Living Silver 



What the plaice wanted, it took. But it did no unnecessary slaugh- 

 ter. When it did not need food it slept, not lazily in an after- 

 dinner sort of way, but deeply and for months on end. The paun- 

 chy and voracious complacency of the cod was alien to the plaice. 

 It was smooth, freckled, hard, cold, abstemious and gluttonous, 

 like an artist. 



And, in its feeding habits, the plaice was as typical of flatfish as 

 the cod of gadoids. Compressed bodies seemed to result in re- 

 pressed activity, especially during the winter months when most 

 marine animals tended to eat a depleted diet and, therefore, to 

 hunt less intensively. The huge silence of the bell of a jellyfish 

 was reduced to the appearance of a microscopic weed. Some of 

 the sea squirts were desiccated. Other sessile invertebrates shrank 

 into various comatose conditions. But a backbone could not dim- 

 inish. So all fish were forced to keep their full stature. If they 

 belonged to those restless groups that could not stop fidgeting 

 though the prospects of food were as thin as their own bodies, 

 they might even have to act more quickly and more continually 

 than in the plentiful summer months. Most fish, however, cur- 

 tailed their activity by eating less, so that there was usually a diff- 

 erence in the summer and winter rates of growth. The story of 

 this differential growth was recorded in their scales and their ear- 

 bones, or otoliths, as the same story was told on land by the rings 

 of a tree. By reading the number of thin lines and thick that ran 

 through these hard parts, the age of any individual fish could be 

 easily ascertained. In flatfish, the diet was often reduced to the 

 point of complete starvation. A full-grown plaice seemed to be 

 able to survive the three coldest months of winter without eating 

 anything whatsoever. And flatfish contrasted with gadoids in this 

 respect. Though the roundfish did often reduce or change their 

 diet, they never did so with the same thoroughness as the flatties. 

 Only the mackerel did that, mackerel that shoaled even to sleep, 

 in the deep Atlantic waters off the coast of France, millions of 

 mackerel laid side by side on the bottom so that they covered the 

 stone substratum with the blue-striped life of their bodies and the 



104 



