Marine Research at Cullercoats

Abstract

THE Report for the year ending July 31, 1934, of the Dove Marine Laboratory, Cullercoats, Northumberland (Armstrong College), published by the Marine Laboratory Committee and drawn up by the director, Prof. A. D. Hobson, shows it was a period of expansion of the activities of the Laboratory. The research work of the staff has been well maintained and there has been an increase in the number of outside workers. A number of alterations have been made in the building, including the conversion of a little-used lecture room into a new laboratory in which about a dozen students can be accommodated, or five research workers. This can be used for experimental and chemical work for which the main laboratory is not suitable. The work on herring has been continued as agreed with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, samples from the catches from the local shoals landed at North Shields during the season of 1933 being duly examined. Further investigations on the shoals from other parts of the coast have been continued. In Dr. Bull's work on conditioned responses in fishes, special attention is being paid to temperature, and it is found that teleostean fishes generally are extremely sensitive to temperature and that they can react to it purpos-ively. Experiments on the perception of changes in salinity are now progressing satisfactorily. An excellent paper on the British Sphaeromatidse (Crustacea Isopoda) by Joseph Omer-Cooper and J. Hedley Rawson is included in this report. One of the species (Limnoria lignorum) is of economic importance as it is a wood-boring form and very widely distributed. A detailed discussion on the distribution of the Sphseromatidse is included. In his aquarium observations Dr. Bull makes some important observations on the enemies of the common star-fish Asterias rubens, and shows that it is the only food eaten readily by the sun-stars Solaster papposus and S. endica and the northern stone-crab Lithodes maia. Adult specimens of all three can be maintained in captivity for long periods on such a diet.