Sign Of The Apocalypse? Weird Fish Washing Ashore In Alaska

The brown, frozen animal Rietze found is a ragfish, and little is known about them. A few have washed up on beaches in Gustavus and Juneau, according to recent news reports, but they’re a rare find. Commercial trawlers, seiners and gillnetters sometimes catch them off the southern coasts of California, north to the Bering Sea and in waters off Japan.

Because they live at great depth, few ragfish are found on beaches, according to a 2003 scientific paper written by George Allen, professor emeritus in the fisheries department at Humboldt State University. Southeast Alaska is the exception.

“A surprisingly large number of adults have been hand-collected from the beaches of bays and inlets of southeastern Alaska,” Allen wrote in the paper published by the Marine Fisheries Review. “Other recoveries from beaches in southeastern Alaska were made by school children on field trips and by young boys on fishing trips near Kake and Petersburg.”

Other specimens have been found in the stomachs of sperm whales and Steller sea lions.

OK, now.