RESEARCHERS have shared stunning footage of a goosefish walking along the bottom of the ocean.
Filmed 1,225 feet beneath the ocean surface, the footage shows the goosefish strolling along the seafloor using its fins.
The video then shows the “sea devil” turning its head and directing its spooky eyes straight at the camera.
Researchers captured the rare video of the goosefish, also known as “Lophiidae,” on October 9th in the Galapagos Islands.
It was filmed as part of an expedition directed by the Schmidt Ocean Institute in collaboration with Parque Nacional Galápagos and the Charles Darwin Foundation.
The expedition is hoping to map the vertical reefs of the Galapagos Islands, which are located about 1,000 km from continental Ecuador.
Goosefishes are anglerfishes that are found throughout the world’s oceans, including the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific.
They tend to inhabit the sandy and muddy bottoms of the continental shelf and continental slope.
In terms of physical features, they have a very large head with a large mouth filled with long, sharp, and recurved teeth.
Like other anglerfishes, the first spine of the spinous dorsal fin bears a bulb-like lure.
They can grow up to 4.6 feet long and weigh around 49 pounds.
They have a large mouth, which is useful for eating prey such as fish and sometimes crustaceans.
“One thing that really stands out in the goosefish is how optimized the body is to a very low-energy lifestyle,” Jethro Reading, a deep-sea fish specialist from the University of Southampton in the U.K., who was not involved in the expedition, told Live Science.
Reading also noted that they do not waste energy swimming away from predators but instead prefer to hide.
Another way of saving energy employed by the fish is the ability to walk underwater.
“The use of the bumbling, rather inelegant-looking walking gait even when disturbed by the ROV [remotely operated vehicle] in the video speaks to how low energy they are — they are built for quick bursts of activity,” Reading said.
