Elusive Shape-Shifting Scaleless Fish Made a Rare Appearance in the California Coast After 100 Years

The deep ocean holds a lot of mystery that humans are yet to discover. And over a century ago, a mysterious fish that seemed to shape-shift was discovered and never seen again, not until recently.

According to Yahoo! Life, ocean explorers scouring the deep offshore in Monterey Bay, California, have found the elusive shape-shifting fish from over a century ago. This creature is known as the whalefish with fiery orange color, but it has no scales and generally looks haunting.

Whalefish Seen Once Again After Over 100 Years

The elusive fish lives in the midnight zone of the ocean or also known as the "Bathyal zone." It covers the whole ocean and spans from a depth of 3,300 feet to 10,000 feet. The particular whalefish featured in the report swam by a remote submarine called the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) as scientists pilot it at a depth of 6,600 feet in Monterey Bay, California.

Whalefish (Cetomimiformes) are fish that look like whales but otherwise have no other similar characteristics. Whalefish has a unique breeding process wherein males feed off of their huge livers and use their large nasal organs to sniff for females. Like many deep-sea creatures, male whalefish look utterly different from females due to sexual dimorphism.

The video shared by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) shows a glimpse of a female whalefish that is much larger than males. They are 18 inches long, while males are only 1.5 inches. The fiery orange color of female whalefish seen on the video is their true color and not from the light coming from the ROV, and it helps them blend in.

According to Live Science, the whalefish undergo three different forms across their lifespan: tapetails, bignose, and whalefish. Their bizarre transforming acts make them a unique species among vertebrates.No one knew for decades that the transforming body types have to belong to the same zoological family.

It was a 2009 mitochondrial research, titled "Deep-Sea Mystery Solved: Astonishing Larval Transformations and Extreme Sexual Dimorphism Unite Three Fish Families," published in The Royal Society Publishing: Biology Letters, that proved that the three transformations belong to one species.

The Mystery of Whalefish

According to the Smithsonian Ocean Team, the mystery of whalefish begun in 1895 when two Smithsonian scientists found a new species from 3,280 feet below the ocean's surface. They named it whalefish for its whale-like appearance.

Flash forward to 1956, a group of scientists found a new kind of fish with a long, streamer-like tail, which inspired its name tapetail. However, unlike the whalefish, it was found living near the surface. More so, all specimens they captured were only at their larvae stage, which had the scientists thinking of where the adults could have gone.

Ten years later, scientists found another kind of fish that they named the bignose fish that lived in the deep ocean like whalefish. It has an unusual nose on its snout with large organs for smelling.

However, like the tapetail, scientists felt that there was something suspicious about the fish because the specimens they got were all male. But in 1989, scientists studied the whalefish they got and found that they are all females, leaving them more baffled than ever.

Finally, in the early 20th century, scientists were able to identify that these three fish belong to one species. They were all whalefish but at a different period of their lives.

Below is the video shared by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in their Twitter account on the latest sighting of a female whalefish in the deep coast of California.

Check out more news and information on Fish on Science Times.