Market Whimsies 



delicate flavours of the whiting and would not have been greatly 

 concerned if the haddock had become extinct. And many of their 

 vessels did fish in the North Sea. No agreement would have been 

 worth anything unless these important fishing powers were signa- 

 tories to it. And they were very unwilling to sign, for the whiting 

 had a small, arrow-like head, a head so small that even a large whit- 

 ing, a mature whiting, could have escaped through the projected 

 meshes. There was never any question of the whiting becoming 

 extinct. There was only the danger that, with a large-meshed cod- 

 end on their trawls, the European fishermen would not be able to 

 catch enough whiting to supply their home markets. Too many 

 would escape. 



An impasse seemed to have been reached, an impasse that had 

 no foundation other than an international conflict between taste- 

 buds. It was never wholly resolved, though a legal compromise 

 was worked out. But British fishermen swore that the foreign 

 ships were still using undersized nets and, occasionally, when a 

 Belgian ran aground on a Scottish coast or some other accident of 

 the sea permitted them to measure a doubtful net, they were able 

 to produce some evidence in support of their suspicions. 



Jan was European enough to side against his shipmates in this 

 matter. He hated the taste of haddock. But he depended on it for 

 his livelihood. It was one of the fish that sold and one of the fish 

 that he caught, even after he had graduated from the North Sea 

 to the great Faroese fisheries, so that he really owed it his first 

 allegiance. He felt sympathy with both parties. What he was un- 

 compromisingly against was the absurd divagation of taste that al- 

 lowed such a dispute to become so important and to interfere, as 

 at times it did, with the serious business of catching and selling 

 fish. 



69 



