When he saw the creature from afar, Rees thought it was the body of a dead seal pup that had washed ashore. But when he came closer to check, the scene before his eyes made the man shocked.

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“I decided to use my foot to turn it over to see for sure what it was, but I didn’t expect that I had put my foot into the giant mouth of a strange deep-sea creature,” Rees said.

“When I turned it over, my foot got stuck in the animal’s teeth. The sharp teeth pierced the tip of the shoe and almost pierced the skin, giving me a bit of a shock. It’s a creepy and scary looking fish,” he added.

Thanks to the long whiskers with a characteristic “lure” on the top of the head, Rees quickly realized that this was an anglerfish or Lophiiformes – an order of bony fish that has existed since the Cretaceous period 130 years ago. million years.

After further analysis of the photos Rees shared, the Marine Conservation Society said the animal belonged to the species Lophius piscatorius, also known as the monkfish. They live mainly at depths from 550 to 2000 m above the water surface in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean.

“I always thought this species only lived in the deep sea, so I was surprised to see it in local shallow waters. The most curious thing is that on the top of its head there is a large thorn about 30cm long,” Rees said.

The body was not intact, but based on the size of the remaining head, biologists estimated the animal was more than half a meter long. In the wild, Lophius piscatorius can even grow to several meters long.

“The creature was likely eaten by some predator and washed ashore due to the recent stormy  . Its internal organs were exposed and its tail had bite marks. I think the fish died not long ago because it doesn’t smell yet,” a spokesperson for the Marine Conservation Association shared .