'Spooky' unidentified seabeast washed up after storm leaves experts stumped
Nobody seems too sure what this 'massive' creature could be
A “SPOOKY” unidentified seabeast of a “massive” size left experts stumped when it washed up after a storm.
Jem, 42, was walking her dogs on St Helen’s Beach in Geelong, Australia, when her terriers found the bizarre creature.
She said: “We've been having really wild storms in Victoria for the last few weeks so perhaps the storm surges caused it to wash up.
“My dogs discovered it on the beach and were sniffing around it. The fish looked really spooky. Its eye sockets were massive.
“We swim at the beach every week in summer so I was pretty shocked to think of such a big fish washing up there.”
Video captured by Jem shows the strange seabeast on the sand, its mottled flesh a mix of yellows, blacks and pinks.
There’s a gaping eyehole in what seems to be its head, which has a long white protrusion emerging from the front.
And a fin is discernible on one side, but all that remains of the back part of the animal are a few bones.
Puzzled, Jem shared her photos on a naturalists’ page on Facebook, where viewers couldn’t believe the sheer size of the creature.
One person asked: “Is it big or just the camera angle?”
Jem responded: “Not the camera angle. It was massive! Bigger than my Scottish Terrier.”
One joker asked: “Were there any UFO sightings reported in the area?”
And though various potential species were suggested, there was no clear consensus.
Jem said: “People said it could be a giant sunfish, a globefish or a pufferfish.
“It did look like a pufferfish but I've never seen one that big before.”
Experts were similarly puzzled.
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Lawrence Chlebeck, a marine biologist at Humane Society International, told Yahoo that the large spines along the backbone suggested it was a large teleost or bony fish.
That narrows it down to some 26,000 species.
But he thought a grouper or tuna were the likeliest candidates.
Meanwhile, Sheridan Rabbitt from the Centre for Marine Science at the University of Queensland, told Yahoo it was a type of puffer fish – namely a porcupinefish.
Other scientists told the website it was perhaps a tuna, a very large globefish, or puffer fish, but declined to name a species due to the animal’s advanced state of decomposition.
The creature’s true identity remains a mystery.