320 CLASSIFIED RESUME OF ORGANISMS OBSERVED 



Order apodes 



Fully metamorphosed eels were sighted twenty times 

 between 400 and 1700 feet. They measured from five 

 inches to three feet in length. I could identify only two 

 genera with certainty: Six or seven times, between 750 

 and 1500 feet, I recognized SerrivomeTj the commonest 

 deep-sea eel of this area. Some of these individuals were 

 fully twenty-four inches long. Once, at 400 feet, several 

 six-inch Labichthys swam into view. In the nets no meta- 

 morphosed Nemichthyid was taken above 1800 feet, and 

 only three times have we caught specimens as much as 

 twenty inches long. 



None of the eels ever showed any light of its own. Move- 

 ments were characteristic of surface forms, the undula- 

 tions sometimes exceedingly rapid, sometimes slow. Once 

 a pair hovered at the bait, and again two, twenty- four- 

 inch fish kept in sight for twenty feet as the sphere de- 

 scended. Eels were frequently seen in the beam and occa- 

 sionally in the light of other animals, when the silvery sides 

 of Serrivomer-W^e forms caught and reflected every ray. 

 Less than half of the eels observed were alone; the others 

 moved in pairs, and, more rarely, in small groups of from 

 three to five. The individuals of a group were always of 

 about the same length. 



Leptocephalid larvas were a fairly common sight from 

 the bathysphere. I reported them thirty-three times, from 

 80 to 2300 feet. They were all between two inches and a 



