California State Park officials connected with Los Angeles County's Natural History Museum in hopes that the fish can be added to their collection of ocean species. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife took the Pacific footballfish while it's sorted out where the fish will go, reports Samantha Lock for Newsweek. How the anglerfish ended up washing ashore on the California beach is unknown. Males are "sexual parasites" that will latch onto a female and eventually fuse until there is nothing left of their bodies except their testes for reproduction. Females can also reach a maximum size of 24 inches, while males grow only to be one inch long, Crystal Cove State Park officials explain in a Facebook post. Only female footballfish have the long bioluminescent appendage used to lure other fish toward its mouth. The esca gets its glow from tiny bacteria called Photobacterium, which live within the pores of the anglerfish's esca.īased on the size of the footballfish and the protruding appendage on the top of its head, Crystal Cove State Park officials say the fish is female. To lure prey in the dark, the anglerfish uses an extended fin that resembles a fishing rod with a glowing bulb called an esca at the end. Encounters with other fish and prey are infrequent, so the footballfish evolved to feed on whatever fits in their 18-inch mouths. Light can't penetrate through the water at those depths, and these fish live in total darkness. The thing about this was that it was almost perfectly intact. "It happens when you're walking along-you find dead things here and there that just shouldn't be on the beach.
"I don't know if he understood the implications of what he found," Jessica Roame, an education coordinator at Davey's Locker Sportfishing & Whale Watching, tells the Los Angeles Times. The species is one of more than 200 species of anglerfish on the planet found at depths of 3,000 feet, reports Amanda Jackson for CNN. Pinho for the Los Angeles Times.īeachgoer Ben Estes stumbled upon the rare find on the shores of Crystal Cove State Park's Marine Protected Area in Newport Beach. The sea creature was later identified as a female Pacific footballfish ( Himantolophus sagamius), reports Faith E. A rare deep-sea fish with teeth resembling tiny shards of glass, a football-shaped body and a long bioluminescent stalk on the top of its head washed ashore in California this week.
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