THE WORLD OF FISHES
“He giveth food to all flesh.”--Ps. cxxxvi.
“Which giveth food to the hungry.”--Ps. cxlvi. 7.
A world abundantly peopled. A world which holds its myriads,
uncountable in kinds, beyond reckoning in numbers.
No part of the wide Ocean may be found where fishes are not, and in
places, at seasons, the water positively teems with them, so that
they may be said almost to hustle one another for want of space.
Fishes, taken by themselves, letting alone jelly-inhabitants and
shell-inhabitants and crab-inhabitants, would suffice to keep the whole
sea alive.
No picture of the Great Deep would be, even in the humblest sense,
complete without some little description of the world of Fish-life
contained therein.
But the subject is one of hopeless magnitude to be dealt with in a
couple of short chapters.
A mere list of the names and chief characteristics of the principal
“Orders” of Fishes, putting on one side the immense array of
“sub-orders” and “varieties,” would speedily outrun the limits of these
pages. Besides, such a list would be to the ordinary reader unreadable.
Natural History _savants_ have not troubled themselves to curtail
syllables in titles so used.
On land we have beasts and birds, which serve as food for man;
beasts and birds of prey; beasts and birds that are simply harmless,
attractive, pretty, or interesting.
In the Ocean also we find fishes good for food; fishes of prey; fishes
which may be classed as merely pretty, or curious, or remarkable.
This rough classification will do well enough for our present purpose.
Many fishes belong of course to more than one of the divisions. That
which is good for food may be also curious. That which acts as an ocean
“beast of prey” may be also beautiful.
The speed with which fishes can dart along is often very great.
Both fins and tails are used as a means of advance; and the smooth
scale-clothed skin glides with the least possible friction through the
water. No better form than the “boat-shaped” outline could be devised
for rapid progress in a heavy element.
Not only are fishes light in make, often weighing hardly more than the
water which upholds them; but also, unlike most backboned animals, they
are cold-blooded. A few deep-sea kinds have no eyes, though commonly
they can see and hear and smell well.
In the sense of feeling they are believed to be very deficient, and it
is doubtful whether they suffer any pain at all, in the true sense of
the word. Probably they can be conscious of discomfort.
One of their unfailing characteristics is the possession of a
stupendous appetite, and with it of a superlatively good digestion.
They live to eat; and they are at it incessantly. Perhaps in their
case it does not always mean greediness, but only a due satisfying of
Nature’s needs.
Certainly, as a race, they are not troubled with daintiness; and
if they love variety of fare, they can have the same with ease.
Pretty much whatever comes in their path is gulped down without
hesitation--“gobbled up in the twink of an eye.” Most of them, in
cannibalistic style, feed without compunction upon other fishes.
While they may be popularly said to “breathe water,” because they take
in water instead of air, they depend upon life-sustaining oxygen every
whit as much as do land animals, only in a different mode.
Large quantities of oxygen are ever present, dissolved, in the sea. It
is not the _water_ flowing through the fish’s gills, but the _oxygen_
dissolved in that water, which carries on combustion in the body, and
so keeps it in life and health.
The amount of oxygen thus obtained is small; therefore the combustion
is slow; therefore the blood is cold. But if, for a very short time,
all oxygen could be withdrawn from the ocean, the whole multitude of
fishes therein would fast die of suffocation. Sea-water alone, without
oxygen, could not keep them alive.
The gills are, however, so constructed that, while they can use small
supplies of oxygen dissolved in water, they cannot use large supplies
of oxygen forming part of the free air. So when a fish out of water
draws in atmospheric air, its gills become dry and useless, and it dies
of suffocation.
A world of rapid living and dying is this which we have now in view--of
killing and being killed--of an incessant struggle for existence.
Many of its inhabitants have no means of defence, save by flight; and
these feed only on beings weaker than themselves; largely on the vast
hordes of the young of crabs and jelly-fishes. Others are furnished
with formidable weapons, wherewith they can actively attack powerful
foes.
Cold-blooded though they be, and probably without the sense of physical
pain, they yet have their little range of emotions.
According to one thoughtful and competent observer,[10] they can be
frightened, they can be angry, they can endure pangs of jealousy,
they can be excited by a spirit of curiosity. And though one may
perhaps hardly go so far as to speak of “fishy” affection, shown by
one to another, yet some faint reflection of maternal anxiety seems
occasionally to exist.
[10] ROMANES.
They also display a real enjoyment of life, a pleasure in “being,” a
delight in playing with water and wave, and even a sportiveness, such
as one might imagine to belong only to creatures of a higher grade.
On the whole, the brain of a fish is better developed than the brains
of any other animals of low rank, excepting only that of the Cuttlefish.
Some instances have been known of tame fishes recognising, or
seeming to recognise, human beings. It is open to doubt how far the
“recognition” meant more than an expectation of something to eat,
following upon certain familiar sounds.
Fishes good for food--these are and have been through ages by far the
most important to man. Other kinds may be dangerous or interesting.
But without the “Food-fishes” of the Ocean the difficulties of feeding
mankind would be largely increased.
For they are always there. They come without exertion on our part. No
sowing, no digging, no tending of the waters, is needed to bring forth
the mighty harvest. Year after year, multitudes past imagination come
into existence, and any number of them may be had for the trouble of
taking.
All that man did in the past was his level best, by reckless
destruction, to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs, to
exterminate the creatures which are to him of so incalculable a value.
Of late years some steps have been taken in the other direction, some
efforts have been made towards the preservation of fish and the culture
of spawn. But much more remains to be done. The incessant use of line
and net and trawl through centuries has thinned the multitudes of some
species very greatly, and in the course of time they may even cease to
exist.
That the harm done thus far has not been far greater must be ascribed
to the enormous numbers of each kind, and to the vastness of those
ocean-regions, where they may at any time retreat beyond man’s reach.
For this we have to be thankful. It would be an ill day for us, on
which the chief food-fishes should fail.
Herrings, for example. What would the poorer throngs of our large
cities do, without that useful little cheap dish?
The amount of herrings caught yearly around British shores almost
exceeds belief. They appear often in mighty shoals, swimming closely
packed throughout a mile or more, being devoured as they swim, to the
tune of millions, and being captured by fishermen in masses.
Yet year by year the supply goes on, apparently undiminished.
One fisherman alone, at work near the French coast, reckoned that in
the course of a single night he had taken over five hundred thousand
herrings, half which he threw back into the sea. An unusual amount,
of course. But what must be the sum-total captured in a year by the
combined efforts of all fishermen?
In a year, however, a herring produces somewhere about thirty thousand
eggs. What, then, must be the sum-total of eggs produced by all
herrings in the ocean?
True, vast numbers of the eggs come to nothing; vast numbers serve
as food for other creatures. Yet enormous supplies escape countless
dangers, and succeed. Thus the poor man’s food is bountifully given, in
an ever-recurring harvest.
Among “Food-fishes” the “White” kinds are prominent, belonging mainly
to two large families. One of these families includes Cod, Whiting, and
Haddock. The other consists of Flat Fishes, such as Turbot, Halibut,
Sole, Dab, Plaice.
At the head of the first family stands the Cod, that most useful and
abundant creature, found throughout the deeper waters of northern seas.
During particular seasons the multitudes of cod are accompanied by
multitudes of cuttlefishes--rather singularly, since cuttlefish are
the favourite food of cod. But perhaps it would be more correct to say
that the cuttlefish are accompanied by the cod--the latter doubtless
going where they can find the food that they like. At these seasons
millions of cuttlefish are caught, to be used as bait, by means of
which enormous supplies of cod are taken for the market.
A calculation has been made that, in the course of a single spring, on
the banks not far from Newfoundland, something like one hundred and
twenty millions of cod are the result of combined British and American
and French exertions.
Happily, this fish also is very prolific. An individual often produces
three or four millions of eggs in a season; and as many as eight
millions have been found on one fish. Here, again, immense numbers of
the eggs fail to develop, immense numbers are devoured. Yet multitudes
come to perfection, and the ocean is still furnished with cod.
There is, however, a very serious danger, beginning to be recognised,
in the case of cod and yet more of some other “white-fish” kinds; and
this is that in time the reckless havoc worked may outrun even these
wonderful sources of renewal. Fishing has been carried on in the past,
without thought for the future. Little or no attention has been paid
to sparing the young; and the valuable roe itself has been used as an
article of food. Man may by-and-by have to pay dearly for his lack of
foresight and common-sense.
As an illustration of the numbers of fishes in the sea, a curious tale
is told about a deep-water kind of Mullet, known as the Tile-fish.
This particular species had not been discovered before the year 1879.
A few specimens were then taken from over a bank about eighty miles
from the coast of Massachusetts--large and brightly coloured. Near that
bank, where they had made their home, they could at any time be easily
caught.
But in the spring of 1882 a heavy gale took place; after which these
fishes were seen in enormous quantities, floating at the surface of
the water, covering a space of three hundred miles in length and fifty
in breadth. One who saw the singular sight reckoned that something
like fourteen hundred millions of them must have been there--enough to
have supplied every man and woman and child in the United States with
between two and three hundred pounds’ weight of fish.
In the following autumn, when fishermen went again to the bank for
tile-fish, they found none. Not a single specimen turned up. The
storm, probably by shifting the direction of the Gulf-stream and its
“cold wall,” had either destroyed them all, or had slain so many as to
frighten the survivors to a distance. In that particular district they
had not, when the story was written, been seen again.