A diver caught an enormous and odd-looking fish full of "human teeth" that smashed a world record.
Todd Elder was spearfishing when he spotted an "abnormally large" creature in the water of Chesapeake Bay, in the US state of Virginia.
He soon realised it was a big sheepshead fish, pulled the trigger on his spear and managed to catch the fish.
It turned out that the fish was the biggest ever sheepshead caught while spearfishing.
Speaking about sheepsheads' peculiar gnashers, he said: “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.”
But what really stood out was the animal’s size.
Mr Elder said: “If we shoot a 10-pounder, that’s a big one for us. That size is pretty large, and we had already shot a few 10-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.”
Up on shore, the fish clocked in at over 19lbs – some five times the average weight of a sheepshead.
And although it took a couple of days to weigh it with a certified scale, by which time it had lost some of its heft, the fish was still a massive 17.4lbs.
It’s now been declared a new world record by the International Underwater Spearfishing Association, according to the Virginian Pilot newspaper.
The previous record, from 2011, was 15lbs. An average sheepshead weight is three to four pounds.
Todd, from Virginia Beach, counts himself lucky. He said: “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 weigh that immediately’.
“I wasn’t even planning to weigh 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’.”
Todd, an offshore oil and gas diver by trade, who runs the Virginia Beach Seafood Company, estimates that the sheepshead was 15 years old.
But he said the animal didn’t 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.”
