Flounder falls from sky, lands on man swimming at Parnell Baths

A large flounder fell from the sky and onto a man's head as he relaxed in an Auckland spa pool this afternoon.

Russell Hogg felt a thwack on the side of his head and thought someone had done an unruly belly-flop or that something had been thrown at him.

Then he saw a black shape sink to the bottom of the pool and pulled out a large, nearly-dead flounder.

"Everyone in the pool just looked at each other like, 'What the f*** was that?"

Given the power with which the fish hit him and the water, the unfortunate creature must have been travelling at a very high speed.

The only explanation he could come up with was that the flounder had been dropped by a high-flying bird.

"It landed with a great force from quite high up and no-one's got a half-dead flounder in their hand when they go to Parnell Baths," he said.

Hogg, who is the director of fire protection company the Fire Guys, took the fish over to show his wife and three children who were swimming nearby.

They attracted quite a crowd of people, who were utterly perplexed by the bizarre incident.

Although he chuckles about it, Hogg could have been seriously hurt by the flying fish, which he estimated weighed a couple of kilograms.

"I'm pretty accident-prone as it is," he said. "I think maybe I should buy a lottery ticket tonight. It's not something that happens every day, is it?"

The flounder was still flopping around a little bit when it first entered Hogg's world but its high-altitude adventure was too much for it and it died. After taking a few pictures he threw it over the wall for the seagulls to eat.

"A couple of them tried to pick it up but they couldn't so it was obviously something big like a heron or a crane that had picked up from Mission Bay or somewhere."

Hogg is originally from Portsmouth in the United Kingdom but has lived in Auckland for the past eight years.