Rare deep-sea anglerfish seen for first time in broad daylight
Researchers have spotted a rare humpback anglerfish, a species known to live in the darkness of the deep sea, off the coast of Tenerife in what might potentially be the first-ever sighting of this fish in broad daylight.
Researchers working on a shark research campaign for the NGO Condrik were surprised by an unexpected visitor off the coast of Tenerife last week, sparking excitement from marine biologists around the world.
Usually found at depths of between 200 and 2,000 metres, an adult abyssal humpback anglerfish or Melanocetus johnsonii was seen near the surface in what might be the first-ever sighting of the species in broad daylight.
Previous sightings have been limited to submarine images, dead individuals or larvae.
Just 2 kilometres off the coast of Tenerife, the underwater photographer David Jara Boguñá first spotted the otherworldly deep-sea fish.
Researchers haven’t determined why this fish showed up near the surface, but some scientists speculate that some individuals of the species sometimes rise up to the surface during the El Niño weather event which reduces the amount of cold water upwelling off the coast of North America.
Marine biologist Laia Valor who was also part of the shark expedition, told the EFE news agency: “We were returning to port when I saw something black in the water that didn’t look like plastic or debris. It seemed unusual. We spent a couple of hours with it. It was in poor condition and only survived for a few hours.”
She added: “There could be thousands of reasons why it was there.
“We simply don’t know. It’s an extremely rare and isolated sighting. While we can’t say it never happens, if it were more common, we would see it more frequently. This could very well be the first time it has ever been filmed in these conditions.”
After the fish passed away, the researchers brought it to the Museum of Nature and Archaeology (MUNA) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife where the body will be studied further to advance knowledge about this elusive species.
Despite a large mouth full of sharp teeth, the humpback anglerfish sports a bacteria-laden, bioluminescent lure on its head to attract and catch prey in the dark realms it lives in.
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Rare deep sea fish found on Carlsbad beach now part of vast Scripps research collection
A deep sea fish that washed up on the shore in Carlsbad is now being preserved for research.
Another deep-sea dweller washed up on a Carlsbad beach this week and its body now joins millions of other rare specimens being preserved for research at a lab in San Diego.
Jordan Coronel came across the toothy, black sea creature while fishing at South Ponto State Beach on Wednesday. Its body was lying on the sand, mouth agape and with a slimy-looking antenna sprouting from its head.
Coronel told NBC 7 that curiosity drew them to what turned out to be a type of deep-sea anglerfish.
“At first, its round, gelatinous body made me think it was some kind of jellyfish,” Coronel wrote to NBC 7. “But when I got a closer look, I noticed its large, wide mouth filled with sharp, jagged teeth and an antenna-like structure on its head.”
Coronel reached out to the marine biology community online and was ultimately connected with San Diego’s fish expert Ben Frable, manager of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Marine Vertebrate Collection — a research lab that has collected about 6,000 fish species that date back to the 1880s and must be seen to believed. Take a look here.
The creature that washed ashore in Carlsbad was a Pacific footballfish, the scientist confirmed. While rare, it’s not the first in the Frable collection. While there are only a few dozen in labs across the globe, about seven have washed ashore on the West Coast since 2021 — three in San Diego County, Frable said.
The shore is a long way from home for these beasts. Anglerfish typically live in the dark depths 1,000 to 4,000 feet beneath the surface where there’s hardly any food source and they’re known as predators — sometimes using a glowing light to attract prey.
“A lot of them have these big mouths, big teeth, and, you know, they also kind of have very dark pigmentation. Some of them glow,” Frable said. “They’re very, very alien. But a lot of that is because, you know, they’re adapted for living in environments that we are very different than what we are used to as land animals, right?”
Another type of anglerfish made headlines this week for swimming a lot closer to the surface than usual. Scientists in Spain captured the black seadevil anglerfish in daylight. It was apparently injured and did not survive.
As for why these anglerfish are coming ashore what it appears to be more frequently, scientists are still trying to figure that out.
“We don’t really know … It may be part of their life cycle. A lot of times what we find are these very large, presumably old fish. So maybe have something to do with their life cycle or may have something to do with changes in environmental conditions down here in Southern California,” Frable said.
Frable commended Coronel for the steps taken after the creature was spotted on the shore to get in contact with marine life experts as quickly as possible. That allows scientists to preserve it in the best condition.
“We say when you do run into something really weird on the beach, the best thing to do is if there’s a lifeguard present, go let them know,” Frable said. “They know who to contact California Fish and Wildlife, us [Scripps], the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, and they can kind of get you in touch with the right people to try to recover that thing and make it available for science.”
Frable said the first-ever description of an anglerfish by science was of a specimen of footballfish found by a beachgoers washed up on a Greenland beach in 1833.
To report a discovery to Scripps:
Frable commended the discoverer for getting in contact with marine life experts as quickly as possible
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A Deep-Sea Fish of Nightmares Strays Into Shallow Waters
A scary-looking creature with “devil” in its name was spotted close to the surface off Tenerife, a Spanish island.
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