Thursday 28 January 2016

Bizarre, two-legged fish whose bite is as fast as a speeding bullet found in New Zealand - via Elizabeth Clem


January 21, 2016 by David Strege

Two New Zealand snorkelers were mystified when coming across a bizarre, all-black, two-legged fish on a white seafloor in a bay near Auckland.

So James Beuvink, 20, and his girlfriend, Claudia Howse, 19, scooped up the specimen and put it into the boat’s livewell where it started slowly walking around, according to Fairfax Media.

“It had these little legs … I’d never seen anything like it,” Beuvink told Fairfax Media. “It was pretty chilled out. It’s not the biggest fish I’ve ever caught, but it was certainly the strangest.”

The two-legged fish was identified as a striped frogfish

The two-legged fish was identified as a striped
frogfish. Photo: Courtesy of
They eventually sent the fish to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, New Zealand, where collection manager Andrew Stewart examined it and put photos of it on Facebook, where it started gaining world-wide attention.

In an email to GrindTV, Stewart identified the specimen as a striped anglerfish, also popularly known as a striped frogfish.

“The last time this species was sent to us was 2008, which gives you an idea of how ‘rare’ they are here,” Stewart wrote. “Elsewhere, the striped anglerfish is very common especially in the tropical and subtropical waters from the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

“The Frogfishes family (Antennariidae) are rare in our waters and seem to be at their southern limits of tolerance, water temperature-wise. They are taken as single captures, and have only been found along the east coast of the northern North Island.”


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