As each colourfully painted wooden fishing boat returns from three or four days at sea, the beach rapidly transforms into a market and large metal bowls of shiny silver herring and tuna are hauled ashore by men who look like Olympic medal-winning body builders.

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It is Silver who is guilty of a logical fallacy, the ignoratio elenchi or red herring.

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Even an empty jetty, like the melancholy Steeplechase Pier at Coney Island in New York, draws Russian and Chinese fishermen eager to net the tiny fish that gleam in silver schools round the piles, for the little fry will catch bigger fish, and the bigger ones (mostly herring) are worth curing and eating.

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