muscles and muscle fibers can be quite long,
on the order of several inches, and the
muscles taper down at the ends into a tough
tendon that connects them to bone. In fish, by
contrast, muscle fibers are arranged in sheets
a fraction of an inch thick (“myotomes”), and
each short fiber merges into very thin layers
of connective tissue (“myosepta”), which are
a loose mesh of collagen fibers that run from
the backbone to the skin. The muscle sheets
are folded and nested in complex W-like
shapes that apparently orient the fibers for
greatest efficiency of force transmission to
the backbone. There are about 50 muscle
sheets or “flakes” along the length of a cod.
Connective Tissue Fish connective tissue is
weak because its collagen contains less
structure-reinforcing amino acids than beef
collagen does, and because the muscle tissue
also serves as an energy store that’s
repeatedly built up and broken down, whereas