08 - Within the Deep by R. Cadwallader Smith - The Dangers of the Deep

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lesson eight of Within the Deep by R. Cadwalad Smith.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Lesson eight
The Dangers of the Deep. The game of hide and
seek is played by most of the dwellers in the sea.
Many of them are hiders and seekers by turn. That

(00:21):
is to say, they are always seeking other creatures to devour,
but must also be ready to hide from their own enemies.
Eating and being eaten. That is the life of the sea.
The small and weak ones must hide, and their lives
depend on their skill in hiding. Perhaps we should not
call it a game, as it is not done for fun.

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But though the sea is full of danger for some creatures,
you must not think that they live in fear. There
is no doubt that they enjoy their lives, each in
its own way. Many are the quaint dodges and tricks
of the hiders and seekers in the sea. We can
mention but a few in this lesson. Look at the

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spider crabs and their trick of dressing up. They have
hooks on their backs which catch in the seaweed. Some
of them even tear off weed with their pincers and
fix it on to these hooks and succeed in looking
like bundles of weed and not a bit like living crabs.
Then there are the fish which wear a colored, scaly coat.

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Many of them are not easily seen in the glinting water.
As you know. Others are lazy. They lie on the
bed of the sea and wear a disguise which hides
them from prowling foes the place or other flat fish,
as we noticed in Lesson, too, are colored and marked
like the sand and pebbles of their home, and they
can even change color to suit their background. They are

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wonderfully hidden owing to this useful dodge. It is as
if Mother Nature had given them the marvelous cloak of
invisibility of which we read in fairy tales. Shrimps and
young crabs wear a coat of sand color or weed color.
Our soldiers, for much the same reason, wear suits of khaki.

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Another common hide and seek trick is to look like
nothing at all. That sounds difficult, but it is a
favorite dodge in the sea. If a number of very
young herrings or eels were placed in a glass tank
of sea water, you would have a hard task to
find them. You can look at them and yet not
see them. They are transparent. You look through them as

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if they were water or glass. You can imagine how
well hidden they are in the open sea. It is
well to be able to hide when all around you
are enemies who look on you as good food. But
there is another way, and that is to wear armor.
Then you can frighten your enemy, or at least prevent

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him from eating you. Some fish, like the trunk fish,
are covered with bony plates jointed together like armor. Spines
and prickles are a commoner defense. The little stickleback of
our ponds wears sharp spines and knows well how to
use them. Even the terrible pike will not swallow such

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a dangerous mouthful unless driven by hunger. Seafish are the
most hunted of all living things. From the day they
leave the egg, enemies lurk on all sides to gobble
them up. The weak ones are eaten, and none of
them has the chance to die of old age. So
we find a defense of spines and prickles worn by

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many seafish. Spines on the fins are the commonest and
no doubt help to keep away enemies. But some fish
go one better than that and wear a complete suit
of spines The porcupine fish, as his name tells us,
is one of these. He is a small fish living
in warm seas. No doubt he has many enemies eager

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to meet him and eat him. But when they see
this little fish puff out his sides like a balloon,
and when pointed spines rise up all over the balloon,
they think better of it. They leave him alone, and
the porcupine fish goes back to his usual shape, the
spines lying flat until wanted again. He is sometimes called

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the sea hedgehog or urchin fish, and well deserves his name.
Many of the skates or rays wear terrible spikes. The
starry ray is not easy to handle, dead or alive,
for he has spines all over his body. The thornback
is another ugly fellow of this family, having spines on

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his back and a double row of them down his tail.
Fishermen are careful to avoid the lash of this armed tail.
The sting ray shows us still another weapon. At the
end of its long tail. It has a horrible, jagged,
three inch spike. As this fish likes to bury itself
in wet sand, they there sometimes tread on it. In

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a flash, the tail whips round a poisonous slime covers
the spike, causing great pain to the unlucky bather. Several
poisonous fish are common near our coast. You may have
seen the one called the great weaver, also its small cousin,
the stingfish. The weaver is dreaded by fishermen for the

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spines on its back fin, as well as the one
on its skill, cover cause poisoned wounds. They are grooved
to hold a very poisonous slime. Some fish have the
power to kill their prey and stun their enemies at
a distance. Instead of a spiny defense, they are armed
with electricity. The best known seafish of this sort is

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the electric ray, also called the crampfish or torpedo. It
is a clumsy fish about a yard long and very ugly.
Being too slow to catch its swift prey in fair chase,
it stuns them with any la electric shock, and then
eats them. The electric power comes from the body off

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the ray. If it wishes, it can send a deadly
shock through any fish which ventures near. Without chance of escape.
It is at once stunned and falls helpless. We come
now to some formidable dangers of the deep. Big strong
fish so well armed that they roam the seas without fear.

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On page fifty two you see a picture of the sawfish,
one of the shark family. It is a large fish
and carries a big saw on its head, with which
it stabs sideways on its prey. Imagine if you can
a shark about fifteen feet long and weighing a ton
or so. Now suppose the top jaw of this monster

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to be drawn out into a hard, flat blade six
feet in length. Then suppose there are sharp ivory teeth
one inch apart fixed on each side the blade, and
you have an eye idea of the sawfish. This strange
shark is said to be as strong as it is spheres.
It kills its prey by tearing them open with side

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blows from its sharp two edged saw. Its big mouth
is fitted with a great many rows of needlelike teeth.
The swordfish wears a different weapon, a lance instead of
a saw. He is not a shark, but a cousin
of the beautiful mackerel. This warrior of the deep is
more dreaded than the sawfish, and braver than any shark.

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His speed in the water is marvelous. It makes him
safe from attack he carries in front of him a
terrible weapon, and all sea creatures hasten from his path
as fast as they can. You may have seen the
swordfish in a museum. There is a fine one in
the London Natural History Museum, where there is also a

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sword from one of these fish driven eighteen inches into
the solid oak of a ship. The swordfish never thinks
twice about attacking, no matter if his enemy is ten
or twenty times as large as himself. He sees a
whale and like a flash, hurls himself at it, stabbing
his sword as deep as it will go into the

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whale's side. With a twist off his body, the sword
is wrenched free, only to be driven savagely in again
exercises one mention three ways in which sea creatures try
to escape their enemies? Two how do the steamfish and
steingray defend themselves? Three? What is the sawfish like? Four?

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How does the swordfish attack its prey? End of lesson
eight