Living Silver 



a needle shape, a glitter too like that of a sewing machine in ac- 

 tion, the silvery muscular silhouette against the darkness of the 

 enclosing water, and the finishing sweep of a powerful tail-fin. 

 That was the whiting. And though it might linger ponderously in 

 mid-water, its dorsal fins spread into the shape of a silent snore, 

 it was always ready to pounce at the least flicker of a smaller adver- 

 sary and its belly was usually as close-packed with fish flesh as a can 

 of pilchards. Shrimps were its favourite invertebrate food, though 

 it sometimes condescended to join the haddock in grazing down 

 the undulating gardens of the tentacles of sedentary worms. But, 

 above all, it lived on sand eels, nothing but sand eels over long 

 stretches of the North Sea year. Almost always, when Jan gutted 

 a whiting, the delicate pouch of the stomach would be torn open 

 and one, two, three, six, nine sand eels would fall, curled, half- 

 skinned and compressed m death. 



It was, of course, a smaller fish than the cod, but it was not less 

 gluttonous. It did not range so far to the north, was almost absent 

 from the Faroes, but it was pandemic in the North Sea and its 

 shoals spread more densely southwards and through the English 

 Channel. It struck Jan that its small size might be due to this 

 more southern distribution rather than to its genetic constitution. 

 For he had often observed that the larger fish of any species were 

 found at the northern limit of its distribution, large haddock at 

 the Faroes, large cod around Bear Island, large halibut in the Den- 

 mark Straits. Even with the whiting itself he imagined he could 

 distinguish the big ones of the Viking Bank and the Shetland grounds 

 from the smaller fish of Dogger and the Bight. But he was not 

 dead certain. Maybe it was just because the southern part of the 

 North Sea was fished more heavily and, therefore, the life history 

 of the southern whiting was shorter. They did not live long enough 

 to grow into big fellows. Maybe, but he was not sure. And a 

 good deal of evidence was against it. 



It was certain, for example, that a five year old haddock on the 

 Faroe Bank was larger in every way than a North Sea haddock of 

 the same acre. And the same applied to cod, halibut, lemon sole. 



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