What do pilchard eat?

Pilchards, or sardines, are small, oily fish of the family Clupeidae. Pilchards eat a variety of tiny sea plants and animals. They eat planktonic crustaceans, suchas copepods, water fleas, tiny prawns, microscopic phytoplankton and krill. Older, larger pilchards also eat worms, the larvae of molluscs, and phytoplankton, such as algae and seaweed. Pilchards may feed at the surface of the water, as they swarm through the water in schools, or on the bottom of the seabed.