{"id":2280,"date":"2013-04-12T10:35:14","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T17:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/?p=2280"},"modified":"2013-04-12T11:46:28","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T18:46:28","slug":"pic-of-the-day-flying-gunard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/?p=2280","title":{"rendered":"Pic of the Day &#8211; Flying Gunard"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/DSC8014.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Awoosh.com Images\" alt=\"Awoosh.com Images\" src=\"http:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/DSC8014.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Flying Gunard &#8211; Dactyloptena orientalis<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>So I&#8217;ll take a break today from the crabby parade, and instead offer up a Friday funny fish face.<\/p>\n<p>This creature is a Flying Gunard (<em>Dactyloptena orientalis<\/em>). It is one of several strange &#8220;creeping&#8221; fish that can be found in the tropical Pacific.<\/p>\n<p>Not so much a swimmer, it &#8220;walks&#8221; along the bottom on two pelvic fin\/legs. It will lift off and swim if startled, with those huge wingy pectoral fins fully deployed. A very strange fish indeed.<\/p>\n<p>These images were captured on a night dive in a mucky bay, in an island group in the Banda Sea. This fish was about 12 inches long, and was the first and only one of these things that I have seen in several trips to Indonesia.<\/p>\n<p><em>Edited to add: The cousin of this weird Indo fish,\u00a0Dactyloptenan orientalis, is <em>Dactyloptenan v<\/em>olitans, which can occasionally be spotted in the Caribbean, Bahamas etc. I have seen only one in that part of the world, despite many dives there &#8211; in Turks &amp; Caicos (I think). Couldn&#8217;t get close enough to get a picture. A skittish fish for sure&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/ps_DSC8050.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Awoosh.com Images\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/ps_DSC8050.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;ll take a break today from the crabby parade, and instead offer up a Friday funny fish face. This creature is a Flying Gunard (Dactyloptena orientalis). It is one of several strange &#8220;creeping&#8221; fish that can be found in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/?p=2280\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,62,13],"tags":[119,118],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2280"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2295,"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions\/2295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awoosh.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}