A deep silver larva with the leading dorsal and pelvic rays drawn out into long spines.
A deep-bodied, strongly compressed larva, silver over the gut and translucent elsewhere, with several dark bars across the body and the first few dorsal and pelvic fin rays drawn out into long trailing spines. The head is blunt and the eye large. Larger juveniles lose the trailing rays and take on the flatter silver shape of the adult jacks, and the change happens over a few centimetres of growth.
The trailing spines and the bars serve the same purpose as they do in other pelagic larvae: they add apparent size and break up the outline of a small fish in open water. Many carangid juveniles pass part of this stage in company with drifting animals, sheltering under jellyfish, salp chains and floating debris, and a larva photographed alongside a jelly is often a jack rather than anything more unusual.
The family is as far as most photographs go. Carangid larvae are among the commoner fish on a blackwater dive in this region and are frequently passed over for scarcer animals, which is part of the reason the local record for them is poor.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
