Speaking of strange fish in Tampa, Florida.
Back when I was in 5th grade I took a trip to Tampa (actually Clearwater, which is very near Tampa). I love walking on the beach to see what I can find, and I came across a dead fish on the beach. It had a huge trap door mouth that covered the whole front of the fish, and a thing dangling from its forehead.
It's eyes were big and bulging. The mouth was lined with pin-like teeth all around the trap door on both the mouth side and the trap door side. Its body was like a triangle, and was very thick at the mouth end, tapering down to a slender tail. All together, the fish was probably about 8 inches long, but it was also 8 inches tall, which was strange. The color was kind of greenish brown.
Closest photo that looks like my memory is this one.
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I had done enough research that I knew right off I had found an angler fish (when I found it, I thought it might be called a hatchet fish, but they only grow about 12 cm big). When I looked it up, sure enough, it was an angler fish.
I later found that an angler fish can grow up to 8" long.
The (probably luminous) lure that grew off its forehead had a bulbous thing on the end of the stalk. It was so fresh that I don't remember it having a smell, yet. I was very surprised that I saw it as I had always heard that when deep sea fishes come to the surface, their air sack explodes, yet it wasn't harmed in any way.
One page I just went to said that there are 150 different species of the angler fish.
So, your article got me interested in that old thought, so I started doing some research on angler fish.
One of the strangest things I saw as a quote on angler fish (National Geographic Site) was, "...n angler fish walks across the sand on
elbows"
If they're a deep sea fish, how can they walk across the sand on elbows? Is there some kind of shallow water angler fish that lives in Tampa Bay?
However, no site that I saw said there was a shallow water variety. One site said, "midwater (2,297-3,281 feet, or 700-1,000 meters)"
However, another site talked about a menu at Busch Gardens, "...chicken with baked potatoes and mushrooms or braised Angler fish".
So, besides them walking across the beach, do people eat angler fish out of Tampa Bay?
Another site seemed to imply that angler fish can be bought for salt water aquariums?
I'm suspecting that possibly there are angler fish that aren't just deep sea angler fish?
One site said, "The Angler Fish lives more than a mile deep in ocean water." Also, apparently, the female is the fearsome-looking one.
Why is it that research always seems to lead to more questions.
Another site seems to imply that you can see them at sand bars... "Landing Boats - These boats are situated ... next to each other on the sand at close to 30 meters of depth. ...you can encounter the angler fish, large spotted dogfish and skates at the sandy areas close by."
I hate when there's alternating information that doesn't add up.
Some other things I didn't know - "In some species of anglerfish, the males are tiny, with simplified body features, and they live as parasites on the females... In Oneirodes, the males are free-living but much tinier than the females, and they lack teeth. Males have extremely large nostrils and a powerful sense of smell, which they use to locate females."
About the lure, one site said, "The "fishing rod" growing from the female anglerfish's snout ends in a glowing blob of light. At the tip of this modified fin ray, is a small organ (esca) that contains millions of light-producing bacteria."
Which I already knew, but thought was cool.
So, does anybody know if there is such a thing as a non-deep-sea angler fish?
There's the Monk fish (also called the stargazer), which is a relative to the angler fish, but it is not as tall as it is long and its mouth doesn't cover the entire front side of the fish.
