Beachcombers in Oregon were in for a surprise when they stumbled across an alien-like creature as black as an oil slick with a gaping mouth, needle-sharp teeth and an unnerving array of spikes across its body.
The strange fish they’d discovered – a deep-sea anglerfish called a Pacific football fish (Himantoliphus sagamius) – is so rarely seen that only 31 of them have ever been recorded.
The Seaside Aquarium shared the exciting find on its Facebook page, saying this is the first Pacific football fish they’re aware of being reported in the area.
“They live in the depths throughout the Pacific Ocean, so they can be found off the Oregon Coast but they are rarely seen,” explains the Seaside Aquarium’s Tiffany Boothe. They live in such deep waters, she says, that it’s remarkably rare for them to be found onshore.
Anglerfish are fascinating animals known for their sexual dimorphism. In many species, females are significantly larger than males. When mating, the tiny males clamp onto the female and fuse into her body like a parasite – becoming a tiny portable sperm sack that she can use when she wants to reproduce.
“Using well-developed olfactory organs, they find and fuse themselves to females, eventually losing their eyes, internal organs, and everything else but the testes,” says the California Academy of Sciences.
“The male becomes a permanent appendage that draws nutrition from its female host and serves as an easily accessible source of sperm.”
Life in the deep
According to the Natural History Museum of L.A. County (NHM), which has a Pacific football fish in its collection, these fish live at depths of between around 300m and 1,200m deep. To put that in perspective, the Chrysler building in New York is 319m high while Snowdon, the tallest mountain in Wales, has an elevation of 1,085m.
This part of the ocean is totally devoid of light, which is why the football fish has a strange appendage on the front of its head that looks a bit like a feather duster. This is a bioluminescent lure that it uses to attract prey close enough that it can pounce and wolf them down.
“Food at the depths that these guys peruse can be very sparse, so football fish are not picky eaters. They eat anything that can fit into their mouths,” the Seaside Aquarium says in its Facebook post.
In January 2022, NHM’s Ichthyology Curator William Ludt documented the first instance of biofluorescence in a deep-sea anglerfish. This was a puzzling discovery because biofluorescence usually needs a light source but the depths of the ocean are pitch black.
"What seems to be occurring is that the light produced by the bioluminescent lure (which occurs due to bioluminescent bacteria) is enabling this biofluorescence,” he explains. The combination of bioluminescence and biofluorescence in deep-sea animals is thought to be rare. However, discovering this in a Pacific football fish could hint that the phenomenon is more common than scientists previously believed.
Understanding why this anglerfish might have biofluorescence is tricky, says Ludt. “It may allow the anglerfish to have a more enticing and complex lure to attract prey or mates in the cold, deep depths of our world’s oceans."
While many museums would have been itching to get this rare specimen into their collection for further study, the fish was left where it was found. “The folks who found the fish did not want it to be picked up. They wanted it to return to nature, which is unfortunate because it was such a rare specimen,” says Boothe.
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