Flying crustacean

The flying crustacean is a strange animal reported from the sea off Palawan. It is a recorded sighting, not an old folk tale. The American zoologist Dean C. Worcester wrote about it in a short note in the Philippine Journal of Science in 1914. He said he saw it three times between 1912 and 1913. Places included Bacuit Bay, near Lumbucan Island and Malampaya Sound. At the last one, the entomologist Willie Schulz was with him.

Worcester described see-through animals like crayfish or shrimp, about 13 to 23 centimeters long. They shot up from the water, glided in a straight line for a short distance, then dropped back in. Flying fish act in a similar way.

Later scientists have offered a plain explanation. Some tiny copepods of the family Pontellidae also jump out of the water. Waldo Schmitt wrote in 1934 that these animals are much smaller than Worcester's. Nobody has caught a specimen, so the case rests on one man's report. No folk tale about it is known.