WEIRD ANGLERFISH FACTS
The dramatisation on social media aside, marine experts are also intrigued by the sighting.
“When I first saw the video, I honestly didn’t believe what I was seeing,” said fish biologist Kory Evans from Rice University in Texas. “I thought it was AI,” he said on National Geographic.
As it turns out, there are more bizarre facts about the little anglerfish that kept swimming, to paraphrase Dory.
It is unusual to see black sea devil anglerfish swim up
It is so rare that only one other person – Professor Bruce Robison, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute – has footage of a live sea devil. And even so, it was shot at a depth of 580m.
“Their whole deal is not moving,” said Prof Robison on National Geographic. “They are ambush predators,” he said. “They kind of sit there, bobbing around, so seeing this one doing something active is kind of shocking.”
Another reason why you don’t see them: Deep-sea species such as the black sea devil anglerfish are typically found at depths between 200m and 2,000m.
It was indeed a “she”
How did netizens know that the anglerfish was female? One sign is the lure on its head; in many species of anglerfish, only the females have it.
Also, the males are a lot smaller than the females, typically a fraction of the size of females, according to Natural History Museum.
Fishing for food with bacteria-fuelled light
Different species of anglerfish vary in size and shape but the females all lure prey towards them with their fishing rod-like appendages, according to Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The deep-sea species often have a sac of bioluminescent bacteria called the esca at the end of the rod. It glows in the dark and it’s what attracts prey towards the anglerfish’s waiting mouth.
Other species, such as the frogfish, for instance, have lures that resemble worms to target small, hungry fish instead.
