Tarpon
Body oblong, strongly compressed. Mouth quite oblique, superior, with prominently projecting mandible. Lateral line with branched tubes. Scales large. Dorsal fin high anteriorly, its last ray produced and filamentous. Anal fin longer than dorsal fin, its last ray produced in large specimens. Pelvic fins inserted well in advance of dorsal fin (Tarpon differs from Megalops Lacepede, 1803 mainly in the more anterior position of the pelvic fins). Branchiostegal rays about 23.
Habitat: coastal waters, estuaries, salt or brackish waters and sometimes freshwaters; tolerates oxygen-poor conditions, young frequently occurring in pools or lakes disconnected from the sea (able to take atmospheric air into a lung-like bladder). Food: carnivorous, feeding almost exclusively on fishes forming schools, such as sardines, anchovies, mullets. Reproduction: becoming adult at 100-120 cm, it moves into open waters to spawn between late April and August. Numerous (to 12 millions) small demersal eggs (0.6-0.75 mm). The transparent leptocephalus larvae migrate into estuaries.
Distribution: only four records in the Clofnam area, one near the coasts of the Azores, one near the Tagus estuary and two in the Bay of Biscay (44° 00' N, 01° 35' W). Generally in tropical or subtropical coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean, from Nova Scotia, Bermuda and southward to Brazil in the western Atlantic and from Mauritania to Angola in the eastern Atlantic.
Species 1.
Species of this genus in the program:
Tarpon atlanticus