‘Living in Darkness’: This Deep Sea Creature Washed up in Oregon—But What’s That Crazy Head Stalk?

A football fish washed up near Cannon Beach. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Courtesy of SeasideAquarium)

Another toothed wonder from the cold, sunless deep sea has washed up on land—this time on northern shores, near Cannon Beach, Oregon.

On May 18, the nearby Seaside Aquarium posted the discovery of a glistening black blob of a fish with the approximate shape and size of a football. It had beady eyes, a startling underbite with rows of sharp tiny teeth like shards of glass, and a strange stalk protruding from its forehead like an alien antenna.

There it lay, on the sand, dead.

An angler fish, or football fish, turned up on a beach in Oregon. (Courtesy of SeasideAquarium)

The aquarium said this bizarre apparition is a deep-sea angler fish, or Pacific football fish (Himantoliphus sagamius), found by local beachcombers just south of Cannon Beach. Posting on Facebook, they shared photos and facts about this unsettling curiosity of the deep.

“Living in complete darkness, at 2,000-3,300 feet, these fish are rarely seen. In fact, only 31 specimens have been recorded around the world,” they captioned. “While a handful of football fish have been recorded in New Zealand, Japan, Russia, Hawaii, Ecuador, Chile, and California this is the first one reported on the Oregon Coast to our knowledge.”

Detail of the angler fish shows rows of sharp teeth jutting from its large mouth and its unusual head stalk. (Courtesy of SeasideAquarium)

At such depths, all sunlight in its habitat is obliterated. In order to hunt, the football fish employs a unique bioluminescent bulb that dangles from its unusual head stalk to attract prey, of which there is little at these depths, the aquarium wrote. Not being a picky eater, the football fish will gobble down whatever sized prey it can fit into its mouth.

This particular specimen is a female, they wrote, adding that males are actually 10 times smaller and sustain themselves in a much different manner than females. While females see and hunt using their wacky, glowing headgear, males have no such appendage and spend their existence seeking a mate, before latching onto her like a parasite to become a continual source of mating.

The Seaside Aquarium posted photos of the angler fish on Facebook in May. (Courtesy of SeasideAquarium)

“[Males] lose their eyes and internal organs, getting all their nutrients from their female partners,” the aquarium wrote. “How the males find the females in the pitch dark is still unknown.”

While football fish sightings are rare, a number have cropped up in the Western United States in recent years. A female specimen washed up at Crystal Cove, California, last October, in time for Halloween on Friday the 13th. Another washed up on the same beach in 2021, and decades earlier in 2001.

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