Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Encounters with three ocean oddities
“What’s a dragonfly doing way out here?” That question crossed the minds of members of our tuna tourney team while trolling for yellowfin some 70 miles offshore at the Washington Canyon last month. When we first noticed the little critter flitting around on the deck of our charter boat that morning, our initial impression was that it was an insect. We realized that an unforgiving ocean this far out represented an impossible environment for any wayward dragonfly, but closer inspection revealed that the creature was not an insect at all, but a tiny little flying fish that, in both its figurative and literal “flight” to escape predators, had errantly sailed over the rail and crash landed onto our deck.
We all took a good long look at and a few photos of the little flying fry before returning it safely to the Atlantic. In addition to its “wings,” essentially modified pectoral fins, its brilliant colors and dramatic markings were most striking. There are over 60 different species of flying fish roaming the earth’s seas, and it’s unlikely that all of the varieties boast the beauty of our tiny accidental friend.
What they do all have in common is their ability to “fly.” But, of course, like the earthbound flying squirrel, these fish do not really fly, per se, but they do have the ability to leap from the water and then achieve a sustained glide. While there are records of flying fish being airborne for over forty seconds at a time, flights more typically cover a distance of under 50 yards at a time. In most cases the fish glide just a few feet above the surface but can reach a maximum altitude of about 20 feet and speeds just over 40 miles per hour.
A favorite food of tuna, marlin, sailfish, sharks and a host of other finned predators, flying fish evolved this way as a defense mechanism, fleeing the water in limited bursts of airborne flight in order to escape the jaws and bills of their pursuers. While the little guy that landed on our deck was barely an inch long, the largest species of flying fish can reach a foot in length. Our captain cited accounts of flying fish smacking into boat cabins and shattering window glass in the process.
Another salt water oddity I’ve often encountered and posing far less a threat to boat cabin windows is the humble northern puffer. Although this species, also known as the blowfish, doesn’t have the capability to glide above the waves, its claim to fame is its habit of gulping in air or water in order to inflate its body to twice its size or more. Like the flying fish taking flight, the puffer’s inflation vocation serves as a defense mechanism, in this case one designed to intimidate potential predators.
Another unique characteristic of the puffer includes beak-like dentures that serve to address its diet of barnacles, mollusks, crustaceans, and other menu items that need to be cracked or crushed before being consumed. Puffers are also unique in that their tough, rubbery skin is covered with small bumpy spines in place of scales. These spines are especially prominent in another species of puffer aptly named the porcupine fish.
Puffers, which can reach a length of ten to twelve inches, are notorious bait stealers whose fused teeth and small mouths make them tough to hook. I’ve caught a few this summer while in quest of flounder in the back bays of Ocean City, Md., and in every case the fish was snagged, the hook barely penetrating its rubbery skin with each puffer fully inflating the moment it was pulled from the water.
While the flying fish is primarily a creature of the open ocean, puffers also reside in back bays and even brackish tributaries. I can remember one day almost sixty years ago when my brother Dan and I were manning crab lines on Herring Creek beneath a bridge on Route 50. While the blueclaws were not cooperating that day, our chicken neck offerings caught the attention of scores of puffers, chasing our retrieved baits to the surface in tight schools where our crab nets scooped up half a dozen or more at a time. We filled our peach baskets with dozens of puffers that day, ultimately arranging them on a makeshift stringer that hung from the handle of our crab net that proudly straddled our respective ten and six year old shoulders as we marched back to my grandmother’s apartment building a few hundred yards away.
Back then puffers were considered worthless trash fish which my grandmother was not about to spend any time cleaning or cooking. My brother and I did not know any better at the time. Nor were our parents pleased with our haul of puffers which, unfortunately, all went to waste. But years later someone discovered that the tail meat of puffers is a delicious delicacy. And unlike other puffers whose internal organs boast a deadly, toxic nerve poison, northern puffers are safe to clean and eat. Today the tail section is sometimes marketed as sea squab.
But one species you won’t find in any fish market (although some folks eat them) is the common sea robin. Like the puffer, sea robins can inhabit most bodies of saltwater. Also, like puffers, sea robins are notorious and hard-to-hook bait stealers. My back bay fluking efforts always yield a few of them each season. They may not be very good table fare, but strips of sea robin do make for great flounder bait.
Like the flying fish and puffers, the sea robin sports a stunningly unique appearance that might be described as both primitive and exotic at the same time. Boasting a disproportionately large, spiny head encased in tough, bony plates, robins also possess piercing blue eyes, tiny mouth and tapered body. While the upper part of this species’ pectoral fin spreads into a broad fan, each lower pectoral fin branches out into three distinctive leg-like feelers that aid it in navigating the bottom.
Adult sea robins average between 12 and 16 inches in length, and, when boated, will often emit croaking sounds. Unlike flying fish and despite its fanlike pectorals, the sea robin cannot flee predators by gliding above the water’s surface, and unlike the puffer, it cannot defend itself via inflation. But the sea robin does practice a defense mechanism of its own -- to thwart predators this fish will completely bury itself under the sand leaving only the top of its hard scaly head and eyes exposed until the danger passes.