Rare Black Sea Devil Caught on Film for the First Time
The anglerfish survived capture and is now being studied in a specially equipped laboratory.
With its gaping mouth, needle-sharp teeth, and slightly startled expression, the black sea devil anglerfish seems tailor-made for the spotlight.
A team using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in the Monterey Bay Canyon spied this 3.5-inch-long (9 centimeter) black sea devil about 1,900 feet (580 meters) deep. The scientists were then able to bring her up to the surface alive—no mean feat—and have been monitoring the fish ever since.
Having a living animal to study is telling scientists so much more than they could ever have gotten from the dead, preserved specimens floating around various research facilities, Robison explains.
"One of the first things that we got back from ichthyologists was astonishment at how [the fish] uses its dorsal fin to swim,"
