These fish were surprisingly calm around divers, though if you got too close they would move away. I suppose there hasn't been much natural selection favouring a flight response from large, ungainly sea creatures streaming bubbles and making regular rasping noises, but more likely it just isn't worth the effort to flee from every large creature in the ocean... a truly timid pelagic fish would be a very exhausted fish and not one to contribute to the next generation.
A side view of one of these fish. The latin name is Oblada melanura. (as an aside, I need to get some better identification guides for the mediterranean... I have one very old guide, and the pictures in it don't do the live fish justice.)
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