The contribution of Henry Charles Williamson (1871–1949) to Scottish and Canadian fisheries research

Abstract

The Scottish zoologist Henry Charles Williamson was one of a group of young men who initiated fisheries science in the late Victorian age, schooled under Professor William Carmichael McIntosh at St Andrews University. Initially working for the Fishery Board of Scotland, Williamson contributed original studies on fish anatomy, morphology, systematics and life cycles; decapod Crustacea life-history stages; fish diseases and parasites. He was at the forefront of attempts to transport herring ova to Australia and New Zealand to introduce this European food fish to antipodean waters. That involved him researching how to retard development of ova using low temperatures and developing glass settlement-plate techniques for their transportation. He left Scotland in 1925 to spend five years in the Canadian Pacific, studying salmon migration by tagging and latterly becoming responsible for pilchard and herring work there too. Returning to his home town of Dundee in retirement, he lived a quiet life, giving talks to local groups, supporting his church's administration and contributing articles to the fishermen's press. Sadly he died before he could complete the two volumes on fishes that he was in the course of writing.