PELAGIC FAUNA 



67 



Shark on hook. 



catch a shark (Fig., above), and then our attention would be attracted 

 by the pilot fish (Naucrates), a kind of mackerel, blue with dark trans- 

 verse bars, which follows sharks and feeds on their excrement or on scraps 

 from their meals. We also saw sucking-fish (Remora remora), which is 

 another mackerel. The anterior dorsal fin of this fish is modified as a 

 large, grooved sucking disk by means of which it clings to sharks. 

 When the shark has seized its prey the sucking-fish lets go and shares in 

 the feast. 



Whenever the ship was stationary we would suspend a railed platform 

 over the side just above water-level, for a man to fish from. This plat- 

 form was also used for nocturnal angling (Fig., p. 68). A beam of light 

 would be directed into the water and soon there would be a swarm of 

 fish, squids, and jellyfish, which the man on the platform would net and 

 pass up to the deck for transmission to the ever hard-working zoologists 

 in the laboratory. Others would fish for larger fish by line, sometimes 

 getting big hauls though rarely any welcome variation of our diet. How- 

 ever, one evening off the Seychelles we caught a quantity of garfish and 

 mackerel of species closely resembling those from our own seas, and we 

 would occasionally "land" the large and savoury dorado (Coryphcena). 



We also caught many squids this way. We would sometimes come 

 across them travelling in shoals at an astonishing speed, shining in the 

 beam of our searchlight like gold-fish. While sheltering from a typhoon off 



