Hurricane Harvey displaced not just people but also aquatic wildlife. Last week, National Audubon Society’s Preeti Desai took to Twitter to beg for help identifying a strange species she saw washed up on a Texas City beach following Hurricane Harvey. The deceased animal had a large cylinder-shaped body and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, despite the fact that it appeared to be eyeless. ‘It looked to me at first glance to be something from the deepwater,’ Desai added.
‘At first, I thought it was a sea lamprey, but as I got closer, I knew that wasn’t the case, especially considering the mouth.’ We twisted it around and even flipped it over, but we couldn’t come up with anything else.’ As a result, Desai resorted to Twitter to seek help from experts. ‘This is the kind of thing that Twitter is great for because there are so many scientists and academics on the platform who are ready to help figure things out,’ she added.
The sea monster was assumed to be an eel by the researchers who responded to Desai’s essay, but they couldn’t figure out which species it was. “I banged my head psychologically,” Desai said, “because once it was offered, I could definitely see the eel shape.” The most popular theory was that the creature was a fangtooth snake-eel, also known as a tusky eel, which is only found in the Gulf of Mexico. Tusky eels live in oceans 30 to 90 meters deep and spend most of their time hidden, but they do occasionally go into shallows.
Tusky eels have eyes, although they are small and may have degraded by the time Desai found the creature’s remains. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Dr. Kenneth Tighe believes the deceased species was a Tusky eel, but he also believes it may have been a garden or conger eel. Its massive teeth, on the other hand, rule out the majority of species from those two families. It may be Bathyuroconger vicinus or Xenomystax congroides, he hypothesized. ‘All three of these species live off the coast of Texas and have enormous fang-like fangs. It’s a pity you can’t see the tip of the tail. This would set the ophichthids apart from the congrids.’
