Jonas Friese / Unsplash
You never know what you’re going to catch when you’re fishing in deep/dark water. I used to go fishing on those head boats out of Sheepshead Bay in NYC all the time and we’d pull up some gnarly looking species every time we went out despite usually targeting seabass.
Never, on any of those trips, did we pull up something that looks like this ‘3 legged’ fish that was clearly released from the gates of Hell by Lucifer himself as a way to scare millions of Americans from never going swimming in the ocean again.
This fisherman’s catch has gone viral on TikTok and the clip has been viewed a cool 1.4 million times. There are countless guesses as to what the species might be. It looks to have tentacles similar to an octopus and a big ol’ fat head.
In all likelihood, it’s a clearnose skate which is a cartilaginous fish (sharks/stingrays/skates) and not too far off from the stingrays you might see when snorkeling in The Bahamas for The Florida Keys. But that’s not at all apparent in this clip where the fish looks like a sea monster sent straight from the depths of Hell:
FoxNews claims this clip has been viewed a collection 15 million times already (I’m not sure where the view count is coming from) and this fish was caught near Coney Island:
The video shows the bizarre fish writhing around on the dock with what appears to be a fishing line still sticking out of its mouth. The post was viewed more than 15 million times and received thousands of comments from users, many of whom were just as stunned as the original poster.
One user described what they thought they were looking at, writing, “I thought a snake was in the process of devouring a squirrel but the lure looking thing confuses me.”
Another user wrote, “I think a fish ate a rabbit or something and it’s still alive,” while another user compared it to the Demogorgon, the monster from the TV show “Stranger Things.”
Fortunately, others seemed to recognize the animal. One user replied, “Pretty positive that’s a type of stingray but its wings or flaps or whatever they’re called are tucked underneath.” (via)
You can see the original TikTok Clip Right Here if you want to skim through the thousands of responses and/or save the clip for yourself which TikTok allows you to do.