A record-breaking “dinosaur-like” fish with human teeth has been caught at five times the weight you’d expect it to be.
Spearfisher Todd Elder, 38, had been in the water In Chesapeake Bay, in the US state of Virginia when he came across the remarkable find, a large sheepshead with rows of very strange teeth.
“I just swam down and happened to get lucky, there was an abnormally large sheepshead there, I pulled the trigger and got him,” he said.
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“Then I grabbed the fish, and that’s when I got really excited.”
The Virginia Beach man continued: “They have very human-like teeth that they use to eat cockles and oysters, and crabs.
“I tell everybody that I’m going to use these teeth when mine start falling out – pull one of them things out with pliers, pop it in with some superglue; good to go!
“And they have a few, there’s a bunch of rows behind their front teeth.”
The size of the fish would turn out to be something truly remarkable and when they put it on the scales would discover it coming at a whopping 19lbs (8.6kg)
Todd added: “If we shoot a ten-pounder, that’s a big one for us.
“That size is pretty large, and we had already shot a few ten-pounders, but this one was just like a dinosaur.
“There were other large sheepshead around, just not as big as this one. It just stood out.”
Local outlet Virginia Pilot reports that according to the International Underwater Spearfishing Association, the fish has been marked as a new world record.
By the time the fish was put on official scales, its weight had dropped to 17.4lbs, however, this still battered the previous world record of 15lbs – normally these fish weigh around three to four pounds.
“It’s pretty crazy; everybody loves a world record.
“Honestly, that night my wife came down to the dock and was like ‘you need to weight that immediately’.
“I wasn’t even planning to weight it, I was just gonna weigh all the fish we got together, but I’m glad she talked me into it.”
He continued: “Normally I see these fish and they just dart off with a quickness – they’re always on high alert; they always see you first.
“I was thinking ‘man, I can’t believe that this is so easy.’”
He runs the Virginia Beach Seafood Company but reckoned that the beast was around 15 years old – however, knew none of it would go to waste.
He said: "We cooked some in an air fryer, and some in a cast-iron skillet. But before we cooked it, we dry-aged it.
“I just want to use this to spread awareness of sustainability and using as much of the fish as you can, and looking after your catch.
“We need to be more observant of that and try to get away from farm-raised fish.”
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