Marine expert addresses viral anglerfish video that broke millions of hearts: 'A lot of hypotheses'
David Jara Boguñá, a marine photographer affiliated with Condrik Tenerife, a Spanish conservation organization, posted a video about the viral anglerfish on Feb. 13. The fish was documented swimming vertically in shallow waters less than a mile from Tenerife, the largest of Spain's Canary Islands, earlier this month.
But the menacing-looking photos did not capture the fish's true size, Jara said – as the deep-sea creature was only about two inches long.
"To start with the size….the small fish measured no more than six centimeters," he recalled. "She was more of a black fritter than a black monster."
"You've asked me this a lot, but at no time did she attack us," Jara added. "I was more confused [by its presence] than anything else."
"The second most important thing I want to clarify is that it was a female, since the males are no more than two, three centimeters long," Jara continued, adding that male anglerfish also lack bioluminescent antennae.
The marine expert also discussed a few reasons why the fish, which could have lived as much as 6,000 feet below sea level, was brought to the surface in the first place.
"There has been a lot of hypotheses about it," Jara acknowledged. "But the main ones would be that the animal was sick, the animal was swept away upstream or that it was fleeing from sort of predator."
The photographer also said that the predatory anglerfish may have "ingested some fish, and that at the time of digestion, gases could have caused it to rise to the surface."
In response to the millions of reactions that the video elicited, Jara said that he found commenters' references to climate change "pretentious" and also dismissed fears that the fish was a harbinger of an impending apocalypse.
Jara also confirmed that the fish died soon after it was recorded.
"Unfortunately, as many of you know, the [anglerfish] died and its body was donated to the Tenerife Museum of Nature and Archaeology," he noted.
The expert's clarification came as millions of social media users shed tears over the fish's fate. Initially regarded as "nightmare fuel," the anglerfish has since inspired fan-art and poetry as humans tried to imagine what her journey from the deep-sea was like – with many believing that she purposely traveled to see light in her final moments.
"can't talk right now. crying over a fish," one TikTok user wrote on a video viewed millions of times.
"there's something deeply poetic about finding the light after a lifetime of darkness," a different user observed.
"All I ever do is cry on this damn app," another wrote.
"Someone said she was blind and couldn't see the light but probably felt the temp change in the water and knew," a fourth viewer said. "I cried so hard."
On another TikTok video of the fish with 1.6 million likes, one user wrote she was personally inspired by the creature's journey.
"Because of her and her will to find the light I enrolled myself in school to get my degree," the TikTok user wrote. "I will be finding my light like her."
Other social media users were less inspired by the video and the emotional reactions it elicited.
"I like to think she was journeying… but my biology background tells me she was dying and lost control of her buoyancy," a commenter wrote.
"This isn't a Pixar movie," another said. "She was dying. Stop romanticizing it."
It is rare for fish who live so deep in the ocean to be seen in shallow waters alive. Last year, a dead anglerfish washed up on an Oregon beach for the first time in recorded history.
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