A black seadevil anglerfish, the rarely seen deep-water creature with its own "headlight," was captured on video about 2,000 feet below the sea in the Monterey Canyon.
The strange looking fish often lurks in deep water that is usually four times deeper where there is no sunlight, which is one of the reasons it is rarely spotted, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute officials told the
Santa Cruz Sentinel.
"We've been diving out here in the Monterey Canyon regularly for 25 years, and we've seen three (black seadevils)," Bruce Robison, research division chairman of the aquarium's research institute, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
The anglerfish has a flashlight-like appendage on top of its head that helps it lure prey to its vicinity. When its curious prey approaches, the seadevil's huge jaws suck smaller fish and squid into its sharp teeth,
reported USA Today.
Robison said researchers were able to get a glimpse of one using a remote-operated diving vehicle operated from an ocean research platform nearby.
"A video would tell us a lot about how it moves, swims, orients to gravity," Ted Pietsch, professor at the University of Washington, told the Sentinel.
Pietsch said that the females are the only seadevils with the luminescent orb on the described "fishing rod" on their forehead while the males are much smaller and have shorter life spans. He said since the males are not built to eat, they latch on the female, fusing to her body to receive the hormones to survive while they mate.
"If they don't find a female, they drown," Pietsch told the Sentinel. "They're not even properly equipped to eat."
The Verge.com reported that more people have likely seen the elusive fish when it appeared briefly in animation in the 2003 movie "Finding Nemo," playing the perfectly suited predator in the children film by Pixar.
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