You may have seen the animated version of the monkfish in Pixar’s The world of Nemo. However, spotting the deep sea creature washed up on a beach is a whole different experience. Taking the round on social media these days is an image of a black monkfish with its giant mouth wide open, revealing the razor-sharp dentition that accompanies it. The photo also showed a large, protruding appendage surrounded by a series of tentacles at its end. The monkfish’s body also had pointy ends, as seen in the image shared by Crystal Cove State Park.
The image of this species of monkfish known as the Pacific football fish was spotted at Crystal Cove State Park by beach regular, Ben Estes. What is more surprising is the perfectly preserved state of this rare fish found in the depths of the ocean. According to Crystal Cove State Park, the fish that stranded ashore was a female, as she alone has a long rod on her head with bioluminescent spikes that is used as a trap to lure prey in dark waters up to 3000 feet.
In its Facebook post, Crystal Cove State Park also mentioned that seeing a true intact monkfish is “very rare” and it is not known how or why the aquatic animal ended up on the shore. Talk to Los Angeles Times, Bill Ludt – assistant curator of ichthyology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History – said that this deep sea creature is a very elaborate and complex species of marine life that is fairly easy to distinguish from other fish. was frozen and stored at Crystal Cove State Park on Monday, as state officials decided on where it would ultimately be placed. John Ugoretz, of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Los Angeles Times that he couldn’t speculate on how rare fish ended up on the beach, but it’s not that rare for such species to appear occasionally.
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