Burton on the Bay: All the Little Fishes  It's tough life out
there. Small fish eat tiny fish, big fish eat small fish, even
bigger fish eat big fish - and fishermen target them all. It's a
hell of a life.                  -Old fisherman's saying  To a
fisherman, even one with a big ocean trawl, a million fish
sounds awesome. He wouldn't dare think of a billion.  Yet one of
the most important food fishes for coastal rockfish and many
other species is a small fish known to congregate in schools
with as many as a billion. They aren't big enough to catch with
hook and line, and even when one reaches maximum size of 10
inches or more a baited hook wouldn't do much good because these
fish, so important to the food chain, wouldn't be interested.
Welcome to the world of the Atlantic herring, a fish that feeds
on plankton - and, curiously, in doing so feeds on other younger
and small Atlantic herring, which in their early stages make up
part of the plankton of the sea.  Perhaps we should know more
about Atlantic herring because o