Hello everyone! I’m Amanda Lohmann, a PhD student at Duke. One of the coolest things we’ve seen at sea so far have been the flying fish – little fish that jump out of the water and glide surprisingly far through the air on their silver “wings”. From up on deck, they look a bit like ocean dragonflies darting just above the waves. Because they use their “flying” powers to avoid undersea predators, when they get startled by the boat they’ll often jump out of the water and take off gliding to get away from the bow. When they’re in the air, though, they’re safe from things in the sea but not things in the sky. Today we had a seabird escort – a northern gannet who flew alongside us for about half an hour, diving down now and then to grab flying fish as they leapt out of the way of the bow. A gannet diving is very cool – it tucks in its wings and rockets towards the water’s surface like an arrow, then plunges underwater, disappears completely, and reappears a few moments later, taking flight and often doing a little midair shake to get a bit more water off its feathers. We had a good time watching it and cheering it on.