14 DAY TRIAL // With all the recent creatures discovered all over the world, Mark Quartiano, also known as Mark the Shark, stands out in the crowd with an 800-pound rare dinosaur-looking creature fished out of Florida's waters while fishing with a Japanese TV crew.
Who would have thought that a massive beast, allegedly from the Mesozoic era, would be caught on the coast of Miami? The creature measured 14 feet (4.26 meters) and weighted an astonishing 800 pounds. The fishermen on the boat had quite the struggle bringing the massive creature on board, fighting for hours with the weird creature.
“It was very old. It had barnacles all over it. When we first saw it, we didn't know what is was. It looked really odd … like some kind of dinosaur,” Mark Quartiano told ABC News. The famous fisherman identified the creature as a dactylobatus clarkii, or usually called hookskate fish, a rare species that lives in muddy waters as deep as 1,000 feet (304.8 meters).
A specialist from Florida Museum of Natural History, George H. Burgess, said that the creature was actually a roughtailed stingray, officially known as a dasyatis centroura. This kind of creatures grow to a maximum of 660 pounds (300 kg) and present a venomous tail that can easily be fatal.
Either way, the picture of Mark and the massive mysterious fish posted on Instagram went viral. Quartiano was really proud of his capture, calling it a once-in-a-life-time event. He said he caught creatures similar to that before but never in that size, this one was massive and visibly old. After admiring it and taking a few photos, Mark released the fish back into the ocean.
It seems like more and more weird sea creatures seem to appear lately. First it was the serpent-like oarfish from southern California, then the second oarfish from the same state, followed by a weird arctic monster fished out of the Canadian water, and now Florida's own “dinosaur fish” makes the headlines.