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Deep water fishing is always an incredible adventure compared to fishing inshore where you can generally see the fish you’re casting at and catching. In really, really deep water there’s no telling what you’ll reel up any time a bait gets dropped down.
Case in point, Captain Nick Stanczyk out of the Florida Keys reeled in his first-ever Channel Scabbardfish, a deep-water species that looks more like a sea dragon or eel than a typical fish. The Channel Scabbardfish is typically found at depths between 820 feet to about 1,000 feet (250-300 meters). These fish have puzzled fishermen for centuries, as can be seen in that painting above showing one from 1842.
Capt. Stanczyk is arguably the world’s best swordfish fisherman and those fish stick to deeper water between 2,000 and 5,000 feet so that might explain why he’s never crossed paths with this species until now. But he landed this peculiar and rare species of fish recently and shared video of the catch along with images of the dragon-like Channel Scabbardfish.
Do I think that there are already aliens on earth and we don’t know about it? No. Do I think that if there were aliens on earth the vast oceans would be, by far, the best places for them to stay hidden? Absolutely.
Looking at the shimmering silver body of the scabbardfish, its elongated body, and razor-sharp teeth it’s easy to see how ancient civilizations believed in dragons. If you found this fish washed up on the beach without any explanation you’d think it was a dragon too:
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According to the Fishbase database, this species is found throughout the Western Atlantic in The Bahamas, Florida Keys, Caribbean Sea, and down into Souther Brazil. It is also found across the planet in the Northwest Pacific and south of the Korean Peninsula.
Scabbardfish are believed to max out at 200cm which is about 6.5 feet in length. At that length, this 100% is a living sea dragon. I don’t care what anyone says. If it looks like a dragon and swims like a dragon then it’s a dragon.
Capt. Nick Stanczyk who caught this Channel Scabbardfish has been known to pull in some wild species. Often times, he finds rare fish inside the bellies of swordfish like here when he found a lancetfish inside of a sword.