A thing of nightmares
A so-called “gruesome” sea creature with rows of sharp teeth gave a runner an enormous scare when his foot became lodged in the creature’s mouth.
Andy Rees was running along the beach at Three Cliffs Bay when he thought he spied a dead seal on the beach.
Spoiler- It was not a seal
Deep-sea creature with sharp teeth washes up on beach in Wales
Andy Rees spotted the bizarre beast at Three Cliffs Bay, Gower, in Wales and initially thought it was dead seal until he got a closer lookhttps://t.co/09dmPd6tVShttps://t.co/799xNDrioL
-via @inshorts— Amrita Bhinder 🇮🇳 (@amritabhinder) December 12, 2021
Rees told the Mirror: “I decided to turn it over with my foot to be sure what it was, not realising I’d put my foot in its huge mouth.
“As I flipped it over my foot got stuck in the teeth inside the mouth, which gave me a bit of a shock.
“Its mouth was huge, with very sharp teeth. It was a gruesome, frightening-looking fish.
Rees says he could feel how sharp the teeth were when his foot became stuck in the animal’s mouth.
What the runner first thought was a seal was actually an anglerfish which are usually found at ocean depths between 550m and 2000m.
He continued: “I have seen it in photographs but never in the sea or on a beach.
“I always thought anglerfish only live in the deep ocean, so I was surprised to see it in our local shallow waters.
“The most curious thing was a large spine about 30cm long on top of its head, with a fleshy bit at the end.”
Anyone who has watched Nemo will know that this fish is not to be messed with- evidently even if it has washed up on the beach.
“That’s what made me think it might be an anglerfish – as they use the fleshy bit as a lure to attract the fish they prey on,” he said.
Rees added: “It was a very ugly-looking fish.”
Most shockingly, a fish of the same species washed up in California recently.
“At first I thought it was a — like a jellyfish or something, and then I went and looked at it a little more carefully, and some other people were gathered around it too, and then I saw that it was this very unusual fish,” Jay Beiler, who encountered the fish, told KNSD.
He added: “I go to the beach fairly often, so I’m familiar with the territory, but I’ve never seen an organism that looked quite as fearsome as this.”
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