A beachgoer walking along a Southern California beach near sunset last weekend came across a scary-looking sea creature washed ashore in what was a rare sighting, especially considering its kind is typically found in waters more than 2,000-feet deep.
“It’s the stuff of nightmares” is how Jay Beiler described his discovery to NBC San Diego.
Beiler was at Black’s Beach north of San Diego when he noticed the specimen, first thinking it was a jellyfish.
“Then I went and looked at it a little more carefully, and some other people were gathered around it, too, and then I saw that it was this very unusual fish,” Beiler told NBC San Diego.
“I have never seen anything quite like this before. You know, I go to the beach fairly often, so I’m familiar with the territory, but I’ve never seen an organism that looked quite as fearsome as this.”
Beiler snapped some photos of the foot-long fish and ultimately sent them to NBC San Diego, which in turn sought help from Scripps Institution of Oceanography to identify the sea creature.
It was a Pacific footballfish, also known as an anglerfish, a species made famous in the animated movie “Finding Nemo.” It features needle-sharp teeth and an odd-looking bioluminescent light extending forward from the dorsal fin like a goose-neck reading lamp, used to lure prey.
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“This is one of the larger species of anglerfish, and it’s only been seen a few times here in California, but it’s found throughout the Pacific Ocean,” Ben Frable, the collection manager of the marine vertebrate collection at Scripps, told NBC San Diego.
Frable said these fish are “very, very rare and very valuable to science because we get such a rare glimpse at these,” and he planned to search for the carcass.
“How you have something from that deep in the ocean … it washing up on the beach here in San Diego has partially to do with the underwater topography of the coastline here on the coast, all the way off of La Jolla here — this was obviously found on Black’s,” […] Frable said. “Up the beach a bit, you have what are called submarine canyons, where water and sediments are running off and it can get really deep, really quickly very close to shore.”
Beiler’s find truly was a rare one, Frable said.
“The Pacific footballfish is known from 30 specimens that have ever been collected and brought to museums around the Pacific Ocean,” the Scripps scientist said. “They’ve been found in Japan, all the way down to New Zealand, all over, and a lot of times, they have been found washed up on beaches, so it’s not really quite sure what causes them to wash up.”
Photos courtesy of Jay Beiler.
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