Living Silver 



on every side, each accidentally yet each quite quickly, because 

 they don't have to stop to eat in the surrounding barrenness. And 

 once inside this new^ rich area, v^hich might well be rich with her- 

 ring spawTi, each haddock will tend to stay there, swallowing food 

 with incessant gluttony and hardly swimming at all. There will 

 thus be many arrivals and few departures until, say, the whole 

 mass of herring eggs has been reduced to a level with the water on 

 every side. Then the haddock, still moving at random, will tend 

 to dribble out of the once rich area more quickly than they come 

 in and the concentration will disperse. Yet the whole process will 

 have given the impression of a purposeful movement of many fish 

 to consume herring spawn. Theoretically, then, this vast under- 

 water party has been celebrated without a single one of the guests 

 realising that he has been invited : not one of them could have 

 known where it was going. Jan learned that this could be expres- 

 sed by saying that the operation was statistically purposive though 

 individually random. All it really meant was that herring eggs 

 were plagued by haddock without any single haddock feeling any 

 animosity towards herring. As far as individuals were concerned, 

 the whole business was an accident. 



Yet, though the haddock was much given to this browsing be- 

 haviour, it was not limited to it. It was quite willing to eat smaller 

 fish if it could catch them. It was like the cod, in fact, in that it 

 would indulgently and gluttonously attack almost anything. But 

 it was not so energetic. The small fry and the leguminous beasts 

 were its most usual prey. It could not be bothered hunting the 

 larger crabs and the more powerful fish. Yet it liked fish, the 

 little ones that couldn't put up much of a fight. At times it ate 

 almost as many of them as the cod. 



These small fish were almost as important to the economy of 

 the sea as earthworms are to that of the land. Jan did not see 

 many of them during his fishing days. Occasionally they would 

 tumble to the deck when he accidentally slit open the stomach 

 of a cod or whiting but he had no time to examine them in the 

 bustle of quick gutting. They did not often occur in trawl nets 



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