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Entry 422Filed under Breeding

How Do Flying Fish Communicate? What We Know—and Don’t

Flying fish gather in large surface groups, but no species-specific communication signal has been demonstrated. Learn what researchers know—and what remains uncertain.
3-minute read By Animalso Team
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No species-specific communication signal has been demonstrated in flying fish. They may use sensory channels known in other fish, but evidence from other species does not show that flying fish use them. For now, the honest answer to “Do flying fish talk to each other?” is that scientists have not established how they communicate.

What is known about flying-fish behavior?

Flying fish are members of the marine fish family Exocoetidae. They live near the ocean surface and gather in large, mobile aggregations. A 2017 survey across about 75,000 square kilometers of the northern Gulf of Mexico recorded at least three species and found aggregations averaging 6.1 kilometers in length, with an estimated average of 10,000 fish per aggregation. The groups stayed near the surface, were slightly deeper at night, and occurred most often off the continental shelf in warm, low-chlorophyll water. The study also notes that flying-fish ecology, abundance, and distribution are only partly known, in part because of their behavior and habitat (Churnside et al., 2017).

These observations describe where flying fish gather, not how they exchange information. A large aggregation could raise questions about coordination or social signaling, but its size alone is not proof of communication.

Do flying fish make sounds?

It has not been established that flying fish produce calls used to communicate. NOAA explains that sounds can convey information quickly and over long distances, and that changes in rate, pitch, or structure can carry different messages. Those are general principles about animal communication, not findings about Exocoetidae. NOAA’s example sound library includes several other fish groups, but not flying fish (NOAA Fisheries sound library).

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Fish-sound research also shows why a call cannot be inferred just because a species gathers in groups. Sound transmission and detection depend on ecological conditions, and researchers still do not fully understand sound communication across fishes (Ladich, 2019, review of fish acoustic communication).

In a separate example, playback of calls from a nocturnal fish increased group cohesion in that species. This demonstrates that sounds can act as contact calls in some fish; it does not show that flying fish make or respond to calls (Scientific Reports study). NOAA researchers use passive acoustics to study fish behavior and identify species, but the agency’s public methods and examples do not report a flying-fish call or communication study (NOAA passive-acoustics research).

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Could they communicate with movement, chemicals, or water movement?

Vision, chemical cues, and hydrodynamic cues—the movements and pressure changes in surrounding water—are reasonable possibilities to investigate in a social fish. But no species-specific evidence in the sources cited here demonstrates that flying fish use any of these channels to communicate with one another. A behavior that appears coordinated is not enough by itself to identify a signal or establish what it means.

Can flying fish communicate while gliding?

There is no demonstrated evidence here that flying fish communicate during a glide. The available observations place their aggregations near the surface, but do not test whether they signal underwater, at the surface, or in the air. Their gliding behavior should not be treated as evidence of a communication method.

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What would show how flying fish communicate?

Researchers would need to study Exocoetidae directly rather than extrapolate from other fish. Useful evidence would connect a specific signal—such as a sound, visual display, chemical cue, or water movement—to a repeatable response by another flying fish. Experiments or carefully controlled observations could then test the signal’s social context, range, environmental conditions, and whether it functions in schooling, courtship, or predator response.

Until such evidence is available, the strongest conclusion is limited but clear: flying fish form large surface aggregations, while their species-specific communication system remains undocumented.

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