IArrival
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40 m – 220 m · fauna
Kelp-fanwing
Petalichthys vexillata
The first animal I learned to recognise. The first thing that felt real on the descent. I have written elsewhere about what it means that a fish can recognise a light, and I am still not sure I was not over-reading.
The kelp-fanwing is among the first animals a new arrival learns to recognise. It is a flat, ribboned thing, perhaps a metre across at full extension, its dorsal surface the colour of old brass and its ventral side translucent. It feeds by drifting against kelp blades and unrolling a soft ciliated mantle across them.
It is harmless. It is also, by the reckoning of long-term residents, slightly companionable: fanwings recognise individual lights, and a habitual diver may find the same animal returning to the same window for years.
Field notes
- Tolerates anchorage illumination without flinching.
- Will not approach hot vents or industrial bubble plumes.
- Believed not to migrate vertically; specimens have been observed at the same metre-band across full seasons.
Slightly companionable, by the reckoning of long-term residents. I am sceptical of the affective vocabulary in zoology, but I have not found a better word, and I have stopped looking.