- These far out pectoral fins are actually wings
F is for Flying Fish Fins
Tagalog: Isdang lawin
Scientific name: Cheilopogon arcticeps
Flying fish pectoral fins make fantastic wings. With these fins, one can jump out of the water to enjoy the thrill of flying on the salty sea air. The use of these fins is a fast way to elude feisty flying fish loving predators. There is nothing more satisfying for a full fledged flying fish than keeping pace with the flying fish school and frolicking on ocean currents of both air and water. There are few fishes in the ocean that have the fins to enjoy this type of freedom.
Garrison Keeler just read this poem and, trees aside, it felt like flying fish to me:
Flying
Treetops are not so high
Nor I so low
That I don’t instinctively know
How it would be to fly
Through gaps that the wind makes, when
The leaves arouse
And there is a lifting of boughs
That settle and lift again.
Whatever my kind may be,
It is not absurd
To confuse myself with a bird
For the space of a reverie:
My species never flew,
But I somehow know
It is something that long ago
I almost adapted to.
“Flying” by Richard Wilbur, from Anterooms. © Houghton Mifflin, 2010.
Mermaid Scientist 