Fishermen in the Sevastopol Bay caught two puffer fish; this species has never been found in the Black Sea before, Alexander Boltachev, a senior researcher at the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, told RIA Novosti.
According to him, the fish were caught right near the quay wall, they attracted the attention of fishermen with an unusual shape. Unusual fish were taken to the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas.
The puffer fish, known in Japan as the puffer, is one of the most venomous fish in the Pacific. However, every year thousands of people consume it in Japan and Korea, where it is prepared according to certain rules. However, violations of these rules are often fatal. The puffer fish is found in the warm waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
According to Boltachev, the appearance of the blowfish in the Sevastopol bay is a real mystery.
“Apparently, two copies were here … for several months. How they could have got here, perhaps we will never know. Pufferfish prefers warm tropical waters, and over the past three weeks, the water off the coast of Sevastopol has cooled sharply … This is an extremely dangerous specimen, which you shouldn't even touch with your bare hands. Now both fish are in the laboratory of the institute, we have to find out what they ate here, and whether they were influenced by the environment of the Black Sea,”said the agency's source.