A strange and rarely seen cannibal fish has suddenly appeared and washed up along a beach in Oregon, United States. The unusual appearance of this animal with big eyes and dagger-like fangs confused experts.
In a Facebook post on May 1, the Oregon State Parks account wrote that several lancetfish, as the fish are known, have been found on the beach from south of Nehalem to Bandon in recent weeks.
"No one is sure why they washed up on the beach," the post read.
Quoted from Live Science, Monday (8/5/2023) Longnose lancetfish (Alepisaurus ferox) usually live in tropical and subtropical waters. Although they can be found in shallow water, their preferred habitat is the twilight zone, which is about 200 to 1,000 meters below sea level.
Oregon State Parks wrote, one of the lancetfish recently found in Oregon was still alive when it was beached and was helped back out to sea and was able to swim,
Lancetfish are very strange creatures. They are one of the largest deep-sea fish, growing up to 2 meters long, and they have a sail-like fin that extends almost the entire length of the body.
These animals include hermaphrodites, aka androgynous, have muscles like jelly and their bodies are covered in pores. The terrible thing about these animals, they are known as cannibals, as evidenced by the frequent small lancetfish found in the stomachs of larger fish.
Daniel J Kamikawa, a research biology researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center said he could find no records of mass strandings or past lancetfish deaths.
"Typically one or two individuals are found in widely dispersed locations on the coast. From our research, strandings in Oregon and elsewhere are not very common or occur frequently," he said.
"The pattern, if you can call it that, appears to be frequent strandings over a wide area but there is no coordinated effort to measure sightings. Before the next stranding event occurs, the previous event has been forgotten and the cycle begins again," he explained.
Why some of the lancetfish wash up along the roughly 290 kilometer stretch of beach is not known. Kamikawa said there were three potential theories as to why the cannibal fish washed ashore.
First, these fish are injured or sick so they cannot swim effectively and are pushed to shore. Second, there was a storm that washed them away. The third relates to a phenomenon known as temperature shock, in which fish are suddenly exposed to water much colder than their normal temperature range.
"This causes the fish to go into shock and can be paralyzing and even fatal for the fish. But once again, these are all unproven theories," he explained.
The mystery of why this lancetfish stranding may never be solved and it is not clear whether any data can be collected for analysis.
Oregon State Parks has asked members of the public to take photos of any lancetfish they encounter and post them to the organization and NOAA Fisheries West Coast.