10 - Within the Deep by R. Cadwallader Smith - Some Curious Fishes

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lessen ten of Within the Deep by R. Cadwalater Smith.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Lessen ten.
Some curious fishes Now and again, that queer fish called
the sea horse is found by our coast, a little
brown fish with bluish white spots and lines on the

(00:21):
sides and tail. But sea horses are common in warmer seas,
in the banks of seaweed, where they love to dwell.
You would never guess that these curious creatures were fish.
The shape of the head and the curved neck remind
you of a horse. It is also rather like the
night of the chessboard, or it may make you think

(00:42):
of the dragon of the fable. But really the sea
horse is like nothing on the earth or in the waters.
Nature has given it a special pattern of its own.
Sea horses use their twisty tails as monkeys do, clinging
to the seaweed with them. They swim along slowly in
an upright position. Every now and then they seem to

(01:05):
be falling forward on their noses, and pull themselves up again,
only to begin falling a moment after. It is fun
to see them play hide and seek among the weed
in an aquarium. Some seahorses are like floating scraps of
torn weed. This, of course hides them from the eyes
of enemies. They have no teeth, but a long mouth

(01:27):
like a pipe, so you can be sure they eat
only the smallest sea creatures. To add to this odd look,
the sea horse moves his eyes in a comic fashion.
One eye may roll round and look at you, while
the other gazes forward. As if this were not strange enough,
he surprises us again. Mister seahorse turns himself into a

(01:50):
living nursery. He carries the eggs about with him in
a special pouch of skin. You will remember that the
pipe fish also carries the eggs in hand, in his pocket,
as it were, so you will not be surprised to
hear that these two quaint fish belonged to the same family.
We will leave the funny little sea horse and look

(02:11):
at a very different fish, the sunfish. This remarkable fish
often reaches a good size even near our coast. Big
ones are caught now and again, and in warmer seas,
where they are often killed for the sake of the
oil they contain. Big fellows of half a ton are
quite common. This sunfish has a peculiar shape. It looks

(02:33):
as if it had once been an immense fish of
the usual fish shape, but someone cut off the head
and shoulders and placed a short fin where the rest
of the body had been. Above and below there is
a long, pointed fin. The mouth is very small and
has no real teeth, so the sunfish lives on small prey,
such as the young of other fish or small shell fish.

(02:57):
Far away from land, these strange sunfish are met with
asleep near the surface, with the back fin showing above water.
They roll along lazily, not unlike big cart wheels. The
top and bottom fins are for balancing and guiding the body,
which is moved forward by the fin which frills the
back part of this odd fish. In the fishmonger's shop

(03:20):
you may sometimes see that ugly monster of the deep,
the angler fish or fishing frog. Now and again he
finds his way into the fisherman's nets and is also
caught on the lines, for he is so greedy that
he will snap at a hooked fish rather than let
go of his prey. He will be drawn to the surface.

(03:40):
Then he is knocked on the head and thrown into
the boat. With the other fish, being slow and clumsy,
the anglerfish cannot chase his prey, so gets his dinner
by fraud. Nature has given him a fishing line and
a bait. He has long spines on his head, so
beautifully joined to the bones of the head that they

(04:00):
can wave to and fro very easily. At the tip
of the front spine there is a loose, shining strip
of skin that is the bait. Now all anglers know
how a fish is lured by a shining bait. The
anglerfish seems to know this too. He buries himself in
the wet mud and sand at the bottom of the sea.

(04:21):
Then he waves the long spine so that the shining
tip glistens as it shakes in the water, until a
fish swims up to see what it is all about.
A sudden snap, and that inquisitive fish is inside a
huge toad like mouth, well furnished with rows of sharp teeth.
The anglerfish puts his catch in his pocket and begins

(04:43):
fishing again, for he is never satisfied. His pocket is
a loose bag of skin in the throat. This bag
is always examined by fishermen who capture the angler for
it may contain a nice, big place or soul worth
money in the market. There are angler fishes in every ocean,

(05:03):
and some live in the very deepest parts. In those
black depths, the little waving bait would not be seen,
so it is made to shine like a bluish spark,
moving to and fro over the cold, black slime of
the sea. Bed Down in those awful deeps, it is
forever dark and freezing cold. There is no day or night,

(05:25):
summer or winter. No plants can live there. Yet, in
that strange still world, there are numbers of living things,
though we know very little about them. There are weird crabs,
blind lobsters, and fish terrors such as are never seen elsewhere.
In that darkness. You would think that eyes would be

(05:46):
of no use, But some of the deep sea fish
have great black owl like eyes. Others are quite blind,
or have eyes like pin points. Some of them make
their own light, glowing with rows of little lamps on
their bodies, each like the lamp of the glow worm
of our country. Lanes. Blue, red and green, these lights are,

(06:08):
but no one can tell you their real use or
why they are so colored. The blind fish fill their
way with long feelers stretched out like the threads of
a web, as there are no plants down there. These
strange fish must live mostly on one another. And here
is a puzzle. For some of them have great big bodies,

(06:28):
but small heads and tiny mouths. Others have bodies like ribbons,
but large heads and huge mouths. And some are such
gluttons that they swallow fish twice their own size. This
sounds absurd, but it is true. Their mouths gape open
like trap doors, and their stomachs are made to stretch
to hold their huge meals. There are other terrors of

(06:52):
the deep with such big teeth that they cannot shut
their mouths. No doubt the sea holds yet other weird
fs which no man has seen. Exercises one in what
ways is the seahorse so different from most other fish? Two?
In what ways are the seahorse and pipefish alike? Three?

(07:17):
How does the angler fish catch its prey? Four? Mention
a few strange facts about the deep sea fish. End
of less than ten