Nov. 24--A rare black seadevil was captured for the first time on video in Monterey Canyon earlier this month, and it's a bizarre creature.
The tiny fish is all mouth and teeth, with a glowing projection on the top of its head. The light attracts prey in the ocean depths.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute shot the footage at about 1,900 feet in Monterey Canyon, spokesman Kim Fulton-Benton told the Los Angeles Times.
The canyon plunges to a depth of nearly 3 miles -- or 14,763 feet, he said. For comparison, that figure beats Mount Whitney, highest summit in the contiguous U.S., by 258 feet.
"We believe this is the first video footage ever made of this species alive and at depth," the aquarium said.
The fish, also known as a deep-sea anglerfish, is about 3.5 inches long and was spotted by the institute's remotely operated vehicle, named Doc Ricketts.
"These kinds of fish," Fulton-Benton said, "we often see between 500 meters and 1,000 meters in the oxygen-minimum zone; there's not a lot of other life forms there."
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