Anglers spot ‘shimmering’ catch being chased by sharks — and haul in 9-foot-long fish
Anglers off the coast of Mexico caught a 9-foot-long deep-sea fish after watching several sharks chase the “shimmering” animal.
Tony Frascone, Gary Morrow and Ken were fishing for marlin off Cabo San Lucas on May 28 when they saw the commotion, Pisces Sportfishing Fleet, a fishing company that helped the anglers, wrote on Facebook.
“We pulled up over to (the animal) and the sharks had bit the tail off,” Frascone told the company in a video. “So we grabbed it and put it on the boat.”
The long, silvery animal was identified as an oarfish, an “extremely rare” deep-sea fish, the fishing company said.
The trio’s oarfish catch weighed 141 pounds and measured about 9 feet 7 inches in length, Pisces Sportfishing Fleet told McClatchy News.
Photos show the “extremely rare” catch.
Oarfish are an “unusual” fish species that “spends time floating vertically in the water column,” according to the Florida Museum. Its “ribbon-like” body can reach up to 36 feet in length and may be “a source for sea monster legends.”
Oarfish are rarely seen by humans and usually only surface “when injured or dying,” the museum said.
“This fish is also known as the ‘Earthquake Fish,’” Pisces Sportfishing Fleet wrote on Facebook, “as folk knowledge says they only appear when an earthquake is about to take place.”
Frascone said in a video the oarfish was “still alive” when they hauled it onto the boat. It died soon after.
Photos show the anglers standing next to the massive oarfish. Frascone described it as “wild looking.” The fishing company called it “elusive and strange.”
“Just another killer day,” Frascone wrote in a Facebook post.
“A rare find today,” Morrow wrote on Facebook.
The oarfish was “donated to marine biologists,” the fishing company said.
Despite their size, oarfish are filter feeders, consuming mainly “plankton, crustaceans, and squid,” according to the Florida Museum. They are “generally considered inedible” for humans due to their “gelatinous” and “poor quality” meat.
Cabo San Lucas is a city on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula and a roughly 930-mile drive south of the United States border.
This story was originally published June 5, 2024 at 8:28 AM with the headline "Anglers spot ‘shimmering’ catch being chased by sharks — and haul in 9-foot-long fish."
