A fish boy! one of the protagonists of Fools Ocean, a story I'm writing. so sorry for all the text o.o

Name: Doven Pikros
Height: 5’2/5'1 (157.5 cm)
Species: Qegian
Age: 15

Doven generally tries to be cheerful, being curious, and tends to be a bit reserved but is more outgoing around friends.
He can be stubborn and has a hard time standing up for himself, and also gets anxious/stressed about things easily.

He’s eager to learn things about humans and their world, having made many journals about things he’s read and learned about them, and sketches of plants and animals he’s found.

He enjoys the cold, hunting for food, being in darker environments, learning new things, doodling/sketching, storms, the ocean, and he is also fascinated with the sky.

He doesn’t like warm/hot weather, heatwaves, bright lights, and reasonless and unnecessary violence.

He has a moral that’s basically; “unless you’re gonna eat it, don’t kill it.”
Aside from the fact he’s a carnivore and has to eat fish/other ocean creatures to live, he tries to not be violent and runs away from most confrontations or fights. Due to his new strength on the surface he’s even more afraid of hurting people, he could hug someone without thinking about it and break their spine in half.
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Backstory..plot stuff:

His life in the bathypelagic zone was pretty rough, the lack of food making him and others malnourished, and since they were bigger than non-humanoid fish, the food that they did get didn’t really satisfy them for too long, so even though they move slow or not at all in order to preserve energy and usually wait for food to come to them, it still was a big issue for most of them. Evolution didn't favor them much.

And the group of siblings he was with were not fun to be around, they believed a lot of myths and things that were talked about a lot in that zone, one of them being that the surface, or even higher levels for some of them, didn’t exist and that humans weren’t real or were also just fish in the ocean.
They didn’t want to venture up as to not waste energy, and to not get killed by anything higher up. An additional reason is also that one of the religions there, to sum up the story was that the god left the ocean to only get eaten alive by eldritch monsters of some kind, which contributed to them not really wanting to leave.

Doven was skeptical of a lot of the myths, as some older siblings had talked to him about their doubts with it when he was younger a while before they left.
He tried to talk to his other siblings about seeing whats up there for a long time, but it didn’t really work, so he decided to leave by himself, he didn’t have much to live for and he didn’t get along with the siblings he was with. And he also knew the fact that he may die at any moment and wanted to at least try to do what he’s always wanted to do before he succumbed to the inevitability of death, as he’d rather die happy with some knowledge as to what was out there, rather than dying with the people that made him feel truly alone.

And so then wacky hijinks ensued!
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Info about him and his species:

Qegians, his species, are related to anglerfish, living in the bathypelagic zone with other fish in that area. The “hair” he has isn’t really hair, it's more like whiskers, helping him see in his dark environment. (which is what he’s doing in the lower right sketch.)

It can help to hydrate his eyes better when he’s out of the water, also shading his eyes against the light. He can also control his hair to make it move.
Qegians also don’t have scales, their skin is almost like gelatin, made mostly of water, and is also slimy, like anglerfish. Their skin has to be like that in order to not be crushed by the pressure in that depth. (the pressure is around 5800 pounds per square inch, and near the bottom it’s around 6000 pounds.)

His pupils expand when in the dark, shrinking super small in the light, though on the surface, due to his eyes being super sensitive to any light, he’s pretty much blind. And even at night it's still fairly bright for him, but at least he can see. He is also able to unhinge his jaw like a snake, having many teeth-like things in his throat that help him eat his food.

He’s able to breathe out of the water only due to two sacs in his chest that resemble lungs. They collect some water inside of them while he’s swimming, so that he can breathe up the stuff he stored when on the surface. Most humanoids have these.
But, due to the fact that he lived in the bathypelagic zone, his are smaller and slightly shriveled due to the pressure. This is the case for most humanoids that live in deeper zones, and some of those who live there don't even have the sacs.

So unlike other humanoid fish, instead of having enough stored water to breathe for a week or less, he has enough for a day or two, and that's only if he’s not doing anything strenuous.

He carries around little bottles of salt water to put to his gills so that if he runs out of water to breathe and there's no salt water nearby, he can use them.

When on the surface or in higher ocean zones, due to the water pressure in the bathyal zone, he becomes way stronger and agile, though when going back into water, the deeper he goes the slower/normal speed he gets.
He does get fatigued, but if he's too exhausted to run anymore then he would’ve completely ran out of the water in the sacs way before then at that point, so oxygen is way more of a worry for him than stamina.

He not only likes the cold but needs it to be cold, because back in the bathypelagic zone it's around 39°F (4°C), and so hot/warm weather is not good for him whatsoever.

He found out more about humans through books in wrecked ships, a few of those books being some Shakespeare plays, and the diaries of sailors. (Though in this world, their english equivalent is called Thoven)
and so, through learning Thoven through them, he speaks a mix of Early Modern Thoven and sailor speak. (in which early modern Thoven is basically Early Modern English when translated.)

Before, he spoke in his original language, which sounded a bit like chirps and whale-like humming, but they mostly used their escas(the glowy things on their head that anglerfish also have) to talk by making the glowy thing in it move up and down, as the skin in the esca gets thinner near the end so it’d get dimmer and brighter, acting like a sort of morse code.

Escas also aren’t there from birth, and unlike anglerfish, both male and female qegians have an esca, the females just have a larger one, along with just being bigger and taller in general.

They typically start to grow when they’re around 2 years old. The bioluminescent bacteria goes into the whisker-hair that’s the closest to their head fins, as the ones closest to it have the material they need to make a little sac..thing that they go into after making it, and then reproduce so that the esca thing can glow. It typically finishes developing and growing at 12-14 years old, most of the time being dedicated to making the glowy sac thing. Once they finish growing, they leave their parent(s) and go out in a group of five or less siblings, as the multiple lights attract more prey.
Oh yeah! Also, Qegians, similar to anglerfish, lay around a million eggs! Yeah, Doven has a lot of siblings.

..once again I am very sorry for the avalanche of info