As the first step of gaining insight into the importance of starvation as a regulatory mechanism of mortality in the very early life of individual fish species this paper describes a stochastic dynamic model of growth and mortality of winter flounder larvae ( Pseudopleuronectes americanus) reared in the laboratory under experimental conditions. The basis of the model is a Markov process with continuous weight-states operating on a day-to-day basis. A minimum growth curve is applied as an absorbing barrier to describe mortality due to starvation. Exact computation principles and Monte Carlo simulation techniques are applied to compute model characteristics, individual fish larval histories, survival probabilities and the weight probability distributions of live larvae. The results seem to be in fair agreement with larval behavior and the rates of growth and mortality observed in the laboratory.