Mark Kurtz age 10, of Allentowh, PA

Which is the biggest fish, in the sea?

The biggest monster in the sea is hot a fish at all. He is a warm blooded, air breathing whale and can claim to be the bulkiest monster that ever lived in the world. The true fish are cold‑blooded, water breathing creatures, They are back boned animals. though the biggest of them have bones made of cartilage. They are called the Chondrichthytes, which means the gristle fishes, They have no boney gill covers like most fish. Instead, they force out the breathed water through five to seven pairs of gill clefts along their sides.

Does a big game fisherman ever land the biggest fish in the world? He may feel he has done so after he has wrested to land a nine foot bluefin tuna. But no, this fellow has gill slits and true bones. The slender sailfish may be ten feet long though he weighs only around 190 pounds. The blue marlin may measure 12 feet, including the marlin spike on his nose. All these huge game fish have hard gill coverings and true bones.

The gristle‑boned fish are the shark family. Judging a contest between them is no fun, for some of them are vicious killers. There are some 235 of the shark cousins not all of them are large and only a few of them are really dangerous to man. Most sharks give birth to live babies and most enjoy life in warm or tropical seas. Some of the big ones keep to the deep blue water. Others prowl close to the shore. Unfortunately some of the dangerous sharks come into shore where they do not hesitate to attack bathers.

Let’s measure the cruel man‑eater, or great white shark, for size, He is a killer for sure and the most dangerous of the sharks. He is a small baby but he can grow to be 36 feet long and weigh half a ton. The tiger shark is striped during his babyhood, Later he loses his stripes and may grow to be 30 feet long. His greedy mouth is filled with sharp sickle‑shaped teeth. These sharks are forever hungry and attack any sizeable creature moving in the water. The man‑eater tends to devour his food whole.  He will swallow a seal, a tuna or big turtle with no more than a couple of bites.

These vicious fellows have a cousin who is almost twice their bulk.  Surely he must be the most bloodthirsty tyrant in the ocean: Not at all, He is the whale shark and is just as gentle as the big blue whale for whom he is named. Full grown he may measure 60 feet in length. The weight of one 38 foot whale shark was estimated to be 13 tons, The big fellow is dark greyish brown and spotted with white or yellow.

He is a lazy monster and likes to keep to the deep blue water.  He enjoys basking on the surface and sometimes gets bumped by a passing ship, Like the big blue whaled the whale shark eats only small bits of food and strains it through the sea water, However, he uses his own straining method for he has no baleen strainers. He opens his mouth wide and swims lazily through a school of small fish. Some of them enter the dark cavern along with the sea water. Those he swallows the surplus water is sent back through special gill arches and out again through the gill clefts.