discern with large black eyes and to seize with sharp-beaked mouth such food as the sea might offer. For the rest of that day the crab larvae were carried along with the mackerel eggs, on which they fed heavily. In the evening the struggle of two currentsâthe tidal current and the wind-driven currentâ carried many of the crab larvae to landward while the mackerel eggs continued to the south.
There were many signs in the sea of the approach to more southern latitudes. The night before the appearance of the crab larvae the sea had been set aglitter over an area of many miles with the intense green lights of the southern comb jelly Mnemiopsis, whose ciliated combs gleam with the colors of the rainbow by day and sparkle like emeralds in the night sea. And now for the first time there throbbed in the warm surface waters the pale southern form of the jellyfish Cyanea, trailing its several hundred tentacles through the water for fish or whatever else it might entangle. For hours at a time the ocean seethed with great shoals of salpaeâthimble-sized, transparent barrels hooped in strands of muscle.
On the sixth night after the spawning of the mackerel the tough little skins of the eggs began to burst. One by one the tiny fishlets, so small that the combined length of twenty of them, head to tail, would have been scarcely an inch, slipped out of the confining spheres and knew for the first time the touch of the sea. Among these hatching fish was Scomber.
He was obviously an unfinished little fish. It seemed almost that he had burst prematurely from the egg, so unready was he to care for himself. The gill slits were marked out but were not cut through to the throat, so were useless for breathing. His mouth was only a blind sac. Fortunately for the newly hatched fishlet, a supply of food remained in the yolk sac still attached to him, and on this he would live until his mouth was open and functioning. Because of the bulky sac, however, the baby mackerel drifted upside down in the water, helpless to control his movements.
The next three days of life brought startling transformations. As the processes of development forged onward, the mouth and gill structures were completed and the finlets sprouting from back and sides and underparts grew and found strength and certainty of movement. The eyes became deep blue with pigment, and now it may be that they sent to the tiny brain the first messages of things seen. Steadily the yolk mass shrank, and with its loss Scomber found it possible to right himself and by undulation of the still-rotund body and movement of the fins to swim through the water.
Of the steady drift, the southward pouring of the water day after day, he was unconscious, but the feeble strength of his fins was no match for the currents. He floated where the sea carried him, now a rightful member of the drifting community of the plankton.
8
Hunters of the Plankton
THE SPRING SEA was filled with hurrying fishes. Scup were migrating northward from their wintering grounds off the Capes of Virginia, bound for the coastal waters of southern New England where they would spawn. Shoals of young herring moved swiftly just under the surface, rippling the water no more than the passing of a breeze, and schools of menhaden, moving in closely packed formation with bodies flashing bronze and silver in the sun, appeared to the watching sea birds like dark clouds ruffling to a deep blue the smooth sheet of the sea. Mingled with the wandering menhaden and herring were late-running shad, following in along the sea lanes that led to the rivers of their birth, and across the silvery warp of this living fabric the last of the mackerel wove threads of flashing blue and green.
Now, above the water where these hurrying fishes jostled the new-hatched mackerel, there fluttered for the first time that season the little flocks of Oceanites, the petrel, come back to the sea from the far south. The birds moved lightly from place to place
There were many signs in the sea of the approach to more southern latitudes. The night before the appearance of the crab larvae the sea had been set aglitter over an area of many miles with the intense green lights of the southern comb jelly Mnemiopsis, whose ciliated combs gleam with the colors of the rainbow by day and sparkle like emeralds in the night sea. And now for the first time there throbbed in the warm surface waters the pale southern form of the jellyfish Cyanea, trailing its several hundred tentacles through the water for fish or whatever else it might entangle. For hours at a time the ocean seethed with great shoals of salpaeâthimble-sized, transparent barrels hooped in strands of muscle.
On the sixth night after the spawning of the mackerel the tough little skins of the eggs began to burst. One by one the tiny fishlets, so small that the combined length of twenty of them, head to tail, would have been scarcely an inch, slipped out of the confining spheres and knew for the first time the touch of the sea. Among these hatching fish was Scomber.
He was obviously an unfinished little fish. It seemed almost that he had burst prematurely from the egg, so unready was he to care for himself. The gill slits were marked out but were not cut through to the throat, so were useless for breathing. His mouth was only a blind sac. Fortunately for the newly hatched fishlet, a supply of food remained in the yolk sac still attached to him, and on this he would live until his mouth was open and functioning. Because of the bulky sac, however, the baby mackerel drifted upside down in the water, helpless to control his movements.
The next three days of life brought startling transformations. As the processes of development forged onward, the mouth and gill structures were completed and the finlets sprouting from back and sides and underparts grew and found strength and certainty of movement. The eyes became deep blue with pigment, and now it may be that they sent to the tiny brain the first messages of things seen. Steadily the yolk mass shrank, and with its loss Scomber found it possible to right himself and by undulation of the still-rotund body and movement of the fins to swim through the water.
Of the steady drift, the southward pouring of the water day after day, he was unconscious, but the feeble strength of his fins was no match for the currents. He floated where the sea carried him, now a rightful member of the drifting community of the plankton.
8
Hunters of the Plankton
THE SPRING SEA was filled with hurrying fishes. Scup were migrating northward from their wintering grounds off the Capes of Virginia, bound for the coastal waters of southern New England where they would spawn. Shoals of young herring moved swiftly just under the surface, rippling the water no more than the passing of a breeze, and schools of menhaden, moving in closely packed formation with bodies flashing bronze and silver in the sun, appeared to the watching sea birds like dark clouds ruffling to a deep blue the smooth sheet of the sea. Mingled with the wandering menhaden and herring were late-running shad, following in along the sea lanes that led to the rivers of their birth, and across the silvery warp of this living fabric the last of the mackerel wove threads of flashing blue and green.
Now, above the water where these hurrying fishes jostled the new-hatched mackerel, there fluttered for the first time that season the little flocks of Oceanites, the petrel, come back to the sea from the far south. The birds moved lightly from place to place
Similar Books
