James Tomasco, age 10, of Philadelphia, Pa., for his question:

WHAT SORT OF FISH IS A SCROD?

We find neat slices of scrod in the fish market, though there are no scrod fish in the sea. As a rule, those tasty slices come from a teen age codfish. Some scrod comes from teen age haddock or other food fish. We have two names for meat that comes from other young and older animals. For example, veal comes from young cattle, beef comes from older cattle.

The story of scrod begins in the cool waters of the ocean. The main characters are splendid codfishes, the second most valuable food fishes in the world. Throughout the world people eat more herring than any other fish, though in North America most of us rate the cod as the most popular food fish in the sea. Vast numbers of these splendid fishes enjoy life on both sides of the North Atlantic.

A fully grown codfish may be six feet long and weigh more than 200 pounds. He is a handsome, streamlined fellow with shiny scales. His back is shaded with browns and olive green and speckled with brownish spots. His tummy is silvery gray. He has round, staring eyes and a feeler type barbel dangles from his chin, like a little beard.

During the day he swims around, shoulder to shoulder, with a shoal of friends and relatives. After dark, they usually scatter and meet again in the morning. In early spring the shoal of adults swims to the spawning grounds, usually in deeper water.

There the females shed eggs and the males shed milt into the water. A female may shed 6 million eggs, and it takes 20 of them to measure one inch. They float near the surface for a couple of weeks, then those that survive hatch into tiny larvas. For the next two or three months, these little baby fishes live in the floating plankton.

    Then they move to the bottom to feast on wormy creatures and baby shellfish. Most of them are devoured during the first year of life  and by this time the survivors are about six inches long. In another year, the young codlings are about one foot long. Thousands of them gather together, usually in age groups, and swim off to feast and grow in the salty sea.

 

Now the fishermen are out in their boats, armed with numerous hooks on long lines. The best catches are the big adult cods. But the partly grown codlings also are just fine. When they go to market, their meat is sliced across the grain ¬and sold as scrod.

The young cods that escape the fishermen have enormous appetites. Always famished, they eat almost anything. In five years or so they are three feet long and ready to produce their own huge batches of eggs. Most of the eggs and youngsters are devoured. But if only a few couples survive, they can produce enough eggs to keep the sea filled with huge shoals of codfish