A man recently discovered something on a San Diego beach, initially thinking he saw a jellyfish but later realized he spotted what reports have described as a "sea monster."
According to a Wild 94.9 report, this rare scary-looking fish is identified as "The Alnglerfish," which, through what is shown on KiloFact's YouTube video below, viewers will discover some interesting and terrifying facts about this.
A KGTV report said on November 13; Jay Bailer was walking on a Black's Beach when he saw the fish. A closer look showed what they found was a fish living in the Pacific Ocean known as a Pacific footballfish at depths between 2,000 and 3,300 feet, the California Academy of Sciences reported.
These fish have needle-sharp teeth pointing inward, and according to the website, some male footballfish attaches themselves to females as sexual parasites, losing their internal organs, as well as their eyes except for testes.
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A deep-sea anglerfish is displayed for the 'Ocean' exhibition in Paris at the National Museum of Natural History (Museum d'Histoire Naturelle).
Footballfish
USA Today reported that according to Bailer, he has never seen anything quite like this in the past. He added he goes to the beach fairly frequently, and thus he is familiar with the territory.
However, he explained, he had never seen an organism that appeared quite as terrifying as his discovery. National Geographic said Pacific football fish belong to the anglerfish species that can grow more than three feet in length and weigh up to 110 pounds.
Collection manager Ben Frable at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told NBC San Diego that a member of this specific fish species was discovered on a San Diego beach in 2001.
He told the media outlet he was planning to find the footballfish spotted by Beiker, although seagulls and crabs most possibly got the deep-sea creature first.
Frable explained that not much is known about these fishes' biology, and that is one of the reasons they would like the public to let them know whenever they find one on the beach to potentially learn more.
Anglerfish
The angry-looking deep-sea anglerfish, as described by National Geographic, "has the right to be cranky." It is rather possibly the ugliest animal on Earth, living in what is easily this planet's most inhospitable habitat, the sea's lightless, lonely bottom.
There are over 200 species of anglerfish, most of which live in the murky depths of the Antarctic and Atlantic oceans, up to one mile beneath the surface, although some are living in shallow, tropical environments.
The anglerfish, generally dark gray to dark brown, have large heads and huge crescent-shaped mouths filled with sharp, translucent teeth.
Some of these species can be quite big, reaching 3.3-feet long. However, most of them are substantially tinier, frequently below one foot.
The most distinctive feature of the anglerfish is a piece of dorsal spine protruding above their mouths like a fishing pole explicitly worn by females.
Their mouths are quite large and their bodies very pliable that they can, in fact, swallow prey up to double their size. The male anglerfish, on the other hand, which is substantially tinier than the female, does not need such an adaptation.
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Check out more news and information on Anglerfish in Science Times.