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Harald Dannevig and the FIS Endeavour
Pioneer of Australian fisheries and oceanography
FIS Endeavour officers and crew in 1912. Second row: Chief Engineer, A Mackay; unidentified; Mate, J Burkitt; Director of Fisheries, H Dannevig; Master, G Pim; Second Engineer, S Ditchman; unidentified. Other crew members unidentified.
Image courtesy Anne Dannevig Ballard Harald Dannevig was a leader of Australian fisheries science who laid the foundation for Australian fisheries over just 12 years, through aquaculture and the discovery of new species and profitable trawling grounds. Dennis Reid and Iain Suthers profile this insightful, inspiring adventurer.
HARALD DANNEVIG (1871–1914) was one of a richly talented cohort of young Norwegian fisheries scientists in the early 1900s. His father, Gunder Dannevig (1841–1911), was a successful sea captain and merchant, who championed the controversial activity of stocking larval cod into fjords to supplement the fishery. Harald learnt from his father about fish husbandry and larval rearing, and at just 23 he was selected by the Fishery Board for Scotland to supervise the completion of marine fish hatcheries at Dunbar from 1894 to 1898 and Aberdeen from 1898 to 1902. His major contribution was in marine stocking of flatfish, but he also studied fisheries methods of the North Sea, and became an expert in the new techniques of the trawl fishing industry. Improving fish stocks by hatchery rearing and release was popular in the late 19th century, and there was a strong push for artificial stocking in New South Wales (NSW) waters, which had been depleted through overfishing and pollution of estuaries. In May 1902 the NSW government invited Dannevig to be the inaugural Superintendent of Fisheries Investigations and Fish Culture. Before leaving for Australia, he collected more than 800 European fish and crustaceans, and designed and supervised the construction of facilities to keep them alive for the 41-day voyage from Plymouth, England, to Sydney. With Dannevig and his fish on the passenger/cargo ship RMS Oroya were his wife and three-year-old daughter. As he nurtured the fish throughout the journey, his mission and personality became an attraction for the passengers on board to venture below to see ‘Dannevig’s fish’. There they saw his experiments to test the effect of water temperature on fish mortality in a passenger’s bathtub!
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When Dannevig arrived in August 1902, he found a country booming with confidence from federation but also found significant overfishing of freshwater and estuarine resources, with no capacity or interest in harvesting the coastal ocean. He soon established a research laboratory and hatching pond at Cronulla, NSW, commissioned in 1905.1 The transportation of fish from England was hailed as a great success, but subsequent acclimatisation efforts on these fish failed. Dannevig noted the poor quality of fresh fish and the high price, when smoking and new freezing technologies were available. By now his thoughts had shifted towards establishing a commercial wild fisheries industry, including a fish transport, handling and marketing system that provided a reasonably priced product. He also noted that Australia did not have the motivation or capacity to explore the continental shelf. In July 1908 he was appointed as Australia’s first Commonwealth Director of Fisheries and scientific director of Australia’s first research vessel. The exploration of Australian waters with a new state-ofthe-art ship coincided with similar projects in the North Atlantic with a 1910 expedition led by the renowned Norwegian fisheries scientist Johan Hjort, and in South Africa under the Scottish scientist John Gilchrist from 1896 to 1901 on the Scottish-built trawler Peter Faure.
FIS Endeavour and identification of fishing grounds from 1909 to 1914 The Fisheries Investigation Ship FIS Endeavour (41 metres long, 336 tonnes, draught 3.6 metres) was built at the eastern shipbuilding slipway adjoining the Fitzroy Dock at Sydney’s Cockatoo Island. The ship’s design was based on plans of the Norwegian research vessel Michael Sars – an English trawler (38 metres, 230 tonnes, draught 3.65 metres) rebuilt under Hjort’s supervision in Norway in June 1900, for oceanographic and fisheries research. Plans and specifications of the Norwegian ship were obtained in March 1907 through renowned explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen, then Norwegian ambassador to the United Kingdom. The Endeavour was designed by eminent naval architect Walter Reeks, who modified the Michael Sars plans to suit Australian conditions and the requirements of the Endeavour project. Construction was supervised by Andrew Christie. The keel was laid on 1 June 1908, trials were conducted in Sydney Harbour and offshore in January 1909, and the first cruise commenced on 9 March 1909. Endeavour was a side trawler, in which the trawl and the trawl doors are deployed and retrieved from fore and aft gantries on the starboard side. George Cartwright was the first captain appointed, but from the outset
Improving native fish stocks by artificial stocking was very popular internationally in the late 19th century
01 Dannevig family at Cronulla laboratory grounds in 1908, prior to the move to Melbourne. Front row: daughter Sigrid (aged nine), Harald Dannevig’s brother Georg, Harald’s wife Annie, Harald Dannevig, sister-in-law Janet Dannevig (wife of Georg Dannevig). Image courtesy Anne Dannevig Ballard 02 Construction of FIS Endeavour at Cockatoo Island Dockyard, Sydney, August 1908. The Sabraon Training Ship is in the background. Image CSIRO Archives
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it was apparent that he resented the authority given to Dannevig and the relationship remained fractious, culminating in Cartwright’s dismissal in August 1911. Captain George Pim replaced him, with considerable experience as master of fishing vessels and an important scientific expedition in New Guinea, and was much more successful in the position. Endeavour was equipped with several oceanographic instruments, for which Dannevig provided training for those on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition on at least two occasions (1911 and 1912), including the crew of SY Aurora. On the 1912 voyage from Melbourne to Eden, Aurora’s Captain John King Davis noted the use of the Ekman current meter, an Ekman reversing water bottle fitted with a Richter thermometer, and a Lucas sounding machine.2 The East Australian Current (EAC) was not scientifically examined until the 1960s, although Dannevig wrote about organising fast-going steamers to record sea surface temperatures en route to New Zealand, and he noted:3 … it appears that the centre of the warm current is normally situated somewhere within 100 to 150 miles off the NSW coastline in the latitude of Sydney; its western border brushes along the headlands and is known to coasting crafts and line fishermen. In a paper published after his death he described strong currents of the EAC beginning at Sandy Cape (Fraser Island) and again evident at Smoky Cape, and that the currents extended down several hundred fathoms. He wrote that the EAC functions ‘as a soft broom’ in depositing the sediments south of the major river mouths, and south of Gabo Island ‘where the final and largest eddy is formed’.4 His appreciation of the EAC eddies is prescient of the studies of the 1980s by CSIRO and university oceanographers. In a second posthumously published paper, Dannevig described the depths, sediments and trawling potential of the continental shelf off southeastern Australia, and in Bass Strait. This area remains one of the most profitable trawling regions in southern Australia, the fishery known as the southeast trawl.5 As Fisheries Director, he instigated 99 research cruises in six years to determine suitable trawling grounds. These voyages led to the identification of 263 new species (including 96 new fish species), and approximately 5,000 catalogued specimens. The specimens collected by Dannevig were delivered to Allan McCulloch at the Australian Museum, regarded as one of the greatest Australian ichthyologists.
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02 01 FIS Endeavour’s main engine ready to be fitted, August 1908. Superintendent of Cockatoo Island Dockyard, A E Cutler, is on right. Image Government Dockyard, Biloela Annual Report 1908–09. Reproduced with permission 02 FIS Endeavour moored at the south bank of the Yarra River, Melbourne. Photographed by Allen C Green, courtesy State Library of Victoria
McCulloch described the new species, and published five major reports on the museum’s Endeavour collection between 1911 and 1926. In particular, one common and globally distributed viperfish was named Chauliodus dannevigi by McCulloch. McCulloch wrote:6 The specimen described …. was one of the last fishes preserved on board the Endeavour before she left on her ill-fated voyage to Macquarie Island. I associate with it the name of my friend, the late Mr Harald C. Dannevig, who collected it and whose untimely loss terminated a grand chapter in the fisheries investigation in Australia. Between 1909 and 1914 the Endeavour cruises covered 7,000 kilometres of coastline and identified 15,540 square kilometres of fishing grounds suitable for trawling off eastern Australia, and 10,360 square kilometres in the Great Australian Bight. Endeavour also made preliminary surveys of fishing grounds off Western Australia as far as Geraldton, and discovered new prawn stocks off Brisbane which are known today as Endeavour prawns. Dannevig was on most of the research cruises over the six years of operation, each lasting two to three weeks. Based on these trawls, which he cautioned were only scientific trawls rather than commercial, he found favourable quantities of fish. Within a decade these catch rates nearly halved, and the trawl fishery that Dannevig discovered and promoted had largely collapsed by the late 1950s. Dannevig enthusiastically spread the message of establishing a new industry, and employed posters, public and scientific presentations, pamphlets and even a seven-minute promotional film, Day on a Trawler, which was filmed in 1913 by Bert Ive, the pioneer Australian Commonwealth Cinematographer.7 Dannevig made a major contribution to the 1912 Royal Commission on Food Supply, explaining the findings of the Endeavour program and prospects for a future fishing industry. The momentum of fisheries research initiated by Dannevig was stopped in late 1914 when the Endeavour was assigned to its final, fatal voyage to Macquarie Island to service the meteorological station, while the Antarctic expedition ship SY Aurora was in refit and naval vessels were committed to World War I. The Australian military forces left Australia on 1 November 1914, only 24 days before Endeavour left Hobart for Macquarie Island. On the return voyage, a severe gale up to Beaufort 10 was recorded at Macquarie Island on 4 December, and the vessel disappeared without a trace. Multiple gales were recorded in the area in the following three weeks. Despite the impending war, the loss of the Endeavour and the 21 people aboard filled the national press pages leading up to the inquiry, and three vessels searched the area for up to two months. Based on the approximate time of departure and steaming at less than 8 knots, we estimate that the wreck probably lies at approximately 4,000 metres depth, 400 kilometres northwest of the island. In the 1915 Marine Court of Enquiry documents it was noted that a set of questions was sent to Dannevig and Captain Pim to ascertain the suitability of the vessel, although their specific responses are unknown.
Dannevig’s legacy Dannevig is regarded as the father of Australian fisheries science, but further research remained dormant until the establishment of the CSIR (later CSIRO) Fisheries Investigation Section in 1935. His major scientific advance concerned the importance of the egg and larval survival for future fisheries, and his 1907 paper on the effect of coastal winds on future estuarine fisheries was a world first. His discoveries were all the more remarkable, as methods of statistics and fisheries production had not yet been developed. Dannevig was very technically minded, focusing his work on a range of programs from the aquaculture of larval fish and crustaceans to the detailed design of the Endeavour. Australia had no marine fishing industry before 1900, very little history of marine research and sparse scientific infrastructure apart from natural history museums. He made major contributions to freshwater hatcheries in the Snowy Mountains and led a major review on the status of the iconic Murray cod. Dannevig was virtually a lone force, for just six years in NSW and a further six years as the founding Director of Australian Fisheries.
The distribution of trawling areas explored by Endeavour off eastern Australia, Western Australia and the Great Australian Bight spans an area as wide as the North Atlantic
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01 Commonwealth Cinematographer Bert Ive on hero platform (top centre) filming Day on a Trawler in October 1913. Image courtesy Anne Dannevig Ballard 02 On board Endeavour after a successful trawl, October 1913. In foreground is Dannevig with a large snapper at his feet; at rear from left are Captain George Pim, unknown (possibly cinematographer’s assistant) and senior engineer Angus Mackay. Other crew members unidentified. Image courtesy Ann Dannevig Ballard
It is clear that Dannevig had a larger synthesis work under way in 1914, and it is likely that much of this work was on board Endeavour when it was lost. Besides some fauna, Dannevig’s name is given to an island in the Glennie Group, on the western side of Wilson’s Promontory in Bass Strait. The Cronulla fisheries laboratory originally built by Dannevig was named the HC Dannevig Laboratory in 2006, and in 2010, a NSW Fisheries patrol boat was named Harald Dannevig. In a 1915 obituary, Dannevig’s department head Sir Nicholas Lockyer wrote about Dannevig’s legacy:8 No more capable man could have been chosen to direct it than Harald Dannevig, who combined a knowledge of the habits and the life of fish, acquired from childhood, with the enthusiasm of one who loved his profession and spent most of his life on it. Out in all weather, in storm and sunshine, when he could have readily directed the work from a comfortable office on shore, his one thought and ambition was to succeed in bringing home to the many doubting minds in Australia that there is a rich reserve of food supply in the fisheries of our coast, simply waiting to be harvested.
1 The Cronulla laboratories were used by the NSW Government Fisheries Department until 1920, by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), later the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), from 1939 to 1984, and NSW Fisheries from 1984 until closure of the site to fisheries research by the NSW government in 2012. 2 Iain M Suthers, Dennis D Reid, Erlend Moksness and Hayden T Schilling (2020). ‘Novel fisheries investigations by Harald Dannevig: some parallels with Johan Hjort on the other side of the world’, ICES Journal of Marine Science, doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsaa001 p 6. 3 H C Dannevig (1907). ‘On some peculiarities in our coastal winds and their influence upon the abundance of fish in inshore waters’, Journal of the Royal Society of NSW 41: p 41. 4 H C Dannevig (1915). ‘The Continental Shelf of the East Coast’, in H C Dannevig, Zoological Results of the Fishery Experiments Carried on by the FIS ‘Endeavour’, Vol 3, Pt VII. Department of Trade and Customs, Melbourne, pp 342–3. 5 H C Dannevig (1915). ‘Bass Strait’, in H C Dannevig, Zoological Results of the Fishery Experiments Carried on by the FIS ‘Endeavour’, Vol 3, Pt VIII. Department of Trade and Customs, Melbourne, pp 347–53. 6 A R McCulloch (1916). ‘Report on some fishes obtained by the FIS ‘Endeavour’ on the coasts of Queensland, New South Wales and south and south-western Australia’, in Biological Results of the Fishery Experiments Carried on by the FIS ‘Endeavour’, Vol 4, Pt IV, 1918. Department of Trade and Customs, Melbourne, p 181. 7 National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, ID 13249. 8 N Lockyer (1915). ‘In Memoriam: Harald Christian Dannevig, Director, and the work and loss of the FIS Endeavour’, in H C Dannevig, Biological Results of the Fishing Experiments Carried on by the FIS ‘Endeavour’, 1909–1914. Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Trade and Customs, Sydney, pp iii-vi.
Further reading ABC Podcast 2018. abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-historylisten/the-man-who-made-us-eat-fish/10404854.
Dennis Reid is a Research Associate at the Australian Museum, Sydney. Iain Suthers is a Professor in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales.
