Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Last week a friend of mine brought her family out for a tour of Coconut Island. After the all of the old favorites (the octopuses, sharks, touch tank) we headed to the beach house where we saw the weirdest fish I've ever seen! Mia (a girl on the tour) spotted something hugging the sandy substrate down below us and asked what kind of fish it was. At first I thought "Oh, that's a rock fish or something," but then I realized its bizarre pectoral fins dragging along beside it.  "What the hell is that? It looks like it is trying to walk on them." Then, suddenly, the pectoral fins spread out into the most magnificent wings! What?!!  It's a bird fish! I had to look it up on my phone so I googled "fish with wings."  Turns out it is an Oriental Flying Gurnard.  This fish is terribly confused.  It WALKS on its fins along the sea floor, acting like it's all "Oh, I can walk, see? Don't be fooled by my fishiness. And wait, you wanna see my freaky wings? BAM! Now I'm a freakin' bird! Hold on a sec, I gotta make some GRUNTING froggy noises to chat with my other messed up fish friends." What?! Make up your mind, fish!  Are you a fish? A bird? A frog? 

Anyway, I got super excited (as you might be able to tell from this post) and ran around Coconut telling people about this strange hybrid fish and it turns out, everyone already knew about it... So, in case you are like me and have apparently been living in sweet ignorance of this monster fish, now you know.  Here is a pic (not mine, I'm not that talented a photographer):