#neuston creatures

A flying fish fry from last year. Baby fishes are often referred to as fry. Flying fish live almost exclusively in the neuston zone, laying eggs, feeding on plankton, and evading many predators.

The argonaut octopus is pelagic, and unusual in that it lives close to the ocean’s surface and that the females secrete a paper thin protective shell, which is unique to the genus.

The Portuguese man o' war, probably the most well known member of the neuston, and also a siphonophore, a colonial organism made up of zooids.

This is a buoy barnacle, a free floating barnacle drifting on ocean currents eating whatever it can get its little tentacles on. Open ocean creatures are susceptible to any surface trawling, something ocean cleanups don't always take into consideration.