Two Aussie mates filmed their battle to catch the beast and put it on YouTube. After no one was sure what it was, a deep sea fishing expert was called in to make sense of it all
A humungous ‘giant goldfish’ was reeled in by a deep-sea fisherman, as professionals are left baffled by the mysterious find.
Brett Methven was shocked when what appeared to be a 22lb goliath goldfish turned up on his fishing boat this month.
The YouTube creator, who goes by the name Coastal Chaos Adventures on the site, is from Hervey Bay in southeast Queensland and was deep-sea fishing with friend Brad when the monster catch occurred.
“Oh my god – look at the size of this thing!” Brad exclaimed as Brett battled to land the beast in a video uploaded to YouTube.
It turned out to weigh 10 kilograms and was hoisted from a staggering 400 metres down.
The pair weren’t the only ones after the big catch either – a shark almost robbed Brett of his trophy as it was being reeled in.
“This is huge, absolutely huge – I can’t believe it!” Brett says whilst straining to hold the fish up to the camera.
“Second ever time deep-dropping and [we catch] this pedigree, huge, massive, frigging gold thing.”
Brett took to Instagram in an attempt to identify the mysterious golden fish.
“Pretty sure the scientific name is ‘Megagoldenfishasaurous’,” on user joked.
Another said: “Dunno, some kid’s pet goldfish experiment gone horribly wrong?”
A YouTube commenter was more bothered about the end of Brett’s video, where he and Brad cooked the fish. “Couple of solid tasty critters,” they commented.
Brett has since told 9News in Australia that the expertise of a professional deep-drop fisherman were required to identify the fish’s species.
He said: “It’s called a Japanese Rubyfish, we couldn’t find much on it.”
Japanese Rubyfish are typically found in depths of over 300 metres. Having been first caught in Japan, the fish has since been found in Korea, Kenya and South Africa.
They are bottom-dwellers that feed on zooplankton sucked in through their extremely large mouths.
One was recorded in Australia for the first time 11 years ago, but sightings are “rare and unusual” according to Fisheries Queensland.
