CRITTER CONFIDENTIAL
Plaice
Pleuronectes platessa
Paul Naylor sings the praises of a beautiful British flatfish that could live to a ripe old age ... if left to do so
Plaice with beautiful markings , photographed on the south coast
This unassuming but beautiful fish has a tough time . We use its name for awful puns on chip-shop signs and , much more seriously , overexploit it terribly in many areas as Europe ’ s most commercially important flatfish . Not only are plaice much less common than they were ( how often do you see them ?), they are much younger and smaller than they should be . If you ask someone how big a plaice is , they usually gesture around the size of a dinner plate , so it ’ s quite a surprise to learn they can reach up to a metre long . It would be even more of a shock to meet one like that , but what an experience ! Plaice are now so small because they are usually caught long before their natural lifespan of around 30 years . If they evade capture , some individuals can even live for 50 years .
When we do meet plaice , they are usually lying on a sandy seabed , often quite close to a rocky reef or piece of wreckage . They can adapt their colouration to largely blend in with the seabed but seem to ‘ forget ’ about their bright orange spots that look so obvious from our point of view . Presumably , these stand out less to their key predators .
Inconveniently for those of us who love to watch and film intriguing behaviour , plaice hunt mainly at night . Their feeding habits apparently include nipping off bivalve mollusc siphons that protrude from the seabed and the rear ends of lugworms
A most unusual sight of two plaice meeting under Brighton Pier
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