Report it to lifeguards, who will notify Scripps.So what should a casual beachgoer do if they encounter something out of its depth? We don’t know much about the biology of these fishes, and that's one of the reasons we would like people to let us know when they find one on the beach so we can potentially learn a little bit more.” Kind of like a pufferfish, you know? Not very appetizing when you get those spikes in the mouth. “So if a deep-water shark or something comes along and tries to bite down on it,” Frable said, “they got all those spikes. The warty-spikes are “kind of bony projections,” Frable said, that can potentially be used for defense. “We’ll go give it a shot regardless, because, again, these are very, very rare, and very valuable to science because we get such a rare glimpse at these,” Frable said.īesides sporting the terrifying teeth, the footballfish features spikes on its sides, too, another unusual sight. “They’ve been found in Japan, all the way down to New Zealand, all over, and a lot of times, they have been found washed up on beaches, so it’s not really quite sure what causes them to wash up.”įrable planned to go see if he could locate the one on Black’s Beach, but there are many seagulls and crabs that likely beat him to the find. “The Pacific footballfish is known from 30 specimens that have ever been collected and brought to museums around the Pacific Ocean,” the Scripps scientist said. “Up the beach a bit, you have what are called submarine canyons, where water and sediments are running off and it can get really deep, really quickly very close to shore.”īeiler’s find truly was a rare one, Frable said.
“How you have something from that deep in the ocean … it washing up on the beach here in San Diego has partially to do with the underwater topography of the coastline here on the coast, all the way off of La Jolla here - this was obviously found on Black’s,” the bearded, bespectacled, be-flanneled Frable said. The footballfish has typically been encountered in the sea swimming between 1,000 to 4,000 feet beneath the sea. The ichthyologist said he can tell that because the females of the species have the lure and are much larger - up to 60 times bigger - than their male counterparts, which don’t have the gnarly teeth.įun fact: The male of the species may not ever eat during its adult lifetime - “they’re just there to reproduce,” according to Frable. The one found last week and the one found in 2001 were the only two ever found locally, as far as Frable knows.īased on the images, some seaweed in the background and other clues, Frable thinks San Diego’s 2021 edition of Himantolophus sagamius is smaller, though it is a mature female fish. That specimen appears to be about 18 inches in length, and a foot from top to bottom. Scripps has in its collection another specimen, which was found on Dog Beach in Del Mar in December 2001, said Frable, who Zoomed NBC 7 from his lab, surrounded by jars of specimens and other scientific detritus. It’s tough to tell how big the fish is from the photographs that Beiler shot.
DEEP SEA CREATURE MOVIE
“This is one of the larger species of anglerfish, and it’s only been seen a few times here in California, but it’s found throughout the Pacific Ocean,” said Ben Frable, the collection manager of the marine vertebrate collection at Scripps.īeiler’s find was a Pacific footballfish, a type of deep-sea anglerfish - once made famous in the animated movie "Finding Nemo" - with a bioluminescent light on top of its head that acts as a lure.
Not being fish scientists ourselves, we reached out to the scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The photos show a mouthful of glistening knife-sharp looking teeth, a projectile flowing out of its forehead and plentiful spikes bristling from its sides. It was only days later that he thought about sending the pics to NBC 7 San Diego. "I’d say it was nearly a foot long."īeiler snapped three photos of the beast and went on his way. “It’s the stuff of nightmares - mouth almost looked bloody!” Beiler said. Owner of ‘Squalid' 109-Year-Old Hotel in Downtown San Diego Ordered to Help Relocate 72 Occupants: City
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