A f ish called Wander strolls to our shores...
A BIZARRE-looking fish – which has both scales and legs – has been found off the west coast.
A Kerry trawler landed the strange creature, called a sea toad, which has evolved feet so it can stroll across the seabed.
The pink fish with short legs, which is usually found in the depths of the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, was caught by a trawler called Cú Na Mara.
Sea toads were one of the lesser known varieties of ocean dwellers until they came to the attention of millions of television viewers when featured on David Attenborough’s The Blue Planet II.
Over time, the oddball fish’s fins have evolved into sea legs to help it sneakily tiptoe along and catch its dinner.
Marine biologist Kevin Flannery, who identified the striking-looking fish caught by the trawler, said it was very rare.
‘It is a fantastic-looking fish. In The Blue Planet II, David Attenborough called it the Fish with Feet because it actually walks along the bottom.’
Mr Flannery, who is the director of Dingle Oceanworld, said that the skipper who landed the sea toad also landed one three decades ago. He said the latest catch came up when they were trawling for prawns on the Porcupine Bank in the last few days.
‘The vessel was the Cú Na Mara. It’s great when they bring in that kind of stuff.’
The director said: ‘It shows they are off our coast. It’s the same skipper, Patrick Flannery, who landed one in 1988 from the Porcupine Bank and this one has come in from the Porcupine Bank.
‘It’s been landed in Dingle twice, but we’ve had two or three around the coast in other places.’
He said the fish will be sent to the Natural History Museum.
‘It will go up to my colleague Declan Quigley in the Natural History Museum and it will be written up for posterity.
‘They will preserve it and put it on display if they want.’
The bright pink fish is an ambush predator with an enormous mouth that lies in wait for its prey at the very bottom of the ocean.
‘Pink apparently is the best camouflage when you go down into complete darkness down there,’ said Kevin Flannery.
‘A lot of fish like prawns are pink when they live in extremely deep waters.
‘They are small. It is about ten inches. Things don’t grow that big down there. They are slow growing.’
Fish has legs to walk on seabed