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Science

Bizarre Deep Sea Fish Dredged Up By Tsunami 339

Posted by michael from the look-what-the-cat-dragged-in dept.
spankfish writes "The following page features numerous great pictures of bizarre and creepy deep-sea creatures which have been dredged up by the recent tsunami and presented by normal divers. Fascinating stuff! The page is in Russian, but it's all about the pictures." Update: 01/15 18:02 GMT by J : As those of you who read the comments have already realized, this is an urban legend.
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Bizarre Deep Sea Fish Dredged Up By Tsunami More

Bizarre Deep Sea Fish Dredged Up By Tsunami

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  • Oops... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Guido del Confuso ( 80037 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:31AM (#11371959)
    They may be weird fish, but they sure didn't wash up on shore from the tsunami! This story just isn't true.

    http://www.snopes.com/photos/tsunami/creature.asp [snopes.com]

    • Re:Oops... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TelcusFreshbreeze ( 601347 )
      Good call
      Snopes should be the first port of call for anything like this

    • Re:Oops... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bon bons ( 734068 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:35AM (#11371975)
      Here [oceans.gov.au] are where the pictures originally came from. As the above poster said the story is not true, but the sealife is real.

    • Re:Oops... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:36AM (#11371983)
      Slashdot editors.. OWNED!

    • Thanks, Captain Bringdown (Score:5, Funny)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:06AM (#11372065)
      you had to go spoil all our fun!
    • It didn't seem likely that they were brought to the surface by a tsunami. However, the pics reminded me how awesome the BBC serries "The Blue Planet" is. For those who haven't seen it, be sure to check it out at your favorite video store or torrent site.

    • A Message to the Hoax: (Score:5, Funny)

      by inKubus ( 199753 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:47AM (#11372184) Homepage Journal
      So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish.

    • Re:Oops... (Score:2, Informative)

      by levin ( 170168 )
      Another page [practicalf...ping.co.uk] that outlines the hoax, figured I'd post it for the hell of it.

    • Re:Oops... (Score:3, Funny)

      by macduck ( 178477 )
      Thought it sounded fishy...
    • At least we'll give that site a good slashdotting.

    • Re:Oops... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Joao ( 155665 )
      I guess nobody stoped to think about this one. Tsunamis don't afect the deep sea. At deep sea, a tsunami is only a few centimeters tall (but several kilometers in lengh). You can be on a boat, or diving in the water, and you won't even notice it.

      • Re:Oops... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Ralph Wiggam ( 22354 )
        There was an American family quoted in many news stories that were scuba diving during the tsunami and didn't notice anything had happened until they saw debris floating above.

        I actually know that family from elementary school. What an amazing story.

        -Barry

  • I recognize some of them... (Score:3, Funny)

    by gatorflux ( 759239 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:33AM (#11371965)
    The first one had a co-starring role in The Faculty.

  • Well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sandstorming ( 850026 ) <johnsee@sLAPLACE ... m minus math_god> on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:35AM (#11371977)
    One day we WILL defeat the Goa'uld
  • It tasted like fish!

    (Actually, I didn't see the picture because it's Slashdotted already, and Snopes says it's not real, anyway, but it tastes like fish.)

  • Crab... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:36AM (#11371982)
    Sweet! That one crab-like thing [oceans.gov.au] is awesome.

    I hereby name it the Crabtacular spikeouchamus, or "Spiky Ubercrab"!

    I never had a favorite animal before, but now I do. It's red, hard, and just plain intimidating. Almost like a Sauron of the seas. Sweeeeeeet!

  • Bah! Humbug, or slow day? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by freitasm ( 444970 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:39AM (#11371990) Homepage
    I've seen some worthy news not present on Slashdot... But wasting bandwidth with something already debunked by Snopes hosted on a crap server that is slashdotted with only 8 comments... Argh!

  • Site already slow, mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:39AM (#11371991) Journal
    Pics only:

    mirror [cs.hro.nl]

    Coincidentally, the third looks like my mother-in-law.

  • Hahaha... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kaedemichi255 ( 834073 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:42AM (#11372000)
    Hey, it's Nemo! Boy did he let himself go...

  • what the fuck (Score:5, Funny)

    by maelstrom ( 638 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:42AM (#11372003) Homepage Journal
    Michael, take a day off, you apparently need it.

  • Dali (Score:3, Informative)

    by jazman ( 9111 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:53AM (#11372032)
    That first one isn't so weird, there's one on Dali's Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.

  • Description of page (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rheagar ( 556811 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:11AM (#11372084) Homepage
    I imagine that any story which is comprised mainly of pictures that is linked to by slashdot is bound to be brought to its knees before it knew what hit it.
    So I've decided to describe the oddities for the slashdotters with active imaginations! Plus I need to work off some caffiene before I hit the sack.

    (1) A pallid creature of diminutive size which is characterized by a body shaped like the blade of a pocket knife. The edges of the body form a fin which bears remarkable similarity to a feather. The GI tract is visible as a dark tunnel connecting the throat area and leading halfway down its body to where what appears to be a tiny foot is attached! The foot may actually be an anus, but I'm no biologist and I don't read cyrillic.

    (2) This photo shows two beasties in a half meter wide container. The first is a dark, eel-looking fellow with a beaty eye that is glazed over in a sort of post-mortem or thickly armored haze. It is shaped like a bottle rocket -- the back is long , cylindrical, and thin and it has a cylindrical gut of larger diameter attached to the back. His mouth is open a little but no teeth show.
    The other fellow is a white squid which has red highlights on its body. The red is probably a result of its blood and viscera being partially drained into its container, but it is difficult to tell from the picture. It looks like a giant, man eating squid from the movies, except it is not giant.

    (3) This picture shows a fish held in the hands of a proud seaman. The fish is probably 20 pounds heavy. It is dark like a bottom feeder and has a menacing look about it. The rear half of the animal has a fin on top that looks like an inch tall mohawk. An inch or two without a mohawk separates the rear fin from a threatening dorsal fin. The front of the dorsal fin is shaped like the fang of a snake. It is curved back from vertical, thin, and looks like it could inject a deadly poison (probably doesn't though). He has a large eye which glows an eerie yellow color, probably due to the camera's flash. The mouth is not very clear. To add to this fish's badass appearence, it looks like it has won several knife fights and thick scars crease its body.

    (4) This one is ugly. It is in the same type of container as described in picture (2). I imagine that it was once just a very fat fish made of pancake mix, and one day it was dropped on the skillet that is the ocean floor. It is smooshed vertically and resembles "blinky" from the classic Simpson's episode. However, instead of the warm yellow tint of our favorite family, this fish has a mixture of red, brown, and white tints on its body and its face is white like a brie cheese. Come to think of it, its face looks like Marlon Brando. Creepy indeed.

    (5) This critter is a sight to behold! It looks like an criptocletus dinosaur on a smaller scale. It has hand and feet fins that look oars. But the best thing about this animal is that it has a beak. It reminds me of an elongated duckbill platypus' beak, except that it is made of flesh instead of a hardened material. Its eye is black and big. I have relatives who eat fish eyes and I'm sure that it would be a wonderful treat for them.

    OK, thats all I can handle for now. I hope this helps paint the picture.

  • One thing (Score:5, Informative)

    by dedazo ( 737510 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:17AM (#11372103) Journal
    This is obviously a hoax, but if the "editors" understood even the most basic facts about tsunamis (and they have been in the news of late) they'd have known that a tsunami is inconsequential in deep water - it's only until the wave reaches the incline of the shore that it becomes a wall of water. Ergo, no "deep sea creatures" can be "dredged" up, not even bizarre ones.

    Otherwise I have to say... PwN3D

    • Let's not get carried away here. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @07:14AM (#11372496)
      Pun intended. Agreed, it's a hoax. Just like with a wave in a pipe, what you push in on one side does not come out at the other side. A wave travels a long way but the material in the pipe just shifts a little bit. And the basic model of a tsunami is just water bungeeing to and fro a bit and ending up where it started. No body of water is displaced very far.

      But if you think of general fluid dynamics, it is possible that a relatively small body of water travels a long way(many miles, not many thousands of miles). It's plausible that sea creatures surface after such an earthquake. They would surface in the middle of the ocean. And then there's sea currents.

  • Two Possibilities (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rie Beam ( 632299 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:17AM (#11372107) Journal
    Lesse - if the page is in Russian, but got approved, there are two possibilities:

    1) Mike doesn't know Russian, and approved it on summary and purty pictures alone.

    OR

    2) Mike knows Russian, and is just gullible.

    Either way, it says something kinda depressing about the state of /. nowadays.

  • How to describe this dupe? (Score:3, Informative)

    by spudchucker ( 680073 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:17AM (#11372108)

    DuPe [slashdot.org]

  • It's a troll (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lairdsville ( 600242 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:21AM (#11372123)
    I thought I had seen these images before.
    Sure enough, I had. From snopes [snopes.com] we get the explanation:

    they are genuine images of some rather strange deep-sea creatures, these photographs have nothing to do with the Indian Ocean tsunami. They date from mid-2003 and were taken as part of the NORFANZ voyage, a joint Australian-New Zealand research expedition conducted in May-June 2003 to explore deep sea habitats and biodiversity in the Tasman Sea. These photographs can be viewed on Australia's National Oceans Office web site.

  • Does anyone else here watch the Discovery Channel (Score:3, Insightful)

    by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <gerdes&invariant,org> on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:37AM (#11372165) Homepage
    Those aren't particularly weird fish. They may be weird and some of them are fish but this certainly doesn't make them weird fish.

    Alot of the things in the water look pretty damn strange but I recognized alot of these animals from science shows and not even ones about deep water fish. While I can't comment about all of them several looked to be the type one might find in fairly shallow water.

    So in response to those who said a Tsunami could bring up these fish I have to disagree, it certainly could stir up fish which live close to shore and even throw them on to land. While it isn't going to stir up fish from the deep ocean my guess is that these are all just fish that live near land but people normally don't notice.
  • I am never going swiming again. :-P

    Cheers,
    Adolfo
  • Computer: $2000
    Broadband Internet: $100
    Being fooled by a hoax at Slashdot's main page: priceless
  • In post-soviet Russia, scams don't ask for money!

  • retraction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shimbee ( 444430 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @05:04AM (#11372221)
    shouldn't slashdot have some sort of journalistic responsibility to retract posts that are clearly hoaxes? many "legitimate" news sources often refer to slashdot as a real reference, and leaving hoaxes up un-changed seems unethical.
    • It's a fine line between "blog" and "journalism" these days, isn't it?

      The crap that winds up here is a prime example of why bloggers are *NOT* journalists. (yeah, slashdot isn't a "blog" exactly, but you get my point.) :)

  • Here's a Coral-cached version of the tsunami deep water fish photos [nyud.net] page.

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @05:11AM (#11372237) Journal
    Anyone else thinking michael got Taco drunk, send him to bed with a shemale and blackmailed him into giving him this job? After this week I'm starting to think this is more likely than not..
  • http://svi.cs.hro.nl/~bart/fish/post-3-1105624964. jpg

    Does that give anyone else thoughts of Half-life and "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck?"

    Maybe I should invest in a HEV suit..

  • Looks like this is a hoax.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by ctid ( 449118 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @05:40AM (#11372308) Homepage
    Snopes debunks this story [snopes.com] But that's not going to stop me using it to recommend one of my favourite books: A Fish Caught in Time: The Hunt for the Coelacanth, by Samantha Weinberger [amazon.co.uk]. I couldn't put it down and I had to blink back a tear at one point. Not bad for a factual book.
  • famous last words


    "but it's all about the pictures"

  • welcome our bizarre deep sea fish overlords!

  • http://www.snopes.com/photos/tsunami/creature.asp

    I'm not sure they've translated the Russian word-for-word, and the layout is way different, but I think it's the same thing ;)
  • Hey, all you people complaining that this is a hoax story, at least this way there are alot of mirrors... you can go to snopes, or the australian page, or any number of other pages that have these pictures... and you don't have to deal with babel getting the translation all wrong.
  • Two things popped into my head before I read the Snopes article:-

    (1) Aren't they well-preserved specimens considering that most people would be *far* too busy with other things to notice them and take them out of the sun before they decayed badly?
    (2) If they were really new deep-sea creatures, wouldn't beasties from that depth have exploded upon depressurisation?

  • A future Snopes article (Score:5, Funny)

    by eric.t.f.bat ( 102290 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @08:38AM (#11372687)

    Claim: Slashdot articles are written by an infinite number of monkeys.

    Status: False

    Example: This [slashdot.org] article, and many, many, many others.

    Origins: It seems that many people consider that a popular source of information must, by its very nature, be reliable. "With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" is a common argument in support of this theory. But as can be seen with a cursory glance at the Slashdot "news" site, it just ain't so.

    This dichotomy has led many people to assume that the so-called "editors" of Slashdot are nothing more than an infinite number of monkeys, but a little logic will demonstrate why this is also unlikely:

    • An infinite number of monkeys can be expected to produce the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare had talent, integrity and an instinctive grasp of narrative and logic. Whoever is writing Slashdot articles shows none of these skills. Advantage: Monkeys.
    • Despite all this, Shakespeare's spelling was appalling. He even misspelled his own name! While the spelling abilities of Slashdot editors are certainly not up to the standard one would expect for one's household pets or pond algae, they're not as bad as ol' Will. Advantage: Slashdot.
    However, the telling point is this: Monkeys are not aquatic. Thus, they have no interest in penguins. Slashdot editors, on the other hand, can think of little else. It seems far more likely that the Slashdot editors are an infinite number of penguins; the penguin's flippers are slightly more suited to keyboards than the monkeys hands which, despite having agile fingers, lack the opposable thumb essential to the operation of the space bar.

    It's certainly easy to see how this urban legend got started, but as usual, a little logic goes a long way.

    Barbara "anyway monkeys are way too bright" Spoofelson

    • A better response to that is the amount of food an infinite number of monkies would eat. Slashdot articles are, in fact, written by a very FINITE number of monkeys. Lots of them, surely, but very, very finite.

  • Hmmmm (Score:2, Funny)

    by SilverspurG ( 844751 )
    I swear I've been trolled by some of those things.
  • ...are belong to us!
  • But it happens me not so often to make an obligatory folklore joke: In Soviet Russia, bizzare fish web forum is slashdotted by You!

    Anyway, I got a text from pages and yes, I can read azbuka, but no images. Any fellíow slashdotters made a mirror? Pics are too fresh for google cache.

  • If you're interested in seeing more bizarre sea creatures, check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Deep Sea exhibit [mbayaq.org]. My favorite: "In some species of anglerfish, the males are tiny, with simplified body features, and they live as parasites on the females." Heh, heh.

  • Remember, folks:
    That is not dead which can eternal lie,
    and with strange eons even death may die.

    Cthulhu commands you to worship these harbingers of the Old Ones!

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