A plaice well matched to the seabed , but the orange spots are rather a giveaway
when they extend them to defaecate . In both cases , the cropped pieces may be regrown so this could be thought of as ‘ harvesting ’, although whole bristle-worms and thin-shelled clams are also consumed .
Plaice migrate from their summer feeding grounds into deeper water to spawn in the winter . Tagging studies have shown how , where tides are strong , they stay on the seabed when the tide is running against their chosen direction and move up into mid-water to swim with it when it is going their way . Using this ‘ tide-riding ’ technique , they can cover up to 30km in a day and several hundred kilometres in a few weeks . Interestingly , fish on their way to spawn and others returning from spawning may pass in opposite directions over the same area by utilising different parts of the tidal cycle . Individual plaice have been shown to
follow the same migration route and return to the same spawning location in successive years so , as always , there is a lot more going on in the heads and lives of these animals than we might imagine !
When they spawn , the female plaice releases her buoyant eggs into the water below the male , so the eggs float up through the cloud of his discharged sperm .
After the fertilised eggs hatch , the planktonic larvae go through the marvellous metamorphosis followed by all flatfish . Larvae start with the typical fish shape and orientation , then ‘ convert ’ to lie on their sides with one eye moving over to what becomes the youngster ’ s upper surface . In the plaice , this is almost always the righthand side but occasional left-eyed fish occur . All in all , amazing animals that look a lot better on the seabed than on a plate ! �
Seagrass is regarded as a nursery for very young plaice but this one was a good-sized individual
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