The Italian sailors pulled out the nets and brought the shark on deck.
But when they took a close look at the creatures head, the whole team decided to let the fish go unanimously. It’s head was as if from another animal.
The unusual underwater inhabitant was caught not far from the small island of Elba. What was weird, that the creature was caught so close to the shore, normally, predators prefer to stay much further from the coast.
Outwardly, the creature resembled a disproportionately fat shark. But if you look at its face, it resembled a pig’s head. The fishermen decided, that it was most likely some kind of mutant. Nobody knew how to deal with it, so they released the prey.
Before releasing the creature, the sailors took a number of pictures in order to show them to experts. So when they returned to the shore they brought the photos to the aquarium caretakers.
The ichthyologists were really amazed to find out that the fisherman managed to caught an extremely rare kind of fish.
“This is the Oxynotus centrina. It is not clear how it got into shallow water, centrins stay all their lives at a depth of 700-800 meters,” said Mario Bertolucci, an employee of the aquarium.
Ordinary centrins are listed in the Red Book. The fishermen were lucky to see that creature and to release it back into the ocean.
