Walking fish adds to rare catalogue
THE latest addition to the ever-growing catalogue of rare and wonderful sea creatures landed in Dingle is a fish with feet. But it isn’t an alien from tropical waters that slowly walked to Ireland – they’re here all the time, we just don’t catch them very often.
The sea toad, which was caught at a depth of about 500m on the Porcupine Bank by Michael Flannery’s trawler Cú na Mara last week was one of only a handful ever landed in Ireland. By rare coincidence, the first ever recorded catch of a sea toad in Ireland was also made by Michael Flannery in 1988, also on the Porcupine Bank and also in June.
Marine biologist Kevin Flannery said that, unlike the slipper lobsters recently caught off the Blaskets, sea toad could be considered native to the Porcupine Bank. They are very rarely landed in Ireland but he said that’s partly because our fishermen rarely fish the Porcupine, which is about 200km offshore and not a great place to be in bad weather.
Despite being rare, the sea toad is relatively well known thanks to David Attenborough’s ‘Blue Planet’ series which featured the fish with feet shuffling its way across bottomless seas.
Michael Flannery’s sea toad probably won’t have as many viewers but it will have its own place in history after it is dispatched to the Natural History Museum in Dublin.