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
