Jay  Waylett, age g, of Waxahachie, Texas.,, for his question:

What kind of fish are sardines?

This little fish comes to us in a can with rows of his relatives packed as tight as sardines. This is natural, because the tiny.. Tasty fellows are sardines. There are many kinds of sardines in the oceans, but the original sardine comes to us from France, Spain., Portugal and other fisheries of Europe.

People have been enjoying sardines for ages. The ancient Romans served these dainty little fishes more than 2000 years ago. The fishermen caught them in the Mediterranean sea near the island of Sardinia. This is why the small, silvery fishes came to be called sardines. These original sardines are not world wide travelers. They live only in the Mediterranean sea, off the shores of Africa and other warm waters of, the eastern Atlantic ocean. But they are not the only sardines in the sea..

You will be happy to learn that there are more, far more sardines than all the other backboned fishes in the seas. The dainty creatures slither through the water in large groups called schools. There may be five billion or more classmates in just one school of sardines, and they may cover a mile or more of ocean water.

All swim along in the same direction, keeping close, but not too close together, they are almost, but not quite as tightly packed as the sardines in a can. The school of dainty little fish stays near the top of the water where there is sunshine and plenty of vitamins in their food. This makes them rich in food value and explains why the tasty little fish are so nourishing.

We eat the tasty morsels whole  fins, tail., bones and all. We know they have backbones, which classes them among the vertebrates.

Sardines axe the teen agers of the fish world. Some sardines are young salmon and if we leave them in the sea, they grow up to be salmon, just like their parents. Some sardines are young herring and some are teen age trout. Young tarpon and young anchovy are also sold as sardines. The original sardine of the Mediterranean is a young pilchard. When fully grown,, he is a seven inch fish and too big to be called a sardine.

Some years ago., a pilchard type sardine was discovered off the shores of California. Vast schools of the dainty creatures were found in the pacific waters from Baja California to Alaska. For a while., almost a million tons of these sardines were harvested every year. Then the numbers dwindled. Many California fisheries are still hoping the vast sardine population will return.