Californian scuba diver Ted Judah and his wife had a memorable shallow-water experience on the morning of 30 December, when they chanced on an “amazing, cool, spectacular, rare fish” while shore-diving from McAbee beach, in the Cannery Row area of Monterey.
Judah posted the sighting of what he had taken to be a small oarfish on a Facebook diver-group page and was overwhelmed by the positive reaction.
It wasn’t long before he was contacted by a marine biologist from Monterey Bay Aquarium who identified the mysterious creature as a juvenile deepwater ribbonfish known as a king-of-the-salmon (Trachipterus altivelis) – an exotic-looking creature that had only rarely been seen alive before.
The fish, which can grow to the length of an adult human, is believed to have been given its name by the Makah, an indigenous people of the Pacific North-west who believed that it would guide salmon returning to their spawning grounds.
‘Silvery knife-blade undulating thing’
Judah said that the Pacific had been exceptionally clear as the couple swam out towards their chosen dive-site, causing him to scan the water beneath him rather than head out on his back.
Almost immediately his eye was caught by a “silvery knife-blade undulating thing” more than 20cm long, moving parallel to shore at a depth of about 5m.
He called out that he had seen “something amazing” and dived to the fish’s depth – at which point it ascended and he followed it back up towards the surface.
Whenever Judah tried to get a better view of the fish from the side it moved to present itself head-on, seemingly accustomed to adopting this defensive semi-invisible stance.
He did however manage to capture some side-on footage using his GoPro. The encounter lasted only about three minutes, because the pair were concerned not to stress the fish before continuing with their planned dive.
“All this has to be because I visited Jacques Cousteau’s memorial in Catalina the day before!” said Judah. He and his wife had been driving back up the coast towards their home in Petaluma near San Francisco when they had decided to stop in Monterey for a night – to get in one more dive.
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has a video of a 14cm king-of-the-salmon spotted at a depth of 100m – still relatively shallow for a fish that usually dwells at around 900m.
hi guys i like fish
People have no idea how bad this is. When cold dependent deep see fish are showing up at the surface it’s because the deep ocean is heating up and they are in search of colder water. This means the deep sea, earth’s heat sink, is warming too fast
Keep publishing stories like this so people can go out and hunt it to extinction..fools!