Morphological observations on a hatchling and a paralarva of the vampire squid, Vampyroteuthis infernalis Chun (Mollusca : Cephalopoda)

We present morphological observations on two very small vampire squids. One , a trawl-caught hatchling of 8 mm mantle length (ML), had embryonic featur es including internal yolk, broad arm-like filaments, and lack of mantle-he ad fusion. The other was a 9 mm ML paralarva collected by submersible and p hotographed alive aboard ship. Although only slightly larger than the hatch ling, its morphology was much more like that of larger specimens than that of the hatchling, except for the oblique orientation of its fins.