Alushta fishermen discovered a strange marine inhabitant last Saturday. Pulling out the nets, abandoned in the area of the Kapsel Bay, the fishermen saw in them a marvelous fish of bright red color. Looked closely - and recognized in the surprise of nature the Black Sea scorpion or, more simply, the ruff. But the unusual coloring of the fish confused the fishermen
“How many years have we been fishing, we have never seen such a specimen,” the fishermen say. - Brushes are caught constantly, they are dark in the sea, but they all come across brown, the color of the seabed, the color allows them to camouflage well. And here is such a miracle, which is something scary. We photographed him as a keepsake and sent him back to the sea.
What kind of beast fell into the hands of the Alushta fishermen, we asked the experts, having previously sent them a picture of the miracle fish.
“For all 34 years of work in fish conservation, I have not met such individuals in the Black Sea,” said Alexei Matveev, a leading ichthyologist of the Crimean territorial department of the Azovvodrybokhrana.
- We have ruffs with a brown or beige abdomen. Of course, depending on the natural environment, the abdomen of the ruff can be colored to a bright orange color, but as a rule, this is the area up to the pectoral fins. The very same bright color is more typical for scorpions living in the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. I did not notice any special lesions on the fish body caused by diseases or pathologies associated with a change in color.
According to ichthyologists, it is still impossible to say for sure that this individual came to us from the Mediterranean, because long-term migration is not characteristic of sedentary species of the Black Sea fish. However, there is a version that the "anomaly" preventing the scorpion from merging with the environment could have appeared during molting or spawning, although ruffs usually breed in May - July.
