On Tuesday 20 May 2008 a television crew managed to capture footage of a flying fish that was airborne for 45 seconds off the southern tip of Japan. You can read the details and see the remarkable video from the BBC. This beats a previous record of 42 seconds recorded in the 1920′s
You can see from the video that it is occasionally slapping the water with its tail which helps it carry on flying. In actual fact flying fish are really gliding rather than flapping their wings, but it’s still very impressive. I was on Vidar’s Empress in Indonesia once having a recuperative beer after a hard day’s diving when one glided up on to the deck and hit one of the others in the group. It looked just as surprised as we did, albeit slightly more stunned.
