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Patty Colvin, age 8, of Albany, New York, for her question:

 What fish is the sardine?

The sardine is a young teenager of the fish world. His childhood days are over and he resembles his parents in everything but size. There are several varieties of sardine, but all belong to the fishy order Isospondyl. No, the name has nothing to do with ponds. These fellows are mostly ocean dwellers. It means those‑with‑equal‑vertebrae. The order includes our most important food fish and produces some 20 million tons for the market each year. It includes salmon, trout and tarpon, pilchard, anchovy and, most valuable of all, herring.

Several of these fish are sardines during their teens. The true, original sardine is a native of the Mediterranean and the warm eastern Atlantic. He is a Pilchard, full grown at seven inches. Vast schools of these pilchards migrate between Africa and the British Isles. The mothers lay their eggs when the water happens to be just the right temperature. This may be north or south and no one can guess where the masses of floating eggs will occur offshore.

These true pilchard sardines are packed in rich olive oil and shipped from fisheries in France, Spain and Portugal. It is believed that the sardine was named for Sardinia, a small island in the Mediterranean where the juicy little fish have been harvested since Roman times.

The original sardine pilchard is not a world traveler. But people along other shores found they had young fish just as delicious. Pilchards may be rare and choosy. But herrings are abundant and wide travelers. In fact, it has been said that there are more herrings than all other backboned animals in the world.

A school of herring in the Atlantic may number three billion members or more. Quite a classroom. Full grown herrings look like large pilchards. What's more, their teenagers are just as delicious and perhaps somewhat more nutritious than the original pilchard sardines. Tons of Atlantic herring become sardines every year. They form part of the vest one and one half million tons of herring that become food each year. Some are smoked, some are salted, some both smoked and salted, some is pickled and some is served plain.

California found a sardine who was first cousin to the Mediterranean pilchard. Schools of these beautiful little fish move offshore between Baja California and Alaska, keeping mostly to California waters. Some 20 years ago west coast fisheries harvested almost a million tons of sardines a year. Much of the harvest was pressed into oil and fodder.

These huge harvests may have discouraged the sardine population of the Pacific. Vast numbers have dwindled or gone away. Studies are underway to bring them back and increase their numbers. But even now these graceful little fellows form one of America's largest fish industries.

The sardine, no matter what variety, is very wholesome and tasty. He swims near the surface, absorbing sunshine and vitamins. Vile net him whole, bones and all, thereby getting all the proteins and minerals in his sturdy little body. And, being young, he is tender, juicy and delicious.

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