The vast open ocean can be pretty scary.
From an albino, one-eyed baby shark to giant shrimp, here are eight crazy things caught
in the ocean.
8.
Human Skull
If you Google “fisherman” and “human skull”, a disturbing number of different
episodes pop up.
Well, this entry only deals with one of them.
In 2007, British fisherman, Barry Hunter, was fishing in the North Sea when something
extra tumbled out of his net with other fish: a piece of human skull.
Being a law abiding citizen and decent human being, he took the remains to the police,
who, after some investigating, learned the bit of skull belonged to one Brian Allison.
Normally, this would be good news in that a family would finally get some closure.
However, it was bad news for Barry.
In life, Brian Allison was his friend.
Brian Allison, with his brother Robert Temple, went missing in 2004 when their vessel sank
off the North East Coast near Tynemouth.
The boat’s wreckage was found but no trace of either men was ever discovered—until
2007, in the net of Allison’s friend, Barry Hunter.
I am not a mathematician but the odds of that have to be astronomical.
For an extra twist, the news of the identification reached Brian’s mother on the day of what
would have been Robert’s 37th birthday.
7.
Cyclops, Albino Shark
Fake pictures on the Internet are more common than goldfish and when the picture of an albino
shark with one eye hit the Web, people immediately began to cry “fake”.
However, truth truly can be stranger than fiction because the photos were actually real.
In the Sea of Cortez, a fisherman hauled in a pregnant bull shark.
The shark was caught on a large hook baited with ballyhoo, tethered to a line beneath
a buoy fixed in place by another line anchored by a sand bag, and already dead when hauled
onto the boat.
Once ashore, the fisherman filleted the shark and pulled out nine normal pups and one not
so normal.
The abnormal pup was an albino, meaning it had none of the usual pigment coloration,
and only one eye, set in the center like a cyclops.
The fisherman, when later interviewed, stated the cyclops would have been born first but
likely would not have survived.
A Mexican scientist, Felipe Gavan, also inspected the shark and acknowledged that it was real.
Animals and humans born with that cyclops feature do happen because of a birth defect
called holoprosencephaly.
Holoprosencephaly affects primarily the brain but can also affect facial features.
The brain does not divide properly into its left and right hemispheres and varies in severity.
It can lead to extremely close-set eyes or, in this case, one eye in a rare form called
“cyclopia”.
Compared to this condition, being albino was almost normal for this never-born bull shark
pup.
6.
Chimera Lobster
Alan Robinson headed out to sea in Bar Harbor, Maine, in July of 2006, hoping for a good
catch.
What he hauled into his boat that day he thought was a joke.
It looked like a half-boiled lobster.
Literally, just half.
One side of the crustacean was the normal mottled brown, while the other side was the
bright orange of a freshly cooked lobster.
What he caught was a rare phenomenon: a chimera.
Chimera occur when two zygotes with different cells, and sometimes from different species,
combine to form a single creature.
There are actually human chimeras, that can happen naturally with fraternal twins, if
one embryo dies early in pregnancy and some of its cells are absorbed by the other twin.
The remaining fetus will have 2 sets of cells, its original set, plus the one from its twin.
The human versions are far less dramatic-looking than what you might expect based on the lobster.
Lobsters carry a variety of pigments, usually yellow, red and blue.
They grow symmetrically, with each half of the body developing independently of the other.
Robinson’s chimera lobster lacked the blue and yellow pigment on one side, which caused
it to look half-cooked.
Even less common than chimera is the uneven distribution of the three lobster pigments,
which can result in other peculiarities like an all blue crustacean or a harlequin.
Robinson could have eaten his catch and claimed, for the rest of his life, that he once dined
on chimera.
Instead, he wanted to share his catch with the rest of the world, so he donated it to
Maine’s Mount Desert Oceanarium.
5.
Giant Shrimp
In September of 2015, Steve Bergeron, a Florida fisherman, hoisted an enormous crustacean
out of the water.
Usually, when we use the term “shrimp”, we are referring to something pretty small.
Well, this ocean creature never got the memo because it was 18 inches long.
That’s over a foot!
Bergeron sent photos to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who identified
it as a scaly-tailed mantis shrimp.
Mantis shrimp come in various kinds.
A smasher variety of mantis shrimp once wreaked havoc in an aquarium when it snuck in with
a shipment of rocks, killing several of the other aquatic creatures living there before
being evicted.
Scaly-tailed mantis shrimp are something of a mystery.
Scientists know it likes warm temperate and tropical zones, which certainly includes Florida.
They are carnivorous, strong, and fast.
However, it is not known if they have any natural predators or anything about their
reproductive habits and embryology.
We do know, though, that they are tasty and sometimes served in Asian restaurants.
What became of Bergeron’s shrimp was not reported, though it’s probably safe to assume
that he put it back where he found it.
Or maybe, he just ate it.
4.
Giant Squid
In 2014, 25-year-old Michael Belvin and his friends were in Texas returning from a fishing
trip when they spotted something like a trash bag floating in the water.
Imagine their surprise, though, when they discovered it was a ten-foot long, 200-pound
squid.
The men found it 100 miles off the coast of Matagorda.
Marine biologists were very excited by the discovery because these are deep-water animals.
They only appear in shallower water if in trouble or, as in this case, dead.
It’s also possible that this animal was larger in life because it appeared to have
been partially eaten by a mako shark.
This would make sense as giant squid can reach lengths of 43 feet.
They have eight arms, two feeding tentacles, and eyes the size of a grapefruit.
This squid was the fourth ever seen in the Gulf of Mexico.
Belvin donated it to some very happy researchers.
3.
Basket Star
One moment, a Singapore fisherman is going about his usual day and, the next, he’s
fallen into a science fiction movie.
While fishing in a seaweed-ridden area off the island of Pulau Ubin, he pulled up what
he at first thought was a clump of seaweed.
And then it started moving in a disturbing, undulating fashion.
He had caught a basket star.
Basket stars are a type of echinoderm, which are marine invertebrates whose bodies usually
have a radial symmetry with five or more arms arranged around a central disk.
Basket stars have a system of highly branched, fleshy arms that resemble a basket.
There are 177 species of basket stars and some can have very long arms, measuring more
than 1 m wide.
The basket star belongs in the same taxonomic class as sea stars, sea urchins, and starfish.
Some eat mollusks and small crustaceans by trapping them in the basket formed by their
arms while other species are plankton feeders.
A final interesting factoid: they don’t have an anus and excrete waste through their
mouth.
No word on what the fisherman did with his wriggling find but, hopefully, he dropped
it back into the sea.
2.
Translucent Shrimp
When New Zealander Stewart Fraser spotted the translucent creature floating in the Pacific,
he wasn’t sure if he wanted to pluck it from the water.
As he told UK’s Mail Online later, he was sitting 40 miles off the North Island's Karikari
Peninsula and wasn’t sure if he’d pay for his curiosity.
In the end, though, he decided to haul it in.
Holding it up to the light, Fraser could easily see through the body of the creature.
He reported later that it felt firm and scaly.
After taking some photos of the dead creature, he tossed it back into the water.
Later, he discovered that what he held was a kind of shrimp called a “salp” and they
aren’t really that rare.
Salps are found around the world, and often in big numbers, scientists say.
While Fraser pulled up a lone salp, scientists say they have often been found in chains more
than 30 feet long.
They also reproduce so rapidly that they can double their population in a day.
Obviously, because of their translucence, they are hard to spot, which protects them
from predators.
Salps feed off of plankton and bacteria and can exist in areas of the ocean where little
else can life.
This makes them an intermediary in the food chain and an important predator.
1.
Crime-Solving Shark
Australia is home to many strange things, but it hardly gets stranger than a shark who
solved a crime.
In 1935, Albert and Charles Hobson baited a few fishing lines and left them off the
coast of Sydney overnight.
When they returned in the morning, they found a plethora of fish and a small shark on their
lines.
As they hauled in their lines, they came upon a startling discovery: a gigantic 14-foot
tiger shark was entangled in their line.
The two men pulled the shark out and took it to the nearby Coogee Aquarium.
After a week in captivity, the shark, who probably hadn’t done anything interesting
up to that point other than look terrifying, vomited up a human arm with a length of rope
tied to the wrist in front of a crowd of terrified onlookers.
An autopsy determined the arm had been removed from its body with a knife.
The story did not end there.
On the arm was a rare tattoo that allowed police to identify the owner as Jim Smith,
a former boxer whose post-boxing employment included petty crimes and insurance scams.
He was also a police informant and picked the wrong men to blackmail.
Those wrong men sent an assassin who killed and chopped up poor Jim Smith and kept the
arm as proof of the killing for his employers.
Once the arm served its purpose, it was dropped into the bay anchored to something heavy by
a length of rope.
A passing tiger shark, being an opportunistic eater, took upon itself to have a light snack
before becoming entangled in the fishing lines of Albert and Charles Hobson.
While the shark did not personally solve the crime, if it hadn’t eaten the arm, then
no one would have known what became of former boxer, Jim Smith.
Thanks for watching!
If you know of other crazy catches, let me know in the comments!
See you soon!