Other Game Fish 203 



"Apodal fishes" are eels, and the very young differ from 

 the adults so much that they were once thought to be a 

 separate species and given the name Leftocefhalus. The 

 name is now used to describe the stage in the young of other 

 species in which their larval appearance is very like the little 

 eel, and unlike their own species. The bonefish or ladyfish, 

 famous game fish of Florida waters recently discovered to be 

 a resident of Southern California, is definitely known to go 

 through this larval stage. It starts life as a thin ribbon, with 



Figure 25. LARVAL OR LEPTOCEPHALID STAGE OF 

 BONEFISH 



a tiny head at one end and the dorsal and anal fins crowded 

 together at the other end (see Figure 25). It is almost trans- 

 parent, and in open water the spot formed by its eye is about 

 the only thing that can be seen. It grows in this form until it 

 is over two inches long. Then a metamorphosis sets in. Its 

 growth goes into reverse, and it starts to get smaller. It 

 shrinks rapidly until in ten days it is less than an inch long, 

 and at the same time it abandons its disguise and changes into 

 a miniature of the adult fish. 



Elop, the ten-pounder, also has this leptocephalid stage. 

 The close relationship of it and the bonefish to the tarpon has 

 led zoologists to believe that very possibly a like stage may 

 occur in the development of the tarpon. Support for this 

 theory came in 1934, when a little fish one inch long from 

 near Beaufort, North Carolina, was tentatively described as 

 a tarpon in transition from the leptocephalus to the adult 

 form. This specimen was unfortunately destroyed before it 

 could be drawn or preserved, but recent analysis of the de- 



