RuleSage cited table rulings
← Finspan

You asked

when eat another fish, does the fish i eat have to be smaller than the one eating it?

Answered counted as answered

The rules for a fish consuming another fish are as follows: * **Size Requirement:** A fish may be placed on top of a shorter fish (card or forage) if the played fish has a longer length than the fish it consumes [1]. * **Gameplay Simplification:** While size is not the only factor in real-world marine biology, the game uses length to designate a fish's size for ease of gameplay [2]. * **Consequences of Consumption:** When a fish is consumed, any tokens (egg, young, or school) on that fish transfer to the played fish; any fish cards under the consumed fish also remain [1]. * **Scoring:** Consumed forage fish count as "consumed fish" for achievements and end-of-game scoring [3]. Specifically, each consumed fish is worth 1 point at the end of the game [1]. * **Exceptions:** For the ABYSSAL HALOSAUR, consumed fish remain under the card that consumed them and no longer count as fish in your ocean [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook · p.5 · PLAY A FISH CARD
[2] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook · p.11 · MARINE SCIENCE
[3] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook · p.9 · FORAGE FISH

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:12b think:false 4eb23ef187e2
timings
search 99 ms · ask 6913 ms · total 7020 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 7020 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 5, "score": 0.016393, "snippet": "CONSUMING FISH: You may place the fish on top of a shorter fish (card or forage) already in your ocean either by choice or to satisfy a cost. The played fish must have a longer length (shown at the bottom left) than the fish it consumes. Any tokens (egg, young, or school) on the consumed fish transf", "headingPath": "PLAY A FISH CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.016129, "snippet": "Throughout the design of this game, we have made every effort to be true to the science of marine biology. We carefully selected fish to represent the broad diversity that exists in the oceans, and we consulted with marine biologists. However, we did take some artistic license on some aspects for th", "headingPath": "MARINE SCIENCE", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "Some fish have two-part abilities with coral requirements. When you activate one of these abilities, start by choosing whether to gain the first benefit. Then, if you meet the coral requirement, you may gain the second benefit. If you do not meet the coral requirement, you may still gain the first b", "headingPath": "NEW FISH ABILITIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 55}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "The fish printed on your ocean mat are forage fish. They count as fish ( ) for dive site bonuses and achievements, and they may be consumed by fish cards (either by choice or as a cost requirement). Consumed forage fish count as consumed fish for achievements and end-of-game scoring. GLASS HEAD GREN", "headingPath": "FORAGE FISH", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "Playing a fish involves choosing a fish card from your hand, paying its cost, and placing it on your ocean mat. Thematically, this represents you discovering this fish in an area of your ocean. Follow these steps to play a fish card: PLACE A DIVER. Place an available diver in the gray box at the upp", "headingPath": "PLAY A FISH CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.015152, "snippet": "Reef fish require 1 or 2 coral (as specified on the card) to already be present in the dive site before you play them there. Reef fish may only be played in the Sunlight Zone (as shown on their card). FS_PlayerMat_r10.indd 1 7/3/24 5:50 PM Whenever a fish card indicates a coral requirement, that cor", "headingPath": "CORAL REQUIREMENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 55}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.014925, "snippet": "Play a fish from your hand on an empty or occupied slot on your ocean mat after paying its cost. As a cost: Discard a fish card from your hand. As a benefit: Draw a fish card from the deck. As a cost: Discard an egg from a fish. As a benefit: Put an egg on a fish (in your ocean) that doesn't already", "headingPath": "ABILITY ICONOGRAPHY", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.014706, "snippet": "If you gain the 'recover a card from your discard pile' benefit and your discard pile is empty, gain the top card of the deck instead. If you choose to gain a 'play a card' benefit (typically for a specific place on your ocean mat), you must pay the card's cost and follow its placement rules. For th", "headingPath": "COMMONLY OVERLOOKED RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 55}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAY A FISH CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MARINE SCIENCE", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FORAGE FISH", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
answered-before recall
this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row retained until
Oct 10, 2026 18:14

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) PLAY A FISH CARD p.5 0.016393 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) MARINE SCIENCE p.11 0.016129 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Finspan — Sharks & Reefs Expansion (corpus doc 55) NEW FISH ABILITIES p.5 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) FORAGE FISH p.9 0.015625 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) PLAY A FISH CARD p.4 0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Finspan — Sharks & Reefs Expansion (corpus doc 55) CORAL REQUIREMENTS p.4 0.015152 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) ABILITY ICONOGRAPHY p.12 0.014925 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Finspan — Sharks & Reefs Expansion (corpus doc 55) COMMONLY OVERLOOKED RULES p.7 0.014706 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) PLAY A FISH CARD p.5 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) MARINE SCIENCE p.11 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) FORAGE FISH p.9 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 99 ms · first delta n/a · total 7020 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 0 ms · retrieval 99 ms · ask 6913 ms · gateway work 7020 ms · total 7020 ms
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 33s ago)
stream path
not recorded — this ruling predates the stream-path column (V41)
watchdog
first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture
both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 5), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.