If a beauty contest was held among the inhabitants of the deep sea , then the crown would surely go to the herring king. The second name is a fish belt. It belongs to the family of hard-feathers. There are not so many lucky ones who managed to see this fish with their own eyes.
Strap-fish: general description
The appearance of the herring king is truly mesmerizing. No wonder she is considered the most beautiful marine inhabitant. The length of the fish can reach seventeen meters, but most often there are specimens from three and a half meters to five. The fish belt is the longest bone fish, it is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. With such a rather big "growth", the width of the body can not exceed seven centimeters.
For this, the herring king was given the name fish belt (photo is presented in the article). The body of the fish is covered with light silver scales, dark spots and stripes are randomly scattered on it. In addition, the fish do not have a
swim bladder. The head is dark blue. But the main decoration of the herring king is his fiery red mane, which develops during swimming, like a train. For her, the fish received the title of king. This same mane is the dorsal fin, which consists of individual red rays. Lateral fins are no less beautiful - crimson color. With its fins, the fish waved like oars. But ichthyologist D. Olney believes that fins serve as organs of taste perception. But not only from its brethren the belt-fish differs in appearance, the manner of swimming is also unlike the rest. The belt fish swims ... upright! Yes, that's right - with your head up. The king feeds on plankton and small crustaceans. Fishermen have seen him more than once in shoals of herring (which also affected the name of the fish), so perhaps a small herring is included in the "royal" diet.
Habitat
The fish belt lives in the warm waters of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Occasionally, it comes to the shores of Europe, due to global warming. But fish meat is absolutely inedible, even animals do not eat it. But some foodies disagree with this statement. On the contrary, they consider the herring king to be very tasty, and attribute it to delicacies, the main thing is to cook it correctly.
Secrets of the herring king
The fish-belt is still very little studied, scientists still do not know anything about the life of this animal. Everything that was possible to find out thanks to laboratory studies of the bodies of the fish caught did not greatly replenish the piggy bank of knowledge. The sizes of the caught individuals, as a rule, did not exceed six meters, but the sailors who observed the herring king in wildlife, claim that they saw real giants - up to twenty meters. How much fish lives is still unknown.
First evidence
The first information about the herring king is found in records of ancient times. They talk about a sea monster or a snake emerging from the depths of the sea. They called him the Great Sea Serpent. People were so struck by the appearance of an unknown creature that they described it as a monster with the head of a bull or horse, with a fiery red mane. The sailors considered a meeting with a sea serpent not promising anything good. The herring king became a legend, which many natural scientists subsequently hunted.
Other meetings with the herring king
In 1771, Morton Brunnich (Danish naturalist) first described a fish-belt, whose body was thrown to the Norwegian coast. Since then, no more than twenty-five meetings with this amazing fish have been documented . In 1906, marine biologist Woerd Jones observed the herring king in vivo. He wrote in his work “Fish of the Indo-Australian Archipelago” that the fish belt swam very close to the bow of the ship.
Her body was very long and shone in the sun with silver scales. Near the head a red train flaunted, and dorsal fins shimmered in saturated pink. The fishermen threw bait nets into the water, but the fish did not react to it in any way. Having sailed a little more near the ship, the herring king disappeared into the abyss of the ocean. But perhaps the longest observer of the "sea serpent" was the naturalist Holder. Near the site of Saita Catalina, a fish belt
(California, Avalon
Bay ) swam in shallow water, splashing on sandbanks. She was noticed by a scientist and watched a marine handsome for a long time. But in 1963, the body of the herring king, washed ashore near the village of Malibu, caused a real commotion. A resident of California, walking with her dog along the seashore, came across a monster. This meeting struck the woman so much that her cry, full of horror, woke up almost all the inhabitants of the coastal strip. Light began to light in the windows of the houses, and within half an hour all the inhabitants of a small town knew of an extraordinary find. The police who arrived at the scene, after what they saw, preferred to call experts. Now found copy is in the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles.