FISHES The coast of SufFolk extends from Harwich to Yarmouth and includes only three estuaries of considerable size, namely the Stour, the Orwell, and the Deben. Besides these there is only one harbour of importance, that of Lowes- toft. The shore consists of sand and shingle, and slopes gradually seawards to the 20-fathom line ; beyond this there is a narrow depression running parallel to the coast and deepening to 25 and 27 fathoms. On the other side of the depression are the shallow grounds extending to the Dutch coast, the more northern part of which is known to the Lowestoft trawlers as the Brown Ridges. The rivers of the county are of no great size, and there is only one considerable lake, Oulton Broad near Lowestoft. Scarcely any special accounts of the fishes of Suffolk have been published, and except at Lowestoft very little attention seems to have been paid to the ichthyology of the county. In Norfolk there have been many zealous natu- ralists and among them good ichthyologists, but the study of natural history has been rather neglected in the sister county. The notes in the following list are chiefly based on records contained in the ' List of Norfolk Fishes ' by Dr. John Lowe, Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society^ 1873-4, the additions to that list in the same Transactions, vol. iii, 1884 and later volumes, and the writer's own observations made at Lowestoft and on board Lowestoft fishing boats in 1895. A few notes have been taken from Mr. Nicholas Fenwick Hele's interesting little book. Notes or Jottings about Aldeburgh, published in 1870. The records in the Natural History of Tar mouth, by C. J. and James Paget, published in 1 834, have been incorporated in Lowe's list. Since 1902 Lowestoft has been the centre for the English portion of the International Fishery Investigations in the North Sea. The English researches have been carried out on behalf of the Government by the Marine Biological Association, which has maintained a laboratory, a scientific staff, and a re- search steamer at Lowestoft, and has also carried on hydrographical researches from its laboratory at Plymouth. The researches at Lowestoft have been principally applied to the trawl fishery and have consisted of investigations of the distribution, movements, and growth of the fishes which are taken by the trawl, especially of the plaice. The migrations of the fishes have been followed by the method of marking large numbers of specimens and setting them free again at different localities. These experiments have also thrown light on the rate of growth of the fish. One of the most interesting discoveries made in the course of the International Investigations is that the age of a plaice is 163
