John Alden Knight's Solunar Theory
In 1926 John Alden Knight postulated some folk lore he
picked up in Florida and proceeded to attempt a refinement, giving it the name Solunar
(Sol for sun and Lunar for moon). Knight compiled a list of 33 factors which influence
or control day-to-day behavior of fresh and salt-water fish. Everything was taken
into account that could possibly have any bearing on the matter.
One by one the factors were examined and rejected. Three of them, however, merited
further examination. They were sun, moon and tides.
Surely the sun could have no effect since it’s cycle was the same day after day,
whereas the observed activity periods of fish were apt to be present at most any
time of the day or night. The moon had already been weighed and found wanting. Tides?
Surely there could be no tidal movement in a trout stream.
But the fact remained, however, that the tides had always guided salt-water fishermen
to good fishing. Could it be that the prompting stimulus lay in the influence of
the sun and moon which cause the ocean tides, rather than the actual tidal stages
or flow?
When the original research was being done only the approximate time of moon up -
moon down were considered. Gradually, it became evident that there were also intermediate
periods of activity that occurred midway between the two major periods. Thus the
more evident periods were called MAJOR PERIODS and the two intermediate periods,
shorter in length, were called MINOR PERIODS.
One convincing experiment was when Dr. Frank A. Brown, a biologist at Northwestern
University, had some live oysters flown to his lab near Chicago.Oysters open their
shells with each high tide, and Dr. Brown wanted to see if this was due to the change
in ocean levels or to a force from the moon itself. He put them in water and removed
them from all sunlight. For the first week they continued to open their shells with
the high tides from their ocean home. But by the second week, they had adjusted
their shell-openings to when the moon was directly overhead or underfoot in Chicago.
Continue to John Alden Knights' Solunar Theory Page 2
*Moonup~Moondown ... Library of Congress #72-93383