Nature
30 January, 2013
One April day, a fisherman named Johan Norman reeled in a female cod near the Norwegian village of Moskenes, where snow-capped mountains rise straight from the sea. He measured the fish: 82 centimetres from the tip of its snout to the tip of its tail. Then he pulled out his knife and sliced off several scales, placing them in a small envelope to deposit at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway. The year was 1913.