Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
May 28, 2012
Last week my friend Alex, on his way from Wake atoll to his California home, stopped in Hawaii for a visit.
“We went snorkeling one day,” he said when I asked about Wake. “I saw a flying fish, even the long fins at its side as it swam past me. I was so excited I called to the others to come see it, but they didn’t hear me.”
I’m glad I wasn’t there. How frustrated I would have been to get that close to swimming with a malolo and then miss it.
During my years of sailing, I’ve watched countless flying fish glide over the water’s surface, some for astonishingly long distances. (The large ones can fly up to a quarter-mile.) I’ve also tossed unlucky ones overboard after they leaped from the ocean to escape a predator, only to die on the deck of my boat. I have never, though, seen one swimming.
This isn’t because these fish are rare. Sixty-some species of flying fish, called malolo in Hawaii, swim the world’s warm oceans. But the fish usually swim farther offshore where few of us snorkel. Besides that, flying fish are escape artists. I suspect that if one spots anything in the distance moving its way, the fish disappears in a flash.
When malolo are startled or pursued, they beat their odd-shaped tails (the lower lobe is longer than the upper) up to 70 times per second. This gives the fish sufficient speed, 20 to 30 mph, to exit the water.
Such an escape mechanism is handy since just about every marine carnivore eats malolo. Tuna, mahimahi, billfish, sharks and dolphins hunt these fish. And when any fish leaps from the water, it’s fair game for seabirds.
People savor flying fish, too, catching them either in gillnets or on the fly at night using lights, which alarm the fish into jumping.
Their eggs are also in demand. In the sushi industry they are a delicacy. They are also a staple for Laysan albatross as well as birds, other fish and mammals.
Given how many species eat flying fish in all stages of their lives, it’s a wonder there are any out there. But malolo have adapted — and keep adapting — a reproduction method that keeps their predators well fed.
Because flying-fish eggs are heavier than seawater, if the females broadcast them onto the ocean like so many other fish and invertebrates, the eggs would sink to cold, dark depths and die. Female malolo, therefore, search for things that float and lay their sticky eggs there. Males following closely behind spray the eggs with clouds of sperm.
In the old days flying fish found natural floating items such as seaweed, driftwood and pumice on which to stick their eggs. Today the fish also find plastic.
One theory of why albatrosses, and maybe other species, swallow so much plastic is that the pieces hold flying fish eggs. It’s not been proved but here’s some food for thought: It’s possible that plastic trash helps flying fish by providing more places to lay eggs.
While writing this I found an amazing video clip of malolo laying eggs, some to their death, on a palm frond: BBC Video. Check it out. Watching it is almost as good as snorkeling with a flying fish.
©2012 Susan Scott