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.”
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The two-legged fish was identified as a striped
frogfish. Photo: Courtesy of
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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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