A woman and her daughter strolling along a beach in British Columbia discovered an odd-looking fish that had washed ashore. They soon learned it was a rare fish revered by the indigenous people on the Washington side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Dana LeComte’s 15-year-old daughter Sadie spotted the sea creature from afar as they walked along the seashore at Whiffin Spit in Sooke, and they went to check it out, as reported by Oak Bay News.

“It looked like a piece of metal from off a boat,” LeComte told Oak Bay News. “The fish was very long and very flat with a really neat fin down the top of it.”

She took a photo of the fish and sent it to her husband, Bob Liptrot, who looked it up in the book “Saltwater Fish of British Columbia.”

Liptrot identified the fish as a Trachipterus altivelis, better known by its common name as king-of-the-salmon. It’s so-named from the legend of the Makah people, who are said to have inhabited the area now known as Neah Bay for more than 3,800 years.

The Makah believed the fish led the salmon to their spawning grounds each year, and so the catching or eating of the fish was forbidden, as they feared killing one would stop the salmon run.

Also on FTW Outdoors: Kayak angler ties 40-year-old record with Northern pike catch

The king-of-the-salmon belongs to the ribbonfish family and is typically found in the open ocean to depths of 3,000 feet from Alaska to Chile. It reaches as long as 6 feet in length.

It wasn’t the first time a king-of-the-salmon has washed ashore in this region. One was discovered near Oak Bay on Sept. 21, 2017 and another was found five days later. A third was found in Sidney on Oct. 29 of the same year, Oak Bay News reported.

What did LeComte do with the fish?

“I left it there even though my husband said we should’ve brought it home,” LeComte told Oak Bay News. “Someone I knew ran down to find it back at Whiffin Spit a few hours later, and it was gone.”

Photos courtesy of Dana LeComte.