A Spanish shark research organisation says it may have captured the first footage of a rare deep-sea creature swimming in the light of day.
David Jara Boguñá, a photographer on an expedition with shark and stingray research and conversation organisation Condrik Tenerife spotted a humpback anglerfish off the coast of Spain’s Canary Islands last week.
The anglerfish, also known as a black sea devil, is typically found in the deep sea, up to 1,500 metres below the water’s surface, where the sun doesn’t reach.
“This could be the first recorded sighting in the world of an adult black devil alive, in broad daylight and on the surface,” the group said in an Instagram post.
The fish was discovered when the team were researching pelagic sharks.
It is referred to as the black devil due to its dark colours, sinister looking sharp teeth and monstrous shape.
Condrik researchers said they spent an hour or so with the fish before it died and was taken to the nearby Museum of Nature and Archaeology in Tenerife.
Magazine Oceanographic said researchers had not determined why this fish showed up near the surface.
Some scientists have speculated that members of the species could rise up to shallower depths during El Niño weather patterns, which can reduce the amount of cold water upwelling off the coast of North America.
The team from Condrik wrote that it may have been unwell or fleeing from a predator.
Marine biologist Laia Valor, who was also part of the shark expedition, told the EFE news agency: “We were returning to port when I saw something black in the water that didn’t look like plastic or debris. It seemed unusual.”
“There could be thousands of reasons why it was there.”
“We simply don’t know. It’s an extremely rare and isolated sighting.”
The female humpback anglerfish sports a bacteria-laden, bioluminescent lure on its head to attract and catch prey in the dark realms it lives in.
“In the same way the popular movie Finding Nemo does,” the Condrik researchers wrote in their Instagram post.
“It is a true predator of the depths, which lives on the seabed between 200 and 2,000 metres deep.”
The first specimen of the fish, also known as Melanocetus Johnsonii, was discovered by English naturalist James Yates Johnson near Madeira off the coast of north-western Africa in 1863.
It was then brought to Albert Carl Ludwig Gotthilf Günther, keeper of zoology at the Natural History Museum in London.
He said it was “a fish which proves to be the type of a new genus, not only on account of its extraordinary form, but also on account of the absence of pelvic fins.”
