CHAPTER TWELVE 



THE HERRING 



BUT though Jan's academic interest in the structural details and 

 the biology of fish was increasing, he and the rest of the crew of 

 the Stanislaw were more immediately occupied by the search for 

 money. That was why they turned to the herring. 



Of all fish it was by far the most important. The total of the 

 world's herring landings often dwarfed the catches of all other 

 species put together. Hundreds of tons of bright blue backs and 

 fluorescent scales unloaded by swarms of fish baskets along miles 

 of quay and wharf; millions of pounds shifting in the ledgers of the 

 banking houses ; war fleets built up to protect the nets ; taxes ; 

 revolutions ; the heads of kings : there was never any wdld animal 

 so important to mankind as the herring. Even as Jan planned to 

 go after the British shoals, there was a threat of war between 

 Korea and Japan - another herring war. 



Yet it was one of the most primitive of marine fish, more closely 

 related to the salmon than to the highly evolved gadoids. Ana- 

 tomically it was distinguished, for example by a two-lobed non- 

 functional lung, slung across its back and used as an air-bladder. 

 This brought it nearer the primitive lung fish, found in the muddy 

 swamps of Australia, Africa, and South America, than to the pure 

 marine creatures, like the mackerel and the haddock, that were 

 challenging it for biological supremacy throughout the northern 

 oceans. But it was not a lung fish nor did it resemble the recently 

 notorious coelacanth. It was a true bony fish, a teleost, and, out- 

 side its owm family, its closest relative among fresh- water fish was 



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