‘It looked prehistoric’: angler describes fish that resembled creature from Alien

Rare mud-dwelling fish, with sharp teeth and no eyes, is believed to be a worm goby, but is not dangerous

Naaman Zhou

Fri 1 Mar 2019 22.03 GMTLast modified on Fri 1 Mar 2019 22.05 GMT

An Australian fisherman, who captured a rare, unsettling fish that resembled a creature from the sci-fi film Alien, says it was “not all that exciting” and he caught it with a beer in his hand.

Andrew Rose was fishing in the Northern Territory’s Kakadu national park when he snagged a 15cm-long worm goby – a rare, mud-dwelling fish with no eyes, a bony head and sharp teeth.

“It looked prehistoric,” Rose told Guardian Australia. “It looked like something you see in the movies. The lure wasn’t swimming right, I pulled it and it had this strange looking fish on it. We didn’t know what it was. We took photos, took him off the hook and put him back in the water.”

On social media, many compared the fish to a Xenomorph, a monstrous alien species from the 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, and its sequels.

Rose’s fellow angler and friend, Tee Hokin, told ABC News: “The first thing I thought about was the Alien movie with Sigourney Weaver and that thing that comes out of people’s stomachs.

“It didn’t even move or wriggle. It was like stunned, like stealth mode … You’d probably shit your pants if it was bigger.”

Dr Michael Hammer, a fish expert from the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, told the ABC he thought it was a worm goby, from the genus Taenioides.

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