Trawling Surveys in Patagonian Waters

Abstract

THROUGHOUT the whole of the cold-temperate (sub-Antarctic) zone of the southern hemisphere the waters overlying the Patagonian continental shelf provide the largest expanse of sea shallow enough to support a considerable population of commercial fishes. During the years 1927, 1928 and 1931-32 the Discovery Committee‘s research vessel William Scoresby carried out three trawling surveys of this region between latitudes 42° S. and 52° S. The primary object of the investigations was to provide information upon which the prospects of carrying on a commercial fishery from the Falkland Islands could be assessed. The results of these surveys have now been published in a scientific report* of considerable importance by Dr. T. John Hart, biologist on the Discovery Committee‘s scientific staff. Dr. Hart did not himself carry out the surveys (though he has had some experience of field-work in that region), and the results have been written up mainly from manuscripts left by the late E. R. Gunther who, unfortunately, did not live to complete them. In these circumstances the task of picking up the threads and collating the data involved much difficulty, and Dr. Hart often found it necessary to start afresh from the original data. The substance of the report is therefore the combined work of Gunther and Hart, but the latter has written the entire text in its final form.