Fishes of the Western North Atlantic 115 



remarked, "The large eye falls below the level of the dorsal green and its iris blends 

 with the silvery side. As seen by the diver this great fish appears unsubstantial, a gray 

 ghost floating in gray water" {^g: 5). 



Size. The Tarpon reaches a very large size; an individual a little over eight feet 

 having an estimated weight of 350 pounds has been reported for Hillsborough 

 River Inlet, Florida. A fish up to six feet in length, having a weight of perhaps more 

 than 100 pounds, is not very rare. 



Development. The exceedingly large number of eggs produced by a Tarpon indi- 

 cates extreme prolificness. For example, a female 80 inches long, weighing 142 pounds 

 (caught and reported by Babcock, I [1936]: 41), contained 12,201,984 eggs according 

 to a close estimate made by John T. Nichols of the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory. This great number far surpasses the classic example of the prolificness of the 

 large codfish often mentioned, which contained 1,839,581 eggs. 



Ovarian eggs, taken from both unripe and spent fish, measured 0.6-0.75 "^'"^ '" 

 diameter, a small size for so large a fish. They sank slowly when placed in sea water, 

 suggesting that they may be demersal, not buoyant. 



Tarpon eggs that have been spawned naturally and are positively identifiable as 

 such have not yet been described, nor have the early stages after hatching. But it 

 has been assumed from analogy with its smaller relative {Megalops cyprinoides) of the 

 East Indies that the Tarpon, like the ladyfish {Elops saurus, p. 124) and the bonefish 

 {Albula vulpes^ p. 134), passes through a ribbon-shaped leptocephalus stage during its 

 larval development. This assumption has been corroborated by the capture at Beaufort, 

 North Carolina, of a leptocephalus 20 mm long, near the transition stage; this, from 

 comparison with the corresponding growth stage in Elops and Albula (jS- 45) ^nd in 

 the East Indian Megalops from Java, probably was a Tarpon.'' (One i 8 mm long, re- 

 cently pictured and described by Gehringer, certainly was [27: 290]. — H.B.B.) 



The smallest fry definitely reported as Tarpon have ranged between 16 and 19.6 

 mm SL (j2: 6, fig. 5, pi. i; see also pi. 2 for fry up to 36-38 mm; for earlier ac- 

 counts of 37 and 77 mm fry, see JJ: 229 and 63: 72). Breder's painstaking study of 

 extensive series of various sizes from the western coast of Florida has shown that little 

 alteration takes place in the body proportions with subsequent growth. 



Rate of Growth. Analyses of the number of checks on the scales of Tarpon from 

 the western coast of Florida, where it may be assumed that growth is interrupted during 

 the cold months, suggest that in open waters it averages about 3,050—3,060 mm in 

 length at one year, about 510-640 mm at two years, and about 1,270—1,525 mm at 

 three years. Earlier scale studies (j [1936]: 68) suggest that a Tarpon averages about 

 1,376 mm or four feet six inches when it is nine or ten years old, that a fish of 70 pounds 

 is about 12 years old, and a fish of 100 pounds is perhaps 13-16 years of age. 



Tarpon kept in the old New York Aquarium grew more slowly than those re- 

 ported above, from less than 500 to only 1,220 mm in five years, perhaps as a result of 



4. For an account of the leptocephalus stages of Elops and Albula, see pp. 125 and 136; for the East Indian Megalops, 

 see especially Chadabaram and Menon {iS: 756-759) and Hollister (42: 449). 



