Shirley Biros, age 12, of Bridgeport, Conn. For her question:

Are there really fish that fly?

The hatchet fish is a two‑inch midget of the streams and back waters of the Amazon. From time to time, he spreads his gauzy fins and takes to the air. He uses his strong chest muscles to make his fins vibrate like the wings of an Insect and can make an aerial hop of about six feet. The true flying fish, however, are ocean dwellers. A fast movie camera shows that they do not flap or vibrate their wings. These aerial acrobats are gliders.

We know of 65 different fish which take to the air like graceful gliders. A ship crossing the Indian Ocean or the warm regions of the Atlantic or Pacific oceans may startle a whole school of them and for a while the air seems full of swarming dragonflies. Their wings, of course, are gauzy fins spread wide like fans to catch a lift from the air. Some of these flying fish glide on two wings and some on four,

One of the common flying fish is at home in the warm, deep waters of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian oceans. He is but seven inches long and has but one pair of gliding fins. What’s more, he has no teeth. He lives on plankton, a drifting mass of waterweeds, diatoms, fish eggs and tiny creatures that can be swallowed whole,

Off the coast of Florida and around the West Indies lives a flying fish with two pairs of gliding wings. Though he has teeth, he too feeds upon small plants and sea creatures near the surface. The most handsome and perhaps the largest of the flying fish lives off the coast of southern California. He may be 18 inches long and, when he takes to the air, his two pairs of gauzy wings give him an 18‑inch wing spread. This beauty has a back and side of deep, rich blue and an underside of silvery white.

Even though some of them live in deep water, flying fish stay near the surface of the oceans. To us, a school of them zooming through ;through the air is a beautiful sight, but the reason for it is a tragic one, Flying fish make very good eating and they are constantly hunted by sharks, dolphin and hungry tuna. When these greedy hunters plow through the water, the pretty little flying fish swim their hardest to escape. Each uses his powerful tail like a scull to get up speed. Then, as the surface water heaves up in a wave, the little fish plunge out into the air.

The gliding fins are spread out and each flying fish is air borne. The gliding flight lasts from about 50 to 200 yards and sometimes longer. Then down the little acrobats tumble into the water, perhaps to get up speed for another aerial glide. Sad to say, the flight from danger below may end only in disaster above the water. For sea gulls, too, like flying fish meat, Many a flying fish has escaped a shark only to be grabbed by a sea gull.