The juvenile king-of-the-salmon fish was spotted Dec. 30 in Monterey Bay. Photo: Ted Judah//Facebook
On the morning of December 30, Ted Judah was pulling on his SCUBA gear for a dive in Monterey Bay, California. Instead of doing what he usually does — swimming on the surface out to where he planned to dive — he noticed that the water off McAbee Beach was clearer than usual, so he decided to have a look at what was under the water closer to shore. That’s when he saw something odd: a fish called the King-of-the-Salmon ribbonfish, which are easily confused with the more famous oarfish, that ropey harbinger of disaster. While they are closely related, they’re not the same thing.
“I decided to just put my face in the water and look at everything,” he told SFGATE. When he saw a blade-like, silvery creature, he came up to tell his wife that, “There is something really amazing down here.”
King-of-the-Salmon ribbonfish live at great depths. They can be found at somewhere around 3,000 feet down, and very rarely, they’ll wash up on a beach after a storm or wind up near the surface if they’re hurt or dying. They got their name because they supposedly lead salmon back to their spawning grounds.
Judah likely didn’t think about any of that when he saw the silvery ribbon undulating beneath him. He grew up in the Bay Area and his dad put him in a wetsuit early. He first dove for abalone at the age of eight, wearing a wetsuit that his father made him. As time went on, SCUBA diving became a big part of his life, and Judah, along with his wife, began taking dive trips to the Sonoma coast and Monterey. He also volunteered his time to scrub aquariums, do reef surveys, and work on helping California’s ailing kelp forests. But in all that time, he never thought he’d see one of the world’s rarest fish.
It was a juvenile, only around nine inches long, with fluttery fins. When Judah saw it, it was floating upright with its tail pointing down.
He thought it would be smart to document what he was seeing, so he began filming with a GoPro while his wife shot images of them together. After a few minutes, he decided to leave the fish alone to go about its day.
“I thought, ‘I don’t want to ask any more of you,” Judah said. “You’re an amazing creature.’ And I let him go.”
Judah and his wife continued on with their dive, but all they could think about was getting home to look at the footage. When they did, they posted the images they captured on social media and asked for clarification on what they’d encountered. Many people thought it was an oarfish, but when a marine biologist saw the pictures, he weighed in.
“I am the senior collector (marine biologist) at [Monterey Bay Aquarium] for 25 years,” Kevin Lewand posted. “I have already shared this with the top ichthyologists in California. It is a juvenile king-of-the-salmon, Trachipterus altivelis. That is [the] second one observed this year! Really cool!!”
