Chapter 7: Birth of a Mackeral
His name is Scomber, and he lives through to the end of the chapter, though a newly spawned mackerel egg will face many dangers in the ocean.
Reading this brought me a special happiness: Throughout the night, while the sea lay under a windless sky, the decimation of the mackerel eggs continued. (p. 69) Later on the same page, this: In the first night of their existence more than ten out of every hundred mackerel eggs either had been eaten by the comb jellies or, from some inherent weakness, had died after the first few divisions of the cell.
What a delight to see that Carson used decimation in the strictest sense of the word. And what a friendly gesture, to include the explanation for her usage. They’re bread crumbs for readers in case we doubted the precision of her thought.