This is the Pacific Football Fish a denizen of the deep sea that’s almost never seen intact. But this unlucky feller washed up in Crystal Cove State Park in Newport Beach, California.
From the park’s Facebook page:
There are more than 200 species of angler fish worldwide and this particular fish is most likely the Pacific Football Fish. Only females possess a long stalk on the head with bioluminescent tips used as a lure to entice prey in pitch black water as deep as 3,000 feet! Their teeth, like pointed shards of glass, are transparent and their large mouth is capable of sucking up and swallowing prey the size of their own body. While females can reach lengths of 24 inches males only grow to be about an inch long and their sole purpose is to find a female and help her reproduce. Males latch onto the female with their teeth and become “sexual parasites,” eventually coalescing with the female until nothing is left of their form but their testes for reproduction.
