter Until very recently it has gen.
orally been supposed that immense as is
the amount of fish-life existing in the sea-
there is certain maximum beyond which
| nature cannot go, certain balance on
which man can draw which she places to
his credit in certain banks, limited both
in number and extent. To make an over
draft on natures fish-supply has long been
| considered by many, well qualified to
| judge, as not only possible. but probable
and that, compared with its extent, the
ocean is desert, Sahara, with few
oases on which alone fish-life is possible.
Further, they say that these oases are
| not only limited in extent, but in their
capability for supporting tsh-life, and that
they are at the mercy Of man because they
are confined to the comparatively shallow
waters near the coast on which he lives.
Only of recent years has the subject of
marine biology been studied on any sys-
| temized plan and with definite object, but
now the North Sea has been mapped out
for observation by the interested biologists
and it is certain that we shall learn many
learn many things which we thought we
knew to be facts, but which have proved
to be fallacieS
The results of the recent researches of
the Norwegian Biological Expedition, un-
der the direction of DIR. Hjort, will go
far toward tightening the labOrs of the
commission. According to DR.. Hort, the
reason for the fear of exhaustion of the
sea fisheries rests ON incorrect theories,
fn hn ltS. Of
vestigations of the last 40 years. Hith-
erto the belief prevailed that the millions
of eggs produced by our sea foOd-fish are
forced by the currents to the vicinity of
the coasts where the nets of the trawlers
sweep them up and destroy them. On the
contrary, DIR. Hjort found the brood of
all our food-fshes in unreasonable quanti-
ties, not dead, as it ought to be in
theory, but alive and spread over the
whole Norwegian sea. That the young of
cod and haddOck could live ont in the open
sea would have been considered impossi-
BILE year ago. 1t was thought they were
only to be found quite inshore near the
coasts, as that was the only place they
had been found.
But it was not only fish brood that DIR.
Hjort found in his investigations of the
North Sea. He made the further remark
able discovery that away out in the open
sea, where it is several thousand feet in
depth, he found fish, as it were, in layers
or ocean strata. There, in these still and
dark and hitherto barren regions of the
sea, he caught great cod and haddock and
coal-fish in quantities. The importance of
this discovery is that it proves that not
only brood fish, but mature fish also, ex-
ist out in the ocean, and that what have
been looked upon as typical ''ground-fsh''
and local Sorts" are to be found at other
places as well as near the coasts. Not of
the least significance is the fishing of cod
in the deep places of the sea, as in this
discovery we have the key to solve the
mystery as to where the cod abides when
he withdraws from the coasts. The fish
ermen on the Newfoundland coast find the
fish in April in the shallow water near
shore, and use lines of 80 or 40 feet, in
creasing the depth as they find the fish re-
ceding, until they have to fish at over 200
feet for them in December