I'll link to the BoingBoing article, because the Sydney Morning Herald requires login:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/09/sea_serpent.html

Sea also
http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/rglesne.htm

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.




<img src=''>





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.

Yep, I think the sites which are referring to angler fish as being able to be caught in shallow water are really talking about Monk fish.

Here's a site which has a photo of a Monk Fish, and is calling it both names.

Well, some facts about Tampa Bay turned up some interesting things.

Tampa bay averages 12 feet deep. Ranges from 7 - 38 feet deep.

It's 400 square miles, meaning it's basically 20 miles x 20 miles big.

Now, I can't be sure if the beach I was on was on Tampa bay, though. It may have been up to 100 miles either side of Tampa Bay.

However, if I was on a beach that bounded Tampa bay, since it's a bay, you'd think it would be very difficult for deep water fish to wash up on the beach.

However, Monk Fish are far too long and thin to be what I saw. What I saw was laying on its side, and from the shape of a Monk fish, it would be hard to imagine it would wash up on its side.

Also, the mouth is just not trap-door enough, nor big enough. Interesting discordant facts.

Mysteries, mysteries, all the time.

Happened to cross what you were saying about a Monk Fish.

When I was in Tampa back when I was in 5th grade I came across what certainly looked like an anglerfish on Tampa Bay.

And, yes, I also looked up the depth of Tampa Bay, and also came across Monkfish pictures (which they eat in Tampa). And, yes, the one I saw had a true trap-door mouth. It had a stalk in the middle of its forehead that was probably about two inches long. I remember thinking it was all mouth and the body was triangular in shape, lying on its side.

The mouth was open like a trap door, as I recall. And, all around the mouth were pin-like teeth.

From my memory of it, it didn't look at all like the longer pictures of a Monkfish that I've seen.

Strange how memory can mislead you. Yes, I was young. Yes, I've probably seen many pictures of Anglerfish since then to support my misconception. It probably wasn't a deep-sea anglerfish, but I have a very vivid image in my head of it and I would say it wasn't a Monkfish if it, indeed, did look like I remember it to look like.

The eyes were glazed over and shiny like they were almost glowing metallic. They didn't look like the fish could possibly see through those.

Anyways, it goes right along with your 'How could an anglerfish possibly wash up on a Tampa beach?'

I was what I would term a naturalist at that time. I had studied many books on fish, and strange fish, because they intrigued me. I had never heard of a Monkfish at that time, though.

Heres another interesting site on oar fish where he captured one on his camera, then tried finding out what it was.





Oar Fish

The sea hides lots of strange creatures and every year one or two new ones are found.

In a way my fav strange creature is the Coelacanth, mainly because it is so ancient.

Another one is the Patagonian Toothfish which is primarily a southern ocean fish. It is also called Chilean Sea Bass but is not a sea bass and it is desperately endangered. Don't order it in restaurants.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/post?forumid=106498&messageid=1108052390

With all the fish disappearing everywhere, the fishermen have been forced to fish deeper waters so they've been dragging up far stranger things quite regularly.

The last few years around Australia they've been pulling in giant squid like they are going out of style (and they probably are, at least now that humans are spreading their plague of extinction to the ocean depths as well).

It wasn't that long ago that nobody believed that giant squid existed.

Here's a photo of a bunch of men holding a small oar fish.

Sea serpent stories occurred by the hundreds back at the turn of the century. Then, the stories were stretched until they were unbelievably impossible. Then people scoffed, because of course the stretched stories were impossible. Then the actual fish which caused the original stories appears and nobody even notices or cares.

Sounds similar to another tall tale I remember hearing about. Probably he already returned, it's just that nobody noticed or cared. Guess they were all too busy waiting for the world to end.

Yep, at least 8 giant squid have been found, but I believe more than that.

Here is a new giant squid type they had never seen before which has long thin tentacles which was photographed from a vehicle called ALVIN:





Here's another shot of it.





This is the typical idea of what a giant squid looks like (almost always minus the long tentacles because they're generally nipped off by sharks and other predators). At least 12 of this type have been either stranded on beaches or caught in trawlers.





Here's another fragment of one.





Here's a good website on them from the ABC Science website.

Good Website

the pictures of real giant squid are a little disappointing compared to the one that Kirk Douglas was fighting, but these pictures are neat anyway.

It is my understanding that they are a source of food for some whales.

See, another example where human exaduration makes for a disappointing outcome once the real thing is observed.

However, there are much much bigger ones out there because whales have been found washed up on shore that had "Dinner-plate-sized sucker scars" on them.

Seeing that these squid had golfball sized suckers on the pads, and they were 40 feet long, I think interpolation implies that there are MUCH bigger squid down there somewhere.

"Sperm whales stranded on beaches and caught by whaling ships bear circular scars inflicted by the powerful suckers of giant squid. The size of the scars has led some to estimate the size of squid eaten by the whales. Scars as large as 20 cm were reported and some believed it would take a 75 meter long squid to bear such a sucker."

Giant Sucker Scars


However, those squid might now be extinct...

"Scientists later noticed no fresh scars were in excess of about 5 cm, and certainly no giant squid examined have suckers larger than 5.2 cm."

About Giant Squid


Or, here are some other plausible explanations as to why super-large circles have been found on Sperm whales before.

"Perhaps people's imaginations increased the size of the sucker scars. Or it may be that the scars expand as sperm whales grow. Whales also get infected with a species of ringworm, a fungus that grows in a circular pattern, so it is possible for ringworm scars to have been mistaken for old sucker scars."

Yes, that's true, but it might also be true that as a whale grows, if it had scars on it from sucker marks when it was small - those marks might grow in size as the whale grew in size.

Some think that that is the explanation for the dinner-plate-sized sucker marks.

This is what they now know about the tentacles:

"Much of the length of a giant squid is taken up by the two long feeding tentacles, which can be 10 metres or more long."

Thus, the two long feeding tentacles are 30 feet long (even minus the 6 - 8 foot body).

"(These) have spoon-like enlargements, called clubs, at their ends. This is where the biggest suckers - golf-ball size and with sharp-toothed rims - are found."

And, the eight other short arms are, "... about two or three metres long (6 - 9 feet) and about 50 cm around at the base. They are covered with suckers.

"The mantle (the main body) can be up to 2.5 metres long (7 1/2 feet)."

The oar fish can grow larger than 30 feet long.

Here's a nice drawing of one on a stamp.

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Here's an interesting article on the first North American sea serpent sighting which they termed, The Great New England Sea Serpent

no message, just kudos.

I haven't been following the board much lately -- you're new. Are you an actual Philly local or just a passerby on the road to skepticism?

I'm on the road to no named thing.

I hope I'm far more complex than that.

I appreciate Dragonfly's remarks. The real things aren't appreciated. I mean, it turns out that the stories of sea serpents are, well, REAL! There really are great serpentine fish 30+feet long. Just because we come up with a name for something doesn't diminish what it is. Archetuthis (sic, I know) may be a less impressive name than "Kraken", but that doesn't change the fact the giant squid is real! How cool! And BTW, since only a few dozen specimens have been found, it's a pretty safe bet that the largest one of all was not amonst those caught; so it almost statistically certain that they get even bigger than the nearly 60-foot current largest specimen on record. One last thought. We chuckle at he drawings of great dragon-fishes that appear on the edges of old maps. Um, ever seen a picture of a 20 foot+ great white shark? Yeah, we've got a name for it, but if that isn't a guenuine giant, man-eating sea monster, I don't know what is.