Wait!? That's a fish?

 These are some of the strangest catches from my last week's vacation.  The top picture is of a box fish.  Its tail does look very tiny, but it uses its front fins to swim.  Its tail just steers.  This is a young box fish, as they can get 4 or 5 times larger than this at least.  From my knowledge, they live on reefs, so I was shocked when I caught him by our hotel dock in Orange Beach, AL.  He is a very amazing fish. 

 This photo is of a ribbon fish, which I had never seen nor heard of before.  Surprisingly, I caught him on a hook when I was fishing for speckled trout.  This surprised me because his jaw is as thin as a needle fishes and the fight he put up was exceptional, especially since he has no apparent tail fin.  He swam up and down using the fin on this back, which traveled all the way up and down his body.  We saw others of his kind while there and they would bite a small fish, go back down, and then come up and eat it.  Above water, he shimmered like a piece of silk ribbon.

The bottom photo is of a fish that I have never seen or heard of and still do not know the name of.  They swam in small schools that resembled bunches of small floating leaves being tossed in the current.  I only realized they were fish when they swam against a wave and started swimming towards deep water.  They were kind of cute the way they zipped around in the bucket. 

Overall I had a very fun vacation, being mesmerized by these amazing products of the sea.

On another note, my grandmother's snapping turtle nest should be hatching this week.  I'll keep you posted!