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UNDERWATER GUIDE TO MARINE LIFE 



Habits: This greatest of all game fishes is mainly an inhabitant of shallow 

 waters along channels, flats, mangroves, and estuaries. It pursues small fishes 

 with great vigor chiefly at night and also eats crustaceans. It migrates north in 

 the warm months, but is very sensitive to cold. In its leaps from the water the 

 posterior filament on the dorsal fin is used to determine the direction of the fall. 

 Tarpons can leap 8 to 10 feet vertically from the water or 20 feet horizontally, 

 and these leaps have sometimes resulted in injury to innocent bystanders. One 

 knocked a man from a boat, so stunning him that he drowned. Another landed 

 on a man's neck, breaking it. Tarpons are immensely prolific, producing millions 

 of eggs. The voung larvae look very different from the adults, being band-shaped 

 and transparent (probablv for protection) and like eel larvae. Adults are usually 

 solitary but may also school. 



TEN-POUNDERS: Family Elopidae 



These, like tarpons, are bright silvery fishes, but they are slender and have 

 the ventral fins slightly anterior to the dorsal fin. The one species is cosmopolitan 

 in warm seas. 



TEN-POUNDER (ladyfish, chiro) : E/ops saiirus 



Size: Up to 3 feet. 



Weight: Averages Wi to 5 pounds. Up to 15 pounds. 



Distribution: Florida to the Caribbean. Straggles to Cape Cod. Gulf of 

 California to Mexico. Also in the Salton Sea of California. 



Identification: Same as for the family. 



Habits: Like the following bonefish, the ten-pounder is primarily a fish of 

 shallow water which comes inshore over soft bottoms with the tides to feed 

 upon small fishes and crustaceans; it may even enter fresh waters. The young 



Fig. 86. Ten-founder. 



Fig. 87. Bonefish. 



