A seldomly seen fish was found washed up on shore by a passing-by paddleboarder near Port Angeles last weekend. The fish has a striking huge eye and swims mainly in the depths of the ocean.
Scott Herning was paddling around the Salt Creek Recreation Area on June 6 when he came across the strange fish, dead and floating in the middle of the creek.
“This thing was very big and had a massive eye and I could not figure out what it was,” Herning said. He initially thought it may be a shark of some sort.
The next day he returned to the area to paddleboard and saw people carrying buckets and looking into the water. He called out to them from across the creek, wondering if they were biologists.
The group, Harbor Wildwatch, was conducting a virtual beach walk when Herning called them over. Two of the biologists used Herning’s paddleboard to get a closer look at the over-4-foot-long fish. The fish was then pulled closer to the shore for observation. It looked like its coloration had faded, and the dorsal fin was beginning to deteriorate. The biologists estimated it washed ashore three days before or less.
“I had never seen anything like this,” said Stena Troyer, science specialist. “And we have discovered some incredible things on the beach over the years.”
They struggled to identify it at first, then realized it was a King-of-the-Salmon, a species that’s not a salmon at all but a type of ribbonfish. It’s rare to see the fish, which lives at 3,000 feet below the surface, making it hard to study. It’s also rare for the fish to wash to shore completely intact like this one. Sometimes the fish is pulled up as bycatch by fishermen, said Carly Vester, communications specialist for Harbor Wildwatch.
It’s likely this fish was caught in the surf and washed ashore, said Rachel Eason, education director.
The King-of-the-Salmon, also known as Trachipterus altivelis, lives along the Pacific Coast, from Alaska to Chile. Just a handful have ever been documented washed ashore from British Columbia to Washington.
The name of the fish comes from a Makah legend. The fish led the salmon back to their spawning grounds each year, so catch or consumption of the King-of-Salmon was forbidden for fear of stopping the salmon run.
The fish can grow up to 6 feet in length. They consume copepods, octopus, squid, krill, and other small fish. Bigeye thresher sharks and longnose lancetfish are predators of the King-of-the-Salmon.
Harbor Wildwatch is a Gig Harbor-based public educational program. Since the spread of COVID-19, its programs have gone digital, which has actually broadened the organization's reach, Vester said. The beach at Salt Creek isn’t one they normally go to, typically sticking around the South Puget Sound area.
“As a team, we had heard of this beach to see creatures you don’t normally see in our South Sound beaches,” Vester said.
They wanted to bring things like big purple sea urchins and sea slugs to those viewing their program. The programs have been done though Facebook Live or uploaded to YouTube. Harbor Wildwatch normally hosts beach walks on the shores of South Puget Sound, introducing people to their aquatic neighbors and how to be good stewards to them.
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June 13, 2020 at 01:49AM
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Rarely seen big-eyed fish found washed up near Port Angeles - Kitsap Sun
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