  Recent proposals for spin-1 Kitaev materials, such as honeycomb Ni oxides
with heavy elements of Bi and Sb, have shown that these compounds naturally
give rise to antiferromagnetic (AFM) Kitaev couplings. Conceptual interest in
such AFM Kitaev systems has been sparked by the observation of a transition to
a gapless $U(1)$ spin liquid at intermediate field strengths in the AFM
spin-1/2 Kitaev model. However, all hitherto known spin-1/2 Kitaev materials
exhibit ferromagnetic bond-directional exchanges. Here we discuss the physics
of the spin-1 Kitaev model in a magnetic field and show, by extensive numerical
analysis, that for AFM couplings it exhibits an extended gapless quantum spin
liquid at intermediate field strengths. The close analogy to its spin-1/2
counterpart suggests that this gapless spin liquid is a $U(1)$ spin liquid with
a neutral Fermi surface, that gives rise to enhanced thermal transport
signatures.
