MARINE LIFE of GOR

Bint
Ayari nodded, shuddering. Such blood might attract the bint, a fanged, carnivorous marsh eel, or the predatory, voracious blue grunt, a small, fresh-water variety of the much larger and familiar salt-water grunt of Thassa. [Explorers of Gor p267]

Carp
To my right, some two or three feet under the water, I saw the sudden, rolling yellowish flash of the slatted belly of a water tharlarion, turning as it made its swift strike, probably a Vosk carp or marsh turtle. [Raiders of Gor  p1]

Clam
I looked at him steadily. “They are probably false stones,” I said, “amber droplets, the pearls of the Vosk sorp, the polished shell of the Tamber clam, glass colored and cut in Ar for trade with ignorant southern peoples.” [Nomads of Gor p20]

Cuttlefish
It contained as well the separated oil of the Thentis needle tree; an extract from the glands of the Cartius river urt; and a preparation formed from a disease calculus scraped from the intestines of the rare Hunjer Long Whale, the result of the inadequate digestion of cuttlefish.
[Marauders of Gor p114]

Eel
Below me the water was swarming with eels. The blood from my back, I realized, running down the blade and dripping into the water, had attracted them. [Guardsman of Gor p129]
I was only dimly conscious of the wetness of my back. Then something wet and heavy, slithering; leapt upward out of the water, and splashed back. My leg felt stinging. It had not been able to fasten its jaws on me. I looked downward. Two more heads, tapering, menacing, solid, were emerged from the water, looking up at me. Then, streaking from under the water, suddenly breaking its surface, another body, some four feet in length, about eight or ten pounds in weight, leapt upward. [Guardsman of Gor p130]
I knew that the fastening of those jaws, in a fair bite, could gouge ounces of flesh from a man's body.  [Guardsman of Gor p131]

Gint
I was interested in the fauna of the river and the rain forest. I recalled, sunning themselves on exposed roots near the river, tiny fish. They were bulbous eyed and about six inches long, with tiny flipperlike lateral fins. They had both lungs and gills. Their capacity to leave the water, in certain small streams, during dry seasons, enables them to seek other streams, still flowing, or pools. This property also, of course, makes it possible for them to elude marine predators and, on the land, to return to the water in case of danger. Normally they remain quite close to the water. Sometimes they even sun themselves on the backs of resting or napping tharlarion. Should the tharlarion submerge the tiny fish often submerges with it, staying close to it, but away from its jaws. Its proximity to the tharlarion affords it, interestingly, an effective protection against most of its natural predators, in particular the black eel, which will not approach the sinuous reptiles. Similarly the tiny fish can thrive on the scraps from the ravaging jaws of the feeding tharlarion. They will even drive one another away from their local tharlarion, fighting in contests of intraspecific aggression, over the plated territory of the monster's back. The remora fish and the shark have what seem to be, in some respects, a similar relationship. These tiny fish, incidentally, are called gints.
[Explorers of Gor p299]
The creature which had surfaced near us, perhaps ten feet in length, and a thousand pounds in weight, was scaled and had large, bulging eyes. It had gills, but it, too, gulped air, as it had regarded us. It was similar to the tiny lung fish I had seen earlier on the river, those little creatures clinging to the half-submerged roots of shore trees, and, as often as not, sunning themselves on the backs of tharlarion, those tiny fish called gints. Its pectoral fins were large and fleshy. [Explorers of Gor  p384]

Grunt
Three other men of the Forkbeard attended to fishing, two with a net, sweeping it along the side of the serpent, for parsit fish, and the third, near the stem, with a hook and line, baited with vulo liver, for the white-bellied grunt, a large game fish which haunts the plankton banks to feed on parsit fish. [Marauders of Gor p59]
I ran to the stern that I might watch. Half out of the water, then returning to it, I saw a great speckled grunt, four-gilled. It dove, and swirled away. Another man came to help with the line. I observed the struggle. One often fishes from the ships on Thassa, and the diet of the sailors consists, in part, of the catch. Part of each catch is commonly saved, to serve as bait for the next. [Slave Girl of Gor p360]
The blue grunt is particularly dangerous during the daylight hours preceding its mating periods, when it schools. Its mating periods are synchronized with the phases of Gor's major moon, the full moon reflecting on the surface of the water somehow triggering the mating instinct. During the daylight hours preceding such a moon, as the restless grunts school, they will tear anything edible to pieces which crosses their path. During the hours of mating, however, interestingly, one can move and swim among them untouched.
[Explorers of Gor p267]
Waters from the lake circulated through the city and fed this moat. In it, as had been demonstrated, by the hurling of a haunch of tarsk into the waters, crowded and schooling, were thousands of blue grunt. This fish, when isolated and swimming free in a river or lake, is not particularly dangerous. For a few days prior to the fullness of the major Gorean moon, however, it begins to school. It then becomes extremely aggressive and ferocious. The haunch of tarsk hurled into the water of the moat, slung on a rope, had been devoured in a matter of Ihn. [Explorers of Gor p432]

Lelt
The lelt is commonly five to seven inches in length. It is white and long-finned. [Tribesmen of Gor p247]
Lelts are often attracted to the salt rafts, largely by the vibrations in the water, picked up by their abnormally developed lateral-line protrusions, and their fernlike craneal vibration receptors, from the cones and poles. Too, though they are blind, I think either the light, or the heat, perhaps, from our lamps, draws them. The tiny eyeless heads will thrust from the water, and the fernlike filaments at the side of the head will open and lift, orienting themselves to one or the other of the lamps. [Tribesmen of Gor p247]
It swims slowly and smoothly, its fins moving the water very little. [Tribesmen of Gor p247]

Moccasin
We saw a narrow, dark shape, about five feet long, like a slowly undulating whip, glide past. A small triangular head was almost level with the water surface. I did not think there had been much danger, but there was some possibility that the movements of her legs in the water might have attracted its attention.
“That is a marsh moccasin," I said.
“Are they poisonous,“ she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“I never saw one before,” she said.
“They are not common,” I said, “even in the delta.”   [Vagabonds of Gor p267]

Oysters
Other girls had prepared the repast, which for a the war camp, was sumptuous indeed, containing even oysters from the delta of the Vosk. [Captive of Gor p301]

Parsit Fish
The men of Torvaldsland are skilled with their hands. Trade to the south, of course is largely in furs acquired from Torvaldsland, and in barrels of smoked, dried parsit fish. [Marauders of Gor p28]
The men who had fished with the net had now cleaned the catch of parsit fish, and chopped the cleaned, boned, silverish bodies into pieces, a quarter inch in width. Another of the bond-maids was then freed to mix the bond-maid gruel, mixing fresh water with Sa-Tarna meal, and then stirring in the raw fish. [Marauders of Gor p63]

Sea Sleen  (Also see Sleen in Mammals Section)
And behind them, in a rich swirling cloak of the fur of the white, spotted sea sleen, sword in hand, looking wildly about, was another man, one I did not know. [Raiders of Gor p300]
The sea sleen, vicious, fanged aquatic mammals, apparently related to the land forms of sleen, are the swiftest predators to be found in Thassa; further, they are generally conceded to be the most dangerous; they tend, however, to frequent northern waters. Occasionally they have been found as far south, however, as the shores of Cos and the deep inlets of Tyros. [Slave Girl of Gor p360]
Sleen, interestingly, come northward with the parsit. their own migrations synchronized with those of the parsit, which forms for them their principal prey. The four main types of sea sleen found in the polar seas are the black sleen, the brown sleen, the tusked sleen and the flat-nosed sleen. There is a time of year for the arrival of each, depending on the waves of the parsit migrations. Not all members of a species of sleen migrate. Also, some winter under the ice, remaining generally dormant, rising every quarter of an Ahn or so to breathe. This is done at breaks in the ice or at gnawed breathing holes. [Beasts of Gor p38]
“There,” whispered Imnak, in his own kayak, a few feet from that which I was using, which belonged to Akko.
The head of a sleen, glistening, smooth, emerged from the water. It was a medium-sized, adult sea sleen, some eight feet in length, some three to four hundred pounds in weight.  [Beasts of Gor p280]
“That, I think, is a rogue sleen,” said Imnak. “It is a broad-head, and they are rare in these waters in the fall. Too, see the gray on the muzzle and the scarring on the right side of the head, where the fur is gone?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think it is a rogue,” he said.  [Beasts of Gor p283]

Saurian
Sharks, and sometimes marine saurians, sometimes trail the ships, to secure discarded garbage and rob the lines of the fishermen. The convoy, by its size, had doubtless attracted many such monsters. I had seen, yesterday, the long neck of a marine saurian lift from the waters of gleaming Thassa, It had a small head, and rows of small teeth. Its appendages were like broad paddles. Then it had lowered its head and disappeared. Such beasts, in spite of their frightening appearance, are apparently harmless to men. They can take only bits of garbage and small fish. Certain related species thrive on crustaceans found among aquatic flora. Further, such beasts are rare. Some sailors, reportedly, have never seen one. Far more common, and dangerous, are certain fishlike marine saurians, with long, toothed snouts; they are silent and aggressive, and sailors fear them as they do the long-bodied sharks. [Slave Girl of Gor p360]

Shark
Beyond them would be the almost eel-like, long-bodied, nine-gilled Gorean marsh sharks. [Raiders of Gor p58]
I saw the flash of a triangular, black dorsal fin. I screamed. Lana looked out, pointing after it.
“A river shark,” she cried, excitedly. [Captive of Gor p79]
A recalcitrant girl may be kept on the oar for hours. There is also, however some danger in this, for sea sleen and the white sharks of the north occasionally attempt to tear such a girl from the oar. [Marauders of Gor p66]
We saw the broad, blunt head, eyeless, white On the whitish back, near the high dorsal fin, there was a long scar. Part of the dorsal fin itself was rent, and scarred At the top of the food chain in the pits, a descendant, dark-adapted, of the terrors of the ancient seas, stood the long-bodied, nine-gilled salt shark. [Tribesmen of Gor p249]
I cried out with fear. One of the men shouted with anger. Rising from under the grunt swiftly was a long-bodied shark, white, nine-gilled. It tore the grunt from the line and bore it away. Other dorsal fins, of smaller sharks, trailed it, waiting. [Slave Girl of Gor p360]

Snails
Once the Forkbeard went to her and taught her to check the scoop, with her left hand, for snails, that they not be thrown overboard. Returning to me he held one of the snails, whose shell he crushed between his fingers, and sucked out the animal, chewing and swallowing it. He then threw the shell fragments overboard.
“They are edible,” he said. “And we use them for fish bait.”  [Marauders of Gor p62]

Sorp
Ho-Hak looked at the man who wore the headband of pearls of the Vosk sorp. [Raiders of Gor p21]
He sat upon a giant shell of the Vosk sorp, as on a sort of throne, which for these people, I gather it was. [Raiders of Gor p14]
Her hair was blond and straight, tied behind her with a ribbon of blue wool, from the bounding Hurt, dyed in the blood of the Vosk sorp. [Marauders of Gor p1]

Whale
That scent, I knew, a distillation of a hundred flowers, nurtured like a priceless wine, was a secret guarded by the perfumers of Ar. It contained as well the separated oil of the Thentis needle tree; an extract from the glands of the Cartius river urt; and a preparation formed from a disease calculus scraped from the intestines of the rare Hunjer Long Whale, the result of the inadequate digestion of cuttlefish. Fortunately, too, this calculus is sometimes found free in the sea, expelled with feces. [Marauders of Gor p114]
Sometimes they managed to secure the northern shark, sometimes even the toothed Hunjer whale or the less common Karl whale, which was a four-fluked, baleen whale. [Beasts of Gor p36]
Two weeks ago, some ten to fifteen sleeps ago, by rare fortune, we had managed to harpoon a baleen whale, a bluish, white-spotted blunt fin. That two whales had been taken in one season was rare hunting, indeed. Sometimes two or three years pass without a whale being taken. [Beasts of Gor p265]
Suddenly, not more than a dozen feet from the boat, driving upward, rearing vertically, surging, expelling air in a great burst of noise, shedding icy water, in a tangle of lines and blood, burst the towering, cylindrical tonnage of the black Hunjer whale. [Beasts of Gor p258]
I reached out with my hand and pushed against the side of the mammal. The Hunjer whale is a toothed whale. [Beasts of Gor p259]

Wingfish
“Now this,” Saphrar the merchant was telling me, “is the braised liver of the blue four-spired Cosian wingfish.” This fish is a tiny, delicate fish, blue, about the size of a tarn disk when curled in one's hand; it has three or four slender spines in its dorsal fin, which are poisonous; it is capable of hurling itself from the water and, for brief distances, on its stiff pectoral fins, gliding through the air, usually to evade the smaller sea-tharlarions, which seem to be immune to the poison of the spines. This fish is also sometimes referred to as the songfish because, as a portion of its courtship rituals, the males and females thrust their heads from the water and utter a sort of whistling sound. The blue, four-spired wingfish is found only in the waters of Cos. Larger varieties are found farther out to sea. The small blue fish is liver as the delicacy of delicacies.  [Nomads of Gor p83]