Living Silver 



did the fishermen themselves, and there was nobody who knew 

 more than the fishermen. One soHd fact was the size of the eggs 

 and another was that these eggs, or the larvae that sprang from 

 them, went inshore toward the shallows of such places as Faxa 

 Bay, the great Icelandic centre for the preservation of young fish. 

 And there, in water of not more than twenty fathoms, the halibut 

 began to feed and to grow. 



At first it took only the same amphipods as the plaice ate. As it 

 grew older it graduated to larger crustaceans and larger fish. Then 

 it turned its attention to small squids and octopods. Until, finally 

 it was ready to start on its life work of devouring the Norwegian 

 haddock, the sea bream. It was true, Jan found, that it alternated 

 this pursuit with the consumption of the lumpy spikes of the spider 

 crab, the most inedible three pound morsel that Jan had ever seen, 

 but even this gargantuan monster of living stone did not distract 

 the halibut from its main prey, Sebastes marinus. And it was this 

 fish that was the source of the halibut's high vitamin content, a 

 content so high that halibut liver oil had become a medical rather 

 than a commercial term. But where the sea bream got its vitamins 

 nobody knew, since nobody ever saw what the sea bream ate. It 

 always vomited whatever was in its stomach before it reached the 

 surface. Its air-bladder expanded and out went its food. Even less, 

 in fact, was known about it than about the halibut and until more 

 was known about the one, nothing further could be learned about 

 the other. The only certainty in the case of the Norwegian had- 

 dock was that the young were born in the belly of their mother : 

 they were not spawned, as in most other fish; they were truly 

 born, born alive, fully developed, as hilly developed as a baby; 

 more so ; not an ^gg; not a larva ; a real, though tiny, Norwegian 

 haddock, sea bream, redfish, Sebastes. It was all the same, and it 

 was all a mystery. Not even the one usual clue was offered. There 

 was no way of finding out how the sea bream managed to perpetu- 

 ate themselves ; and there was certainly no way of discovering on 

 what they fed. 



Jan found very little enlightenment among all this palaver - sea 



114 



