Flatfish

“ Two or three flatfish apiece, for a whole year, for Europe. There are many billions of fine fresh flat fatfish—fat fratflish, I mean—there are billions of armies of these and other fish in the sea. We skim off a silly little fraction of this annual crop, and then publish newspaper articles about our improved methods! ”

“ It belongs to the flatfish family Pleuronectidæ, and was noticed by Schöpf as early as 1788, and from his description was named by Walbaum Pleuronectes americanus, which means, literally, "the American side-swimmer." It inhabits the North Atlantic coast from Labrador to the Chesapeake Bay, and is abundant in all the bays and estuaries of the Middle states, where it is variously known as flatfish, flounder, winter flounder, mud-dab, etc. ”

“ By suitable muscles these cells can be forced upwards so as to modify the colour of the skin, which, when they are not brought into action, is a dirty white. These animals are excessively sluggish and defenceless, and the power of changing their colour to that of their immediate surroundings is no doubt of great service to them. Many of the flatfish are also capable of changing their colour according to the colour of the bottom they rest on ”

“ See flab, sb.
flad, sb., see flag1, sb.
flada [flāda] , sb., ray (fish) ; a sea-term, tabu-name, used by fishermen. Fo. Really “the flat” or “flatfish”; * (hin) flata; doubtless the def. fem. form of O.N. flatr, adj., flat.
fladrek [flād (ə) rək] and more comm. flodrek [flōd (ə) rək, flȯd··ərək·] , sb., limpet; tabu-name, a word belonging to fishermen’s tabu-terms. These limpets are commonly used as bait for fish. The form fladrek is nowadays the rarer form (Fe. occas.) , flodrek the more frequent. ”

“ As usual with all of the flatfishes, the dorsal and anal fins are very long, horizontally, the color on the exposed or right side is rusty brown, obscurely mottled, with the under or left side white.
The flounder is partial to sheltered coves and quiet bays, preferring bottoms of sand or mud, though sometimes it is found in rocky situations. It is sedentary in its habits, partially burying itself in the sand or mud, where it remains during the entire year, feeding on minute shells, crustaceans, worms, etc. ”

“ You see how truly your prediction regarding the flatness of the creature's head is substantiated by these casts; it is really not easy to know how, placed on so flat a surface, the eyes could have been very available save for star-gazing; but as nature makes no mistakes in such matters, it is possible that the creature, like the flatfishes, may have lived much at the bottom, and that most of the seeing it had use for may have been seeing in an upward direction. ”

“ When first born the fish swims upright with a slight tendency to favor one side; its eyes are on opposite sides of the head, as in most vertebrates and the head itself is regular. With age and experience in exploring the bottom on one side, the under eye refuses to remain away from the light and gradually turns upward, bringing with it the bones of the skull to such an extent that the adult Flat-fish becomes the apparently deformed creature that appears in our markets as a regular product of the deep. ”

“ About 500 species of flat-fish are known, mostly marine, a few species allied to the sole being confined to the fresh waters of South America, West Africa, and the Malay Archipelago, whilst a few others, such as the English flounder, ascend streams, though still breeding in the sea. ”

“ These little baby flat fish, not much larger than your thumb-nail, crowd in the shallow, sandy parts of the sea near the coast. There they often end their lives in the shrimp-trawl, as we have already noticed.
After leaving this "infants' school" the Plaice, and other small flat fish, go to deeper water. There they feed and grow fat. Our fishermen know where to find them. Indeed, these special fishing grounds are so well known that flat fish are scarcer than they used to be. Some kinds are much too dear ever to be seen on the poor man's table. ”

“ As the largest flathead invariably dart upon the bait, and then make a bolt with it, this plan is a good one to follow, unless, of course, they are biting freely; in that case the smaller lines for bream and whiting, &c., are hauled in, for there is more real sport in landing an 8-lb. flathead than there is in catching smaller fish, for he is very game, and fights fiercely for his life. ”

“ The side turned towards the bottom is sometimes the left, sometimes the right, colourless, and termed the “blind” side; that turned upwards and towards the light is variously, and in some tropical species even vividly, coloured. Both eyes are on the coloured side, on which side also the muscles are more strongly developed. The dorsal and anal fins are exceedingly long, without division. All the Flat-fishes undergo remarkable changes with age, which, however, are very imperfectly known and not yet fully understood, from the difficulty of referring larval forms to their respective parents. ”

“ The flat-fish, such as soles and flounders, are a familiar example; and the same principle is illustrated by the flattened forms of many of the bivalve shell-fish, whose flat shell, when closed, can lie safely on the loosest sand. Equally is their form adapted for their circumstances, when, in their slow way, they begin to [24] move. For the flat valves of the shell are placed to the right and left of the animal's body. ”

“ Their bodies, more or less flattened according to the species, have their sides perpendicular to the plane of the water, and their eyes are placed in such a way that there is an eye on each flattened side. But those fishes whose habits place them under the necessity of constantly approaching the shores, and especially the shelving banks or where the slope is slight, have been forced to swim on their flattened faces, so as to be able to approach nearer the edge of the water. ”

“ Now in the case of the ancestors of the Flat-fish the adult and the larva must have had the same symmetry with regard to eyes and colour and the dorsal fin terminated behind the level of the eyes. Thus the variations which gave rise to the Flat-fish were not discontinuous but continuous. In each individual development now, not merely hypothetically in the ancestor, the condition of the adult arises by an absolutely continuous change of the eyes, fins, and colour. Such a continuous change cannot be explained by a discontinuous variation, i.e. a mutation. ”

“ In fishes which are in the habit of moving on the bottom, the whole body, or at least the head, is vertically depressed and flattened; the head may be so enormously enlarged that the trunk and tail appear merely as an appendage. In one family of fishes, the Pleuronectidæ or Flat-fishes, the body is compressed into a thin disk; they swim and move on one side only, which remains constantly directed towards the bottom, a peculiarity by which the symmetry of all parts of the body has been affected. ”

“ Fish both see and hear well, and the idea that they cannot see is based upon the great difference visible between an artificial fly and a real one. As a matter of fact few men could tell the difference between them when in the water, the surface being covered with froth and suds from an eddy or foam and bubbles from a rapid, the surface ruffled by a fresh breeze, and shadowed by drifting clouds. I have frequently seen bass dart like an arrow and seize the bait from a distance of thirty feet. ”

“ Male flathead mature at 15 to 18 inches total length, females at 18 to 20 inches. The spawning season in 1959 probably began in early June and extended to mid-July. I attempted to find spawning fish on 19 June and for one month thereafter. On 19 June nine holes were dug into a 75-yard section of a clay bank adjacent to a long, shallow, rubble riffle. A flathead was first found in one of these holes on 22 June, and others were frequently found in this and one other hole until mid-July. ”

“ Now, many fishermen with whom I have conversed hold the same opinion as Bishop Spratt, and believe that when the oyster is gaping the Star-fish insinuates a finger, and hastily scrapes out the delicious mouthful; nay, further maintain that the Star-fish is far from being successful at all times, very often, especially when there has only been one ray inserted, the frightened oyster grasps it with all his might, and obliges his discomfited opponent to retire minus a limb. ”

“ For whiting and silvery bream, rather fine lines are used; but we each have a heavy line for flathead, for these fish are caught in the tidal rivers on a sandy bottom up to three feet and four feet in length. They are in colour, both on back and belly, much like a sole, of great width across the shoulders, and then taper away to a very fine tail. The head is perfectly flat, very thin, and armed on each side with very sharp bones pointing tailward. ”

“ Those fresh-water fishes that do not wander away, go to the well-aired spots in their neighborhood to spawn—to the shore-waters, the wet meadows, or the junctions of rivers, or to the tributary streams of the lakes in which they live. Those salt-water fish which live at the bottom likewise go to the waters near the shores, where the flats and the meadows swarm during the spring with their young. The eggs of the cod and mackerel are buoyed upon the surface of the water, where the winds blow constantly over them. ”

“ Most shells have three layers. They have the thin, brown skin; the outside layer, like the common fresh-water mussel; then they have an inner layer, which is very brilliant. Very frequently the water is sufficient to wear off the skin, and they show the dull layer on the outside. By artificial means that opaque whitish layer is ground off by means of a wheel, and the inner layer is exposed, which presents that inner pearly appearance. [Samples shown witness.] These shells have had the outer layer ground off so as to exhibit the beautiful inner layer. ”

“ He believes with the fishermen that frequently the star-fish [284] begins his attack by inserting an arm, but he does not believe that the oyster under such circumstances escapes with life. Let us suppose the star-fish to have succeeded in insidiously introducing a ray within the shell of the apathetic oyster, and that the oyster immediately resented such intrusion by closing his shell with all the force he can exert. The opposite argument at this stage is, that the intruder is obliged from pain to abandon his hold, and even pay for his audacity by the forfeit of a limb. ”

“ These are so slender that they generally lie coiled up in a spiral cone in two pockets, one on each side, just below the eye, when the animal is quiescent, and are only seen when it takes its food. These long, slender tentacular arms are expanded at their extremity, and the inner surface of their enlarged part is studded with suckers—some of them larger in size than those on the eight shorter arms. As the food of these swimmers consists, of course, chiefly of fish, their sucking disks are curiously modified for the better retention of a slippery captive. ”

“ These beautiful sea animals present the appearance of delicately tinted flowers adorned with the most exquisite gems.
Starfish and sea-urchins of all descriptions are found in immense numbers. The five-rayed varieties of starfish are universally condemned as insatiable foes of the oyster family, and the oyster cultivators destroy all they can find. To dismember the body of the starfish by pulling off the finger-like rays does not kill the animal, for not only does each fish produce new rays but each ray will produce a new starfish. ”

“ We see that one side is dark and positively coloured, the other is white or slightly tinged with a fleshy hue, and we are apt to suppose that they offer no greater peculiarity than that of being greatly depressed or flattened horizontally, like the Skates, which at first sight they much resemble: but, in fact, the coloured surface is not the back, nor the white surface the belly, in the Flat-fish, but these are truly the two sides, right and left, so that instead of being depressed, it is compressed, or flattened vertically, like the Chætodons. ”

“ When the extremities come to be developed, [189] "The feet of lizards and mammals, the wings and feet of birds, no less than the hands and feet of man, all arise from the same fundamental form." The young of flat-fish such as soles and turbots, when they leave the egg are not flat, but shaped like ordinary fish, and they wear their eyes in the normal fashion, one on each side of their head, not both on the same side like their parents—whose form however they presently by degrees assume. ”

“ In the Rock Hind, fig. 12, the eye is 5 in head, the snout is 4-2/5 in head, and the maxillary 2-3/5. Young fishes have the eye larger, the body slenderer, and the head larger in proportion than old fishes of the same kind. The mouth grows larger [Pg 20] with age, and is sometimes larger also in the male sex. The development of the fins often varies a good deal in some fishes with age, old fishes and male fishes having higher fins when such differences exist. These variations are soon understood by the student of fishes and cause little doubt or confusion in the study of fishes. ”

“ But there are more things than shrimps in the gleaming, working, struggling mass of life before us. Not to mind the uncouth soldier-crabs, dragging about their despoiled shells, which, numerous and conspicuous as they are, we shall neglect for another occasion,—we have other fish to fry. Here are sundry examples of that remarkable race, the proper Flat-fishes. These thin, brown, long-oval ones are specimens of Soles, of which there are two kinds here, the Common Sole, uniform dull brown, and the Lemon Sole, of a more [Pg 105] freckled tint, pale orange brown, with darker spots. ”