Sea Fish

Cod Sea Fish Part 2

I have found the young one less than an inch in lenth by the end of May, and they require at least the second year to render them fit for the market. When about half grown they are often caught in rough ground near the land, and being somewhat variously coloured they have been regarded as a separate species, with the name of Tamlin Cod, a name which is first mentioned by Jago, and after him by Borlase.

The word tam in a western dialect signifies what is short and stout, and is applied to this fish because it is in full condition at the time when the full-grown fish has become thin from the effect of spawning.

Besides that the Cod in its season is an excellent dish for the table, an important use of it is when it is salted and dried, the ordering of which is effected in a different manner in different places, but into the peculiarities of which this is not the place to enter. The tongues and sounds (or air-bladders) are also preserved in pickle, and in this condition when boiled they form a very acceptable dish.

The usefulness of this fish has also been more widely extended of late by the employment of the oil extracted from the liver in several diseases, in some of which it is found an important remedy. The first notice we have of it as such, was in the medical works of Dr. Bardsley, who mentions it as prescribed for chronic rheumatism in the Dispensary at Manchester, at the beginning of the present century, and since that time it has found genera' acceptance in glandular diseases among medical practitioners.

But in England at least it has been found that this oil can only be extracted from the liver when the fish is in its best condition, for when its strength has become exhausted by the process of spawning, and until the recovery of its flesh, which is not soon effected, the liver is found in a like state of emaciation with the flesh, and affords no oil.

We believe that the greater portion of what is now used is obtained from the fishery of Newfoundland, where, however, it has been said that the fish is scarcely equal to those caught in our own waters.

The value which has been set on the Cod is of comparatively modern date, since it does not appear that this fish was known at the tables of the Romans of the Empire, a circumstance to be explained by the fact that it was not found in the Mediterranean.

The first regular fishery appears to have been carried on in the German Ocean, and that in very early times, as appears from the fact that it was so recognised before the year 1368, when the city of Amsterdam procured permission from the King of Sweden to form an establishment for carrying it on in the Isle of Schonen, and in the year 1415, Henry the Fifth of England compelled the King of Denmark to make satisfaction to some of his subjects for injuries received in his dominions for something connected with it.

Whatever was the nature of the privilege thus claimed, it was afterwards lost, until Elizabeth recovered it. This fishery was the principal source of the supply of Cods, until the discovery of the much larger numbers to be obtained on the banks of Newfoundland, when the attention of fishermen became directed to that more distant but more promising source of wealth, under the direction and with the assistance of merchants who made it a portion of the traffic which they were accustomed to carry on with the Italian ports of the Mediterranean.

On these fertile banks the mode of fishing has varied, but it is only of late that reports have been circulated of a decrease in the numbers of the fishes that are found in that district, as if the long- continued and mighty inroads which have been made on them have at last effected a decided diminution of what may have appeared an inexhaustible supply.

But Cods have long been found in large numbers nearer home, as on the Dogger Bank, and in our North-eastern Sea, where, along the borders of Northumberland and Norfolk, the fishery engages the service of a large number of boats and men, of which the port of Barking in particular affords an instance.

According to evidences produced before a committee of the House of Commons, there belong to that place about one hundred and twenty fishing vessels, of the burden of forty to sixty tons, with a crew of upwards of eight hundred men, and their employment in this fishery lasts for about three months in the year, during which they are accustomed to make three voyages on the whole.

But within a year or two a new discovery has been made of a situation, which for a time, is likely to draw to itself the attention of fishermen of the northern portion of our island and perhaps of Ireland, in a higher degree than any other. This is along the upper portion of a submarine elevation, of which the situation is marked by a solitary rock that bears the name of Rockall, and which probably was better known at some distant date as the resort of fish, than more lately, down to the time of its renewed discovery.

In the meanwhile tiie fish has had time to grow, as well in size as numbers, so that wonders are told of the success of the first adventurers to the spot, from which two boats returned after a week's fishing, each with between thirteen and fourteen tons of fish.

The size of the individual Cods is not mentioned, but as a single example was known to have lived in an enclosed pond at Logan, in Scotland, to the supposed age of about fifteen years, during which it is said to have made a gradual increase in bulk, we may judge that those taken at Rockall, at freedom and fully fed, had attained to the full of that which at any time they reach.

A successful fisherman on the banks of Newfoundland informed me that out of many hundreds he once caught there, there was a Cod which reached to a hundredweight, and that with a wish to show it to his friends at home, he purchased it of his captain for the price of half-a-crown. The largest Cod I have known weighed fifty-six pounds, but scarcely any are in finer condition than those which abound in the deeper water between the Scilly Islands and the west coast of Cornwall, and also between St. Ives on the north and the Mount's Bay.

The fishery for Cods is conducted with hooks, and either with a single line from the boat, (each fisherman attending to a couple,) or with long lines, which in the west of England are termed bulteys, or bulters, and which cannot be shot in such deep water as may admit the single line, these bulteys are formed of a principal line, which is a stout cord or small rope, and to which is fastened a series of short lines about a fathom in length, placed at such distances from one another as that they shall not be entangled together.

Sometimes many hundreds of these hooks are thus fastened together, with a stone or grapnel to moor them, and with a cork-line to mark the place and draw them up. The baits are various, as Herrings, Pilchards, and Lamperns, and the direction is across the course of the tide, on ground where the hooks are not likely to get entangled amidst the rocks.

The whole is drawn up at such a time as experience has taught the fishermen to be sufficient for their purpose. If left long after the fish are dead they are subject to the depredations of some of the sessile-eyed crustacean animals, termed by fishermen sea lice,

which enter their bodies by the mouth and gills, and in a time surprisingly short devour the whole of the soft parts, so as to leave the skin almost empty. Of this last-named method of fishing the success must be greater than any which can arise from the employment of a few lines that hang from a boat which is manned by no more than two or three up to half a dozen men, but it requires a greater outlay than many fisher- men are able to provide, and a complaint also is sometimes made of the want of bait for such a multitude of hooks.

But several hundreds of fishes, including the Cod and Ling, are thus sometimes drawn up at a single haul, and that too at times when boats which must ride at anchor with their lines are not able to encounter the roughness of the sea. It has been observed that the largest number of these fishes are often caught when the sea is becoming rough with the threatening of a gale from the direction of the deeper sea, yet a heavier storm is said to drive them away.

When not sold fresh these fish are prepared with salt for exportation, and also for consumption at home, for which purpose the head and a portion of the backbone, with the entrails, are removed, in which condition they are salted and dried. In the year 1853, according to a report of the Board of Fisheries, the quantity of Cods, ling, and Hakes cured in Scotland and the Isle of Man, amounted to somewhat more than five thousand nine hundred tons, to which are to be added upwards of three thousand tons which were sold fresh, the whole amounting to nine thousand three hundred and forty-two tons and five hundred- weight, but this was the highest that had ever been known.

Large quantities of Cods which have been thus prepared in Newfoundland are consumed in England. On a copper coin struck in or for the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with a seal on the obverse, the reverse bears a Cod split and prepared in the manner we have described.

The Cod is the stoutest species of this family in proportion to its length. The head large, but in a fish in good condition the outline rises from the snout to the beginning of the dorsal fins. The upper jaw projects a little beyond the lower, teeth in both, and a plat in the form of a horse-shoe in front of the palate, a barb on the under jaw. Eye moderate.

Body slightly compressed at first, more so behind the vent to the tail, vent midway between the snout and root of the caudal fin. Scales small, lateral line conspicuous, at first nearer the back, lower and straight behind. Dorsal fins three, the first beginning a little behind the root of the pectorals, irregularly, rounded, anal fins two, pectorals round, ventrals short, the first rays extended and pointed, tail slightly round.

Colour on the back dark yellow, sometimes brown, sides mottled, belly white, all the fins soft. The Cod of the north of England has the snout much shorter and rounder than the fish of the west coast. We have already mentioned the great weight to which it sometimes reaches, but from thirty to forty pounds is a more general size.

From Griffith's translation of Cuvier's "Animal Kingdom" we learn that in the neighbourhood of the Isle of Man, there is found a variety of the Common Cod, which is named Red Cod, or rock Cod, the skin of which is a brightish vermilion colour, and the flesh of it is considered superior to that of the other.

It was the opinion of Dr. Turton that there was also another species of British Cod, which he named the Speckled Cod, (Morrhua punctata), but which he himselt appears not to have met with when he published his translation of Linngeaus's "System." It has been shown, however, in a way not to be doubted, by Dr. Dyce, in the "Annals, etc. of Natural History," 1860, that this supposed species was no other than a mis-shaped example, such as is scarcely uncommon among fish, of the Common Cod, and Dr. Dyce illustrates his observations by some dissections which prove that the foundation of the deformity was in the structure of the bones of the back, as was the case also in the deformed example of the Codfish which we have described.

A Cod came under observation, which was in good condition and of full growth, which possessed only one pectoral fin, while on the other side there existed merely a stump, which had the appearance ot having been originally formed in that con- dition. It is probable that it was in consequence of this deficiency the ventral fins had been called more particularly into action, for the purpose of regulating the positions of the body.

The Lemma hranchialis, which is a large and formidable parasite, is not unfrequently found firmly attached to the gills of this fish.

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