14 DAY TRIAL // Forget the Kraken, the Hydra or whatever other positively frightening sea monster our imagination has been wild enough to cough out over the years. There are plenty of other wacky things in the ocean, and what makes them scary is the fact that they are very much real.
Take the so-called unicorn pictured next to this article for example. This odd marine creature was pulled from the waters not far from the Great Barrier Reef just a few days ago, and photos of it have since gone viral.
Then again, it's not all that often that ordinary folks chance to catch a glimpse of fish sporting freakishly big horns on their head, so it really shouldn't come as a surprise that this one creature is now getting loads of media attention.
One weird fish this way comes
The bizarre creature was caught by a man named Kim Haskell, who came across it while fishing with brother Jamie and nephew Christopher in the waters off the coast of Cooktown, a small locality in Queensland, Australia.
The three men say that, seeing how the creature tipped the scale at about 40 kilograms (approximately 88 pounds), it took them quite a while to pull it out of the water and into their boat. When they finally got to have a close look at it, they were left speechless.
“[The horn] looked almost too perfectly centered and would not have believed it if we hadn’t caught it ourselves. Probably the strangest thing I have ever found inside a fish,” Jamie Haskell said in a statement, as cited by Metro.
Not really a sea monster
Mind you, the odd fish that the three fishermen caught in Australian waters not far from the Great Barrier Reef was not really some sort of mythical, magical sea monster. On the contrary, it was a regular tuna fish with a marlin spike embedded in its head.
Kim, Jamie and Christopher believe that the tuna was attacked by a marlin quite a while ago, and that the predator somehow ended up losing its spike during this confrontation. Thus, contrary to expectations, it was the tuna that survived this encounter.
“It was totally healed so must have been in it for a while,” the three fishermen explained. “We were wondering if the spike entered through the mouth because the thin bit was at the end,” they went on to comment on this incident.
Having snapped a few photos of the tuna, the fishermen pulled the spike out of its head and then released it back in the water. Hopefully, the fish will get to live a long and happy life.