A scuba diver in the Cannery Row area of Monterey Bay caught a rare glimpse of an “undulating” juvenile ribbonfish, also known as “king-of-the-salmon,” which is typically found a few thousand feet below the surface.

As SFGate reports, Ted Judah, a scuba diver from Petaluma, posted some mesmerizing photos on social media of a juvenile ribbonfish he encountered at McAbee Beach in Monterey Bay Tuesday when the water was particularly clear.

“I decided to just put my face in the water and look at everything,” he told SFGate. That's when he caught a glimpse of the exotic-looking creature.

“I saw this silvery knife blade undulating thing in only about 15 feet of water moving west parallel to shore,” Judah wrote on Facebook. “I wanted to stay with it but I felt like I was harassing it.”

“It had this keen ability to orient itself so that it's narrowest profile was always facing me,” he continued. “I'd try to swim along side to get the profile and it would rotate away from me. I am so honored to see it and I hope someone can help identify it.”

Judah first thought the creature was an oarfish, but a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium later identified it as a ribbonfish, or Trachipterus altivelis, per SFGate.

Here's a video from 2022 of another ribbonfish sighting in Monterey Bay.

Per iNaturalist, the ribbonfish’s nickname, “king-of-the-salmon,” was coined by the Makah people in Washington state, as it’s believed that the ribbonfish lead the salmon to their spawning grounds each year near the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Adult ribbonfish grow to be around six feet, and they look much different from juveniles, which have longer fins. While ribbonfish live 3,000–4,000 feet below sea level, juveniles are more commonly found in shallow waters due to the different species they feed on.

Additionally, per the Marine Detective, ribbonfish have a unique method of traversing the water. “King-of-the-Salmon swim by passing a sine wave down their dorsal fin – they can get a fair bit of speed just by doing that,” writes the Marine Detective. “They can also reverse using the same fin flutter. They slowly turn by putting a curve in the body.”

Per SFGate, ribbonfish strongly resemble oarfish, which are considered a bad omen in Japan — usually when they wash ashore dead. Japanese fishers in the 17th century referred to them as “ryugu no tsukai,” or “messenger from the sea god’s palace.” About 20 oarfish washed ashore in the months prior to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, per SFGate.

Fortunately for Judah, there were no harbingers of doom washing ashore this week — just a healthy juvenile ribbonfish partaking in some tasty fish larvae on a clear, sunny day while vibing with a strange-looking human creature.

Top Image: Ted Judah/Facebook

The oldest fish in any aquarium in the world is here in SF at the California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium, whose biologists just figured out the fish’s age. That said, they still don’t know its gender.

If you’ve ever been to the California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium, you may have seen their Australian lungfish named Methuselah, whom they describe as the “World’s oldest living aquarium fish.” But the museum has never actually known Methuselah’s age, merely estimating that the fish is “likely well over 90” years old. Yet now, as the Chronicle reports, the Academy has done DNA testing to determine this very old fish's age, and according to a Monday morning announcement from the aquarium, biologists have “estimated Methuselah’s age to be 92 (± 9 years).”

That means this lungfish could be more than 100 years old, possibly 101. And as you can see in the video below, the old fish is still quite affectionate, and enjoys petting and belly rubs from humans.

“Although we know Methuselah came to us in the late 1930s, there was no method for determining her age at that time, so it’s incredibly exciting to get science-based information on her actual age,” Steinhart Aquarium curator of aquarium projects Charles Delbeek said in the announcement. “Methuselah is an important ambassador for her species, helping to educate and stoke curiosity in visitors from all over the world.”

While the aquarium acquired Methuselah in 1938, they’ve never known the fish’s age until now. Taking a DNA sample was always considered too risky for the fish’s health, but a few marine biologists in Australia have developed a newer and safer technique. Those biologists  then collected DNA samples from 30 lungfish at six separate institutions, and sure enough, Methuselah proved to be the oldest.

So the Academy of Sciences now has a pretty good ballpark figure on Methuselah’s age, though oddly, they don’t know the fish’s gender. Staff informally refer to Methuselah as a “she,” though making that determination would require a blood draw, which could be too hazardous to this venerable fish’s health.  

You can behold Methuselah at the California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium, Mondays through Saturdays from 9:30 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Sundays from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. And keep in mind that Friday, September 29 is a “pay-what-you-can” day, in honor of the aquarium’s 100th anniversary.

Related: World's Largest Hotspot of Octopi Found Off Central California Coast in Deep-Sea 'Octopus Garden' [SFist]

Image via California Academy of Sciences

We could see a repeat of last summer’s “red tide” toxic algae bloom that caused a mass fish kill-off at Lake Merritt, as scientists have observed the telltale reddish-brown water at shorelines in Berkeley, Emeryville, and Albany.  

If you were in town for the lead-up to Labor Day weekend late last August and early last September, you probably remember the odd occurrence of thousands of dead fish floating in Oakland’s Lake Merritt. Their cause of death was a toxic algae bloom that was the largest such outbreak in nearly a decade, killing tens and thousands of fish throughout the San Francisco Bay, and also bleeding into the San Pablo Bay.

And we could be in for a repeat of that deadly (for fish) phenomenon this year too. KPIX reports that scientists have confirmed another “red bloom” toxic algae outbreak along East Bay shorelines in Berkeley, Emeryville, and Albany. Moreover, the Chronicle adds that there are additional unconfirmed reports of the reddish-brown waters “near the San Francisco airport and Tiburon and in San Pablo Bay.”

"It's alarming to see an algae outbreak of this size in the Bay for the second year in a row," Jon Rosenfield, science director at advocacy group San Francisco Baykeeper tells KPIX. "While it's too early to tell how this harmful algae bloom will proceed, there's not much that we can do to stop it once it has started. Prevention is the only cure."

This year’s outbreak is once again being blamed on the 37 different sewage treatment plants whose waste flows into the Bay, with high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. Still, biologists say another toxic algae outbreak might not necessarily cause another mass fish die-off, or that it could take six to seven weeks for the algae to reach pockets where large amounts of fish live.

While it’s deadly to fish, this particular species of algae is not considered harmful to people  (though it can be harmful to dogs.) This toxic algae was at one point considered a possible culprit in the case of a couple who died mysteriously along with their baby and dog in Mariposa County in the summer of 2021, though those deaths were eventually attributed to extreme heat.

If you see any of that reddish-brown algae floating in the Bay, SF Baykeeper asks that you report any “red tide” algae sightings on their website.

Related: City of Oakland Will Incinerate the 1,200 Pounds of Dead Fish That Have Turned Up in Lake Merritt [SFist]

Image: @Oakland via Twitter

There’ll be a big fish fry in Oakland, but not the good kind. The toxic algal bloom that has killed literally tons of fish in Bay Area waters is leading to Oakland Public Works incinerating the 1,200 pounds of dead fish that were floating in Lake Merritt.

The Dead Fish Wave of Summer 2022, believed to be caused by a “red tide” toxic algal bloom, has been spreading through waters all over the Bay Area since late July. Huge volumes of dead fish have been turning up at Coyote Point Marina in San Mateo, the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge near Fremont, but most famously, probably because of the amount of foot traffic there, at Oakland's Lake Merritt.

The heat wave kicking in is only expected to increase the algal bloom and the numbers of dead fish, but the City of Oakland has dutifully noted in a public post their “clean-up of the lake's shoreline, removing the dead wildlife to mitigate the odor and public nuisance ahead of forecasted hot weather.”

But the Chronicle adds a key detail about the dead fish clean-up operation. The paper reported late Wednesday afternoon that the fish will "be incinerated, according to city protocol." That's according to Sean Maher, public information officer for the city’s Public Works Department.

According to the City of Oakland’s announcement, “Contracted cleanup crews are scheduled to begin this work on the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 31,” and that same announcement noted that the cleanup will continue Thursday. “Crews will wear protective gear in an abundance of caution. Community members are asked to watch for signage and work crews/vehicles to enable these crews to perform this work.”

The algal bloom has been brewing for months, but the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board never expected things to get this bad. “Oakland officials posted warning signs in May after finding contaminants associated with a low level of harmful algae in the water, as well as water scum,” according to the Chronicle. “The water board performed additional testing on Aug. 22, but the results were not available as of Wednesday morning.”

But of course, people did not need those results to notice that dead fish have been floating on the lake’s surface since this past weekend.

Crews do expect to complete the cleanup today. The City of Oakland asks for help, advising that “property owners can avoid over-irrigation of landscapes (such as overwatering lawns) to prevent excess nutrients from entering waterways.” They also add that “we all need to continue working to keep Lake Merritt clean — littering, especially food and food containers, may contribute nutrients to the Lake that feed these harmful algal blooms.” But as seen in the above tweet, Lake Merritt-adjacent restaurant Lake Chalet took matters into their own hands and cleared out some dead fish themselves, because according to the Chronicle, the place is “losing customers due to the stench.”

The City of Oakland describes this as “the odor.” Oakland resident Marcus Wells instead describes it to the Chronicle as “hella stanky.”

Related: Fish Are Falling From the Sky In SF, and Clumsy Pelicans Are Likely to Blame [SFist]

Image: @Oakland via Twitter

A seasonal boom in the anchovy population on the San Francisco coast and in the Bay is causing some heavy traffic among feasting seabirds, and this is apparently leading to fish seeming to fall out of the sky in the city and elsewhere.

Stories about fish falling from the sky bubble up on social media on the regular, but it's never anything cool like the Biblical plague of frogs in Magnolia. The culprit: birds.

SFGate picked up a local thread from Reddit about some anchovies falling from the sky onto someone's house in the Outer Richmond about three weeks ago. The post garnered plenty of comments such as, "I saw this happen over at the Fort Point parking lot a few years ago: one or two dozen 8-inch silver fish rained down like splat splat splat!" and "I saw like 3 or 4 little fish this evening, maybe 4” long max, on the path near the boathouse at Stow Lake," and "Almost got hit by a fish waiting for a bus in Castro. Came out of a tree... Like a 4 inch sardine, partially chewed on."

Yes, it seems the pelicans and other seabirds have more anchovies to feast on than they can handle right now, and this may lead to you finding random fish on the pavement as they fly overhead, perhaps traversing from the ocean to the Bay with a mouthful.

Adam Ratner, who is the associate director of conservation education at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, explains to SFGate that the "upwelling" of cold, deep-sea water is bringing more anchovies to the surface, and many fishermen and around the Bay have been taking notice. "The water temperatures right now do appear to be colder than normal, and this has provided some much-needed food for animals such as anchovies, seabirds and marine mammals," Ratner says, adding that while this could be a phenomenon linked to climate change, for now it is providing a lot of extra food whales, sea lions, and, of course, the birds.

Cold temperatures and plenty of anchovies are a sign, at least temporarily, of a very healthy ocean, so that's good.

In related news, State Bird Provisions off-shoot The Anchovy Bar is still going strong over in the Fillmore, and it's delicious! Fresh or lightly pickled anchovies are nothing like they're overly cured and salted cousins you find in cans. Below, a brief video made a couple of years ago about the "anchovy protocol" in the kitchen at State Bird and The Progress next door, and how it gave birth to The Anchovy Bar.

Top image: Photo by lucyinthesky/Reddit

Fish that tested positive for a viral liver disease has spurred a recall in three states — and officials say that five Bay Area restaurants might have already served the troubled tuna.

The Associated Press reported this weekend that back in May, the Hawaii-based Hilo Fish Company told the US Food and Drug Administration that it had recalled a batch of yellowfin tuna that had shown positive results for Hepatitis A.

According to the World Health Organization Hepatitis A is a viral liver disease "primarily spread when an uninfected (and unvaccinated) person ingests food or water that is contaminated with the feces of an infected person." Unlike B and C, A doesn't cause chronic liver disease, "but it can cause debilitating symptoms and fulminant hepatitis (acute liver failure), which is often fatal."

According to the AP, the tainted fish originated with two companies: Sustainable Seafood Company in Vietnam and Santa Cruz Seafood Inc. in the Philippines. With Hilo Fish Company as a middleman, it then made its way to retail locations and restaurants in California, Texas and Oklahoma.

Three of the restaurants in question are in San Francisco, ABC 7 reports.

• Blue Hawaii Acai Cafe, located at Two Embarcadero Center
• Bonito Poke, a food truck with multiple stops in SF (check their schedule here)
• 808 Poke Shack, also a food truck with stops announced via Instagram

The yellowfin was also delivered to Fenix in San Rafael and Noelani's Bar and Grill in San Carlos, ABC 7 reports.

According to the FDA, no illnesses have been reported as a result of the fish, which is described as "8-ounce steaks with label code 627152, and tuna cubes in 15-pound cases with label code 705342." Per the WHO's website, the incubation period for Hep-A is "usually 14-28 days," and symptoms "can include fever, malaise, loss of appetite, diarrhea, nausea, abdominal discomfort, dark-colored urine and jaundice." If you suspect that you have been infected, officials recommend that you seek medical help immediately.

That's thousands of baby king salmon 🐟🎣 about to be unloaded into the ocean - part of @CaliforniaDFW @ebmud study of survival. @CBSSF 11 pm pic.twitter.com/z7Sr7lzo56

— Betty Yu (@BettyKPIX) May 1, 2017

It's so mesmerizing that you almost don't need context, just the information that that is a pipe full of baby fish who will soon head out to sea.

But where would we be without context? According to ABC 7, that pipe of fish is a massive — slow down and count 'em, there's 200,000 — batch of adolescent salmon that was loaded onto a Sausalito fishing boat called the Merva Sunday before heading out to be released in the Pacific.

It's all part of an effort to bolster up California's salmon population, which has been endangered by rising water temperatures that, as NPR reported in 2015, "has caused high mortality for the young salmon, which are very temperature sensitive in their early life stages." Salmon born in 2014 and 2015 has a survival rate of about five percent, which, Yale Environment reports, has spurred scientists to worry that "the Chinook salmon will be unable to tolerate future conditions and will all but vanish from California’s landscape" as "climate change is emerging as the next great threat to California’s remaining salmon runs."

The Merva is trying to stave off that environmental disaster, ABC 7 reports, by transporting the young salmon "from a couple state hatcheries out to the ocean." This is basically a helping hand to send them on their way, as "In their natural setting, they are spawned in fresh water rivers and then swim out to salt water through the Golden Gate Bridge." Think of it as hitching a ride.

It's hoped that when these kids grow up, they'll eventually make their way back into the Bay and into the rivers in the Delta to spawn. In an effort to track the success of the project, all the young salmon have been tagged for later identification.

"We're trying to show that barging salmon, these smelts down the river will increase their survival rate, we think significantly," former salmon fisherman Rob Tillitz tells ABC 7. Here's hoping it works. Good luck, little guys!

Previously: This Rain Is Messing Up Our Salmon Migration

Everyone is pretty much required to have a side-hustle these days, and V16, the latest sushi restaurant to occupy the northeast corner of 16th and Valencia, is no exception. With four stars on Yelp at a central intersection for which it's named, V16 replaced a previous sushi spot in the space last year, and now appears to be pivoting, opening a poke bar in what was recently the sushi bar area.

Caleb Pershan/SFist

Poke, which might still be San Francisco's hottest food trend, conveniently requires no heat whatsoever — okay, except for a rice cooker. These Hawaiian bowls of fish and fixings, served cold, are easy and quick to prepare, making them ideal for the fast-casual movement that's swept San Francisco. That trend, by turn, cuts down on wait times for customers and on costs for businesses, mostly by removing servers, at a moment when margins are particularly tight and workers are scarce.

Another plus: Not only are poke flavors already appealing to diners with a taste for sushi, but for sushi restaurants with existing ties to fish suppliers, expanding into the poke biz can't be too much of a departure. "I'm not surprised poke is becoming so popular in the continental US," Hawaii-based food writer Martha Cheng told Eater's national website. "[I'm] just surprised that it took so long.... "People already love sushi, raw fish, and ceviche; poke seems like a natural inclusion."

According to a sign, V16's poke offshoot, or POKI BOWL as its spelled on the door, will be open seven days a week in conjunction with the sushi lounge.

Caleb Pershan/SFist

Eater offhandedly called 2016 the year of poke, but the dish's popularity shows no signs of slowing into 2017. I, for one, welcome our new raw fish overlords, and to honor them I plan to dine exclusively on $200 omakase dinner menus and cheap, choose-your-own poke bowl lunches from now on.

What you are looking at is a female anglerfish, of a species known as the "black seadevil" for obvious reasons. It's pretty small (9 centimeters) and lives at depths of 1,900 feet and therefore has only been photographed by humans about a dozen times in history. But this one was just captured on video by researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, deep in dark depths of Monterey Canyon — and not far from where they recently found the wreckage of a barge that was intentionally sunk there in 1980.

As SFGate tells us, these "black seadevils" can't see very well and they use that light-up "fishing rod" thing on their heads to attract prey. The Aquarium further explains that these rods are actually modified fin rays, and at the tip "is a small organ that contains millions of light-producing bacteria." Most male anglerfish tend to be much smaller than the females and have adapted to exist mostly as parasites living off the females, and whose sole purpose is to find and inseminate them.

Also, in re: the females, "Anglerfish can also swallow prey larger than themselves because their stomaches are highly flexible murder balloons." SFGate appears to have come up with that "murder balloons" turn of phrase, as that is not a technical term.

This image of the "black seadevil" species marks the very first time that scientists have captured one of these fish on video in its own habitat. The fish was video'd via an unmanned underwater probe from the Doc Ricketts research boat run by the MBARI.

Do you suffer from a fear of swimming in lakes (or "limnophobia")? Are you leery of having something slimy and scaly brush up against you whilst blithely enjoying a day at the lake? Have you been dreading karmic retribution for that time your neighbor dared you to swallow your pet goldfish? Then you will doubtless find this next bit of news interesting.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, biologists have discovered an alarming invasion of overgrown goldfish in Lake Tahoe, the Bay's prime freshwater getaway. Some of the fish have grown to 18 inches in length and weigh in at around 4 lbs, substantially bigger than their fish tank forebears. Initially caused by what researchers suspect to be aquarium dumping (or what small children and Finding Nemo fans might dub "setting them freeeeee!"), the invasion has some worried that the delicate eco-system of the lake could be at risk.

Goldfish are omnivorous and their indulgent eating habits could cause competition for native trout, not to mention the fact that their excrement stimulates dangerous algae growth in a body of water we've been aggressively bumper-stickering to keep blue.

And the worst part? Just in time for spring/summer weekends at the lake, they're breeding.

[KCRA]
[ABC News]

Sad news, folks: about a third of the fish you ate last in the two years was probably not what you thought it was. According to a new study, this huge oceanic conspiracy was pulled on pescatarians nationwide, but Northern Californians were especially hard hit. In the Bay Area, 58 percent of fish sold in restaurants was mislabeled or misidentified. It's like restaurants don't even care about ichthyology.

The Chronicle, details the study conducted by seafood truthers at activist group Oceana:

Genetic testing of 1,215 fish taken from 674 retail outlets, grocery stores and sushi bars throughout the United States between 2010 and 2012 found that 33 percent of the samples had been mislabeled, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

Researchers with Oceana, a group dedicated to preserving the ocean ecosystem, reported finding seafood mislabeling in all 21 states where they tested, including retail outlets in San Francisco, Monterey, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland.

Whether this is because all fishermen are prone to lying to begin with, or this is a large-scale conspiracy by the seafood industry (or more likely: a quality control issue) is still unclear. What we do know is we're not getting the right fish: "Fish labeled snapper turned out to be rockfish 34 times at sites in the Bay Area, Monterey and other sites in Northern California, according to the watchdog group."

Can you imagine? Accidentally getting rockfish, when you really wanted snapper? The mind reels, remembering all the times we were desperately craving snapper. To think, all those times we could have been unknowingly eating rockfish. It's as if all the parts in our lives when we were eating fish have been a complete lie.

There's hope for the future, at least: mislabeling food for profit is illegal under California and federal law, so we can probably curb this fishy labeling epidemic just as soon as the state can come up with the cash to create some kind of Fish Investigation Agency. On the other hand, mislabeled fish might be a product of confusing bureaucratic bullshit to begin with: "California law allows 13 species of rockfish to be sold as Pacific red snapper, but FDA guidelines allow only one."

Things only get worse when we start talking Tuna though: The FDA includes 14 species that can be called "tuna," but eight out of nine pieces of tuna sushi sampled in Los Angeles were actually escolar, which is not one of those 14 official tunas. Fish Biologists — as in real people with advanced degrees in this sort of thing — call escolar the "ex-lax fish" because of its "purgative effect on the digestive system." And we wonder how Los Angeles stays so slim.

There are some other unexpected benefits to mislabeled fish too: shark meat has been found in fish tacos sold across California, so it's kind of like we've been getting an added bonus this whole time.

[Chron]

Teens? What won't they do for market fresh fish? In South San Francisco Wednesday evening, a 19-year-old lady allegedly stuffed her purse full of fish at the Pacific Supermarket on El Camino Real, before getting stopped by store employees on her way out. Naturally, the teen suspect didn't like being hassled and threw a punch at the supermarket worker who tried to block her path.

Bay City News reports that the suspect denied having any pilfered poisson, but she had already been spotted on surveillance cameras. Police responded to the scene around 5:45 p.m. Wednesday and booked the young woman on robbery charges. The stolen fish, meanwhile, was apparently returned to the store, which is kind of gross.

[BCN/CBS]

Love it or hate it — pst, we love it — the new playground in Dolores Park got a wee bit of a makeover with some fun street art. Jeremy Novy painted some of his famous koi on the rubber matting. You like? He also drew some clouds and a line of ants, both of which are sure to delight the thong of kids playing in the park again. Mission Mission has more images for your enjoyment or disapproval, depending on which side of the street-art fence you sit.