The sea bottom was rich with crawling and swimming

and growing things. The brown algae waved in the

gentle currents and the green eel grass swayed and little

sea horses clung to its stems. Spotted botete, the poison

fish, lay on the bottom in the eel-grass beds, and the

bright-coloured swimming crabs scampered over them.

On the beach the hungry dogs and the hungry pigs of the

town searched endlessly for any dead fish or sea bird

that may have floated in on a rising tide.

from The Pearl by John Steinbeck