Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1894 — Fecundity of Fish. [ARTICLE]

Fecundity of Fish.

It is said that probably about 60,000,000 or 70,000,000 codfish are taken from the sea annually around the shores of Newfoundland. But even that quantity seems small when we consider that the cod yields something like 3,500,000 eggs eaoh season, and that even 8,000,000 have been found In the roe of a single cod. Other fish, though not equaling the cod, are also wonderfully productive. A herring, six or seven ounces In weight, Is provided with about 30,000,000. After making all reasonable allowances for the destruction of eggs and of the young It has been calculated that in three years a single pair of herrings would produce 154,000,000. Button said that if a pair of herrings were left to breed and multiply undisturbed fora period of twenty years they would yield a fish bulk equal to the globe on which we live. The cod far surpasses the herring In fecundity. Were it not that vast numbers of the eggs are destroyed fish would so multiply ae to fill the waters completely.