Íslenskar landbúnaðarrannsóknir - 01.09.1978, Page 20

18 ÍSLENZKAR LANDBÚNAÐARRANNSÓKNIR
Fig 4. Number of Atlantic salmon caught in Iceland from 1910-1975 plotted by the average catches for
five-year periods.
The returns of 1 -year-olds have improved
greatly since 1970, when they were ex-
posed to natural photoperiod through the
winter (Isaksson 1976). If the tagged 1-
year-old smolts, tagged prior to 1970, are
left out, 48,171 tagged smolts produced
2,609 returns or 5.4% during the 9-year
period.
Nine of the returned tags were reco-
vered from salmon caught abroad. Six
were caught oíf West Greenland, 2 in and
around the Faroe Islands, and 1 in Nor-
way. In addition, a tagged salmon caught
offthe Faroe Islands in July 1968 had been
tagged as a smolt in a hatchery near
Reykjavík, but released in a tributary to
the river Skaftá in southeastern Iceland.
The returned tags from abroad indicate
that the Icelandic salmon may migrate
widely in the oceaii to feed, (Table 1 and
Fig. 5).
Two salmon with foreign tags have
been caught in two Icelandic rivers. One
was tagged off West Greenland in 1972
and was caught in the river Laxá in Dalir
in western Iceland in 1973. The other one
was tagged with a hydrostatic tag carrying
a message in English and Russian. How-
ever, no information was obtainable about
the origin of the tag.