HERRINGS FOR NEW ZEALAND

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 31, 5 August 1910, Page 11

HERRINGS FOR NEW ZEALAND

EXPERIMENTS IN SCOTLAND. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 24th June. For some years the New Zealand Government has been exercised regarding the possibility of acclimatising the North Sea herring in New Zealand waters, and a prolonged series of experiments has been made on its behalf by the Fishery .Board of Scoi.lsnid. As U> was impracticable to acclimatise the fry, the problem to prolong the penod of development of the ova sufficiently to cover the length ul' this vuyagc. It the period of development could be extended to fifty days, well and good. The experiments for the past year were in charge of Dr. 11. C. Williamson, who, taking tlie eggs at Anscruther in the spring, kept them in various forma of apparatus and at different, temperatures until they hatched. The •results show that a proportion of the eggs can be kept for tluvt period, bub the majority succumb. At the request of the New Zealand Government experiments were also made with the eggs of the haddock and tho plaice, with a' view to prolonging the period of incubation. With temperatures varying from 0.6 deg. to 5.6 deg. C., the plaice eggs hatched after a period of from 2? to 43 days, and the haddock eggs were still partly unhalched at the expiration of thirty days. To demonstrate the ability of turbot to resist low temperatures for a prolonged period, two of the fish, measuring

respectively 6^ and 9^ inches,, were placed in apparatus. One, 111 a temperature gradually reduced to 0.6 deg CX, died sifter three days. The other was subjected to a range of from 3.4 deg. C. to 1.7 deg. for over two days, jet survived and recovered. further trials are still being made, and it is hoped that a ranch larger proportion of the ova»may yeC survive the prolonged low temperature.