The degree of active interest shown by Governments in new sciences or research disciplines is very often related to the extent that these are reckoned to be of economic significance to society or the State. In Norway, nature research obtained ofiicial support, inter alia, on account of the fisheries and the problems with which the fishing industry was faced. Interest in the natural history of deep-sea animals and the development of marine biology as a research discipline goes back not least to these sources. The fluctuations in the major coastal fisheries have played an important part in directing attention to the actual natural resources and to research into the natural factors conditioning development of fishing as a means of livelihood. The fact that it was based for so long and to such a large extent on coastal fishing made this livelihood particularly susceptible to changes in the natural resources. Norwegian fishermen based their activities on the spawning and feeding migrations of the fish to the coastal waters and the fiords.Because of this they lacked the necessary stimulus to develop offshore oceanic fishing in the way some of the other fishing nations did. Coastal fishing demanded relatively modest investment in boats and equipment. The numbers taking part were so great and the individual yield at the same time so small that there was little opportunity to accumulate the sizable surplus which might have promoted development in a capitalist manner based on large, ocean-going vessels. For example, as long as the summer herring or fat herring could be caught in the fiords it was not necessary to go out to sea to meet the herring shoals. The fishermen had neither the capital nor the experience to adapt their operations to oceanic fishing if the herring
failed to appear. The fisheries were based to such an excessive degree on the great influxes to the coast of cod and herring thatwhen these failed to materialise, as happened from time to time, the effects were correspondingly serious. It was therefore not surprising that interest in the natural resources appeared early in Norway and that the country in many respects came to be a pioneer in marine biological research.
