Living Silver 



men were still living in what was almost a Stone Age relationship 

 with the life of the oceans, even though they had now managed to 

 make hatchets more complicated than those of Neanderthal man, 

 hatchets that weighed a thousand tons, that consumed oil by the 

 hundred gallon, that carried a whole society aboard them. 



Nothing primitive is economic. American Indians who slaught- 

 ered bison in order to feast on their tongues were far too primi- 

 tive to be able to hold their owm in the complex economies of the 

 modern world. And yet, because of the immense productivity of 

 the sea, fishermen have managed to survive although their methods 

 are basically as primitive. The bison is, at least, a vegetarian. It 

 is only one step removed from grass. All fish, however, are carni- 

 vores. To kill them is about as economic as to live on a diet of 

 wolves. The wolves would have to be fed on sheep and the sheep 

 would still consume whole harvests of grass. Yet it would take 

 many sheep to fatten a single wolf. It would, indeed, be more 

 sensible to kill the sheep, and eat only their tongues. For every 

 link in this kind of food chain implies a loss in food value of some- 

 thing like ninety-nine percent. If men could only grow edible 

 crops, like wheat or oats, on salt water they would increase the 

 yield of the oceans by, at least, a thousandfold. But, though a few 

 pilot experiments have been carried out in this direction, there is 

 no prospect of any change happening within the foreseeable fut- 

 ure. Coming generations of men will have to be content with 

 their primitive role as hunters. 



It took Jan a long time to get these points quite clear in his 

 mind. He sometimes thought that his career at sea helped only to 

 obscure the fundamental issues. The truth was that fishing was 

 such a primitive form even of hunting that the elements of the 

 chase which called for skill tended to be swamped in the brutal 

 fatigue of shooting and hauling. Trawling, in particular, seemed 

 to demand none of the delicacy in stalking its prey, none of the 

 accuracy in aiming a missile, that characterised even the American 

 Indian. The fisherman just went out in a ship, waited till it stop- 

 ped, helped to throw a net over the side, and, when it came up, 



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