Needlefish have a pretty decent aerial game. In fact, since they hang out reasonably close to the surface, they’ll actually choose to jump over boats instead of going around them. Of course, since they’re fish and don’t have the largest brains, they end up inside boats a lot of the time, which is a bad place for a fish.
They also get really excited about lights. Night fishermen in areas with needlefish have real problems with schools of them flying around, smashing into things in the process. And for people that live in traditional Pacific Island communities, they pose a real threat. There have been two deaths by needlefish, and a whole boatload of injuries.
Since needlefish can reach speeds of nearly 40 miles an hour in the air, getting hit by one would suck. Their beaks are sharp, and not very strong, so getting hit by a needlefish at full speed would be similar to getting hit by a living spear with a tip that is very likely to break off inside you. According to the 1978 edition of the Journal of Neuroradiology, the first death occurred in Hawaii in the late ’70s, when a 10-year-old boy was fishing at night with his dad. A needlefish decided that it felt like seeing how close to the sun it could fly, and ended up piercing the boy’s eyeball and brain. The second death was also at night, when a Vietnamese teen was stabbed through the heart while diving for sea cucumbers in 2007.
So when Mitch Parkinson was concentrating on getting shacked off the Telos Islands in the Indian Ocean and a needlefish made its Icarus attempt, things actually could have gone very wrong. Luckily, all we ended up with is a pretty insane clip.
