Deep-sea fish have washed up on California shores twice this year
Earlier this month, a rare and “fearsome” creature was spotted in glider harbor on the shores of San Diego – the second found so far this year on the shores of California.
The San Diego KNSD reported that a Pacific footballfish, a type of monkfish found throughout the Pacific Ocean, ran aground on November 13. Its discoverer, Jay Beiler, told the news station that the fish he found was “almost a foot long.”
“You know, I go to the beach quite often, so I know the territory well, but I’ve never seen an organism that looked so scary like this,” Beiler told KNSD.
Beiler’s discovery follows another football fish spotted on a California coast in May, this time further north in Crystal Cove State Park in Orange County.
From this discovery, “it is not known how or why the fish ended up on shore,” park officials said at the time.
Indeed, the repeated discovery of this particular species of monkfish, a type of fish typically found from two to 3,000 feet below the surface, is an anomaly, an expert told SFGATE.
Dave Catania, senior ichthyology collections manager at the California Academy of Sciences, told SFGATE in an email interview that among a global database of fish specimens, only 13 Pacific football fish, or Himantolophus sagamius, have been collected by institutions around the world. Only three were collected by Californian institutions.
Another expert, Ben Frable of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, agrees, telling KNSD that the fish “has only been seen a few times here in California.”
The one in possession of the California Academy of Sciences, Catania said, was “trawled from 3,000 [feet] off Moss Landing “since 1985.
“Considering their rarity in collections, I would say two dishes on California beaches this year are unusual,” he told SFGATE in an email.
He said the one in their collection, as well as those spotted this year, are female due to their size and the presence of bioluminescent protrusions to attract unsuspecting targets. The males, he said, are “very small in comparison”.
Ted Pietsch, a University of Washington biologist specializing in monkfish, attributed the two stranded on the California coast to a coincidence.
“Nothing special here, failed totally by chance,” he said in an email.
But the cause of their deaths remains undetermined, Catania said, both due to the condition in which the fish were found and their overall rarity.
“Both specimens appear to be in excellent condition so predation is not evident,” Catania said.
Whatever the cause of death, this most recent chance encounter has once again drawn attention to this eerie-looking menacing species.