Another in a series meant to inspires those of you working on a submission for our upcoming FISH anthology; you can find our previous post here.These creatures, nearly all of them called “fish” of one kind or another, are not actually classifiable as fish. Dive right in!

1. Jellyfish – “The word jellyfish (which has been in common usage for more than a century) is used to denote several different kinds of cnidarians, all of which have a basic body structure that resembles an umbrella, including scyphozoans, staurozoans (stalked jellyfish), hydrozoans, and cubozoans (box jellyfish). Some textbooks and websites refer to scyphozoans as “true jellyfish”.Since jellyfish are not even vertebrates, let alone true fish, the usual word jellyfish is considered by some to be a misnomer, and American public aquariums have popularized use of the terms jellies or sea jellies instead.^“

Atlantic Sea Nettle

2. Cuttlefish – “Marine animals of the order Sepiida. They belong to the class Cephalopoda (which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses). Despite their name, cuttlefish are not fish but molluscs.”

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Working on a submission for our upcoming FISH anthology? Perhaps these great and wondrous, terrible and dangerous, mythic fish will give you something scaly to think about:

1. The Salmon of Knowledge: Ireland, Fish – “An ordinary salmon that ate the nine hazel nuts that fell into the Well of Wisdom (aka Tobar Segais) from nine hazel trees that surrounded the well. In doing so, the salmon gained all the knowledge in the world. The poet Finn Eces spent seven years fishing for the salmon. When he finally caught it, he instructed his apprentice, Fionn, to prepare it for him. Fionn burned his thumb when spattered with a drop of the hot fat from the cooking salmon and immediately sucked on it to ease the pain. Unbeknownst to Fionn, all the wisdom had been concentrated into that one drop, and Fionn had just imbibed it all.”

Salmon of Knowledge

2. Abaia: Fiji, Solomon and Vanuatu Islands, Giant Eel – “One day a man discovered a lake in which were many fish, and at the bottom of the lake lived a magic eel, but the man knew it not. He caught many fish and returned the next day with the people of his village whom he had told of his discovery, and they also were very successful, while one woman even laid hold of the great eel, Abaia, who dwelt in the depths of the lake, though he escaped her. Now Abaia was angry that his fish had been caught and that he himself had been seized, so he caused a great rain to fall that night, and the waters of the lake also rose, and all the people where drowned except an old woman who had not eaten of the fish and who saved herself in a tree.”

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