Allan Moses in which he was described as "our Grand Manan ornithologist", who "makes birds his specialty and his pastime". John Thomas Moses died in 1885. His son John Russell Moses, born in 1853, was Allan Moses's father. John Russell Moses learned taxidermy from his father and continued to build the family collection of mounted bird specimens, while prospering as a businessman. He was one of Grand Manan's major fish buyers, with a processing plant in North Head. Part of his business was selling the dried swim bladders of hake for the manufacture of isinglass. This was highly profitable, as the bladders
Fish locomotion of gas in these swim bladders, fish actively control their density. If they increase the amount of air in their swim bladder, their overall density will become less than the surrounding water, and increased upward buoyancy pressures will cause the fish to rise until they reach a depth at which they are again at equilibrium with the surrounding water. The transition of predominantly swimming locomotion directly to flight has evolved in a single family of marine fish, the Exocoetidae. Flying fish are not true fliers in the sense that they do not execute powered flight. Instead, these species glide directly