Bizarre ‘Alien’ Fish Caught Off The Coast In Japan — Could It Be An Aftereffect Of Fukushima Disaster?
A bizarre fish caught by local fishermen off the coast of Hokkaido, Japan, is so strange that the fishermen community have dubbed it as an “alien” fish.
According to Daily Telegraph, the fish was discovered off the coast in Hokkaido, a Japanese island that lies very close to Russia. The sea creature was caught over a week ago, and pictures of the weird-looking fish have circulated widely on social media since, quickly making it an internet phenomenon.
Hiroshi Hirasaka, who is known for hunting down and eating bizarre creatures around Japan and the world, posted the first pictures of the wolffish on Twitter last week. Generally, a typical wolffish grows up to 112 cm and weighs 15 kg, but in this case, the fish is almost two meters in length, twice the size of its normal cousins. Though these species of fish generally diet on crabs and molluscs, this particular fish could open its mouth wide enough to gulp a human toddler.
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With the wide circulation of the images on the internet, amateur theorists have come out in full voice, seeking to explain the reasons behind the discovery of the bizarre fish. Some suspect that the scary-looking wolffish could have mutated in an inorganic manner after being exposed to radiation as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which took place during the 2011 Tsunami in Japan.
This is not the first time that bizarre-looking creatures have been found near nuclear sites. Only last year, giant catfish were discovered near the site of a nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Russia.
While this theory has attracted a lot of attention, some others believe that radioactivity might not have played as large a role as many would like to think. The wolffish could have grown massively big simply because of a lack of opposition from other predators, according to one fisherman, since the waters in these parts are not rife for fishing.
“I suppose radiation could play a role but I reckon radiation is more likely to give them extra eyeballs and two heads rather than simply making them enormous in size.”
We might not yet know what caused this bizarre fish to appear in the waters now, and whether or not it is an aftereffect of the Fukushima disaster, but one thing is certain: this “alien” looking fish has certainly horrified internet like no fish has.
[Photo via Twitter]
