Huge tail-dancing beasts baffle American scientists and shock residents: ‘They’re like dinosaurs’

A huge prehistoric fish is baffling American scientists and fishermen alike as more and more specimens are found in the country’s northeast.

Tarpons are nicknamed ‘The Silver King’ because of their enormous size and glistening, reflective scales.

Their large eyes make them look quite surprising, and an adult can grow up to 2.5 meters long, weigh up to 300 kilos and live up to 50 years.

But the sea creature is perhaps best known for the ‘dance’ it does when hooked, jumping and spinning in the air.

Tarpon are typically found in warmer coastal waters such as Florida, but reports of this enormous fish are now pouring in from anglers further north in New England.

‘What are they doing here? It’s really hard to say. They may be a few wayward specimens, or wandering schools of them. They are such unusual looking fish, they look like dinosaurs,” said Owen Nichols, director of marine fisheries research at the Center for Coastal Studies. Wall Street Journal.

Thomas Czernik, a graduate student at Brown University, recalled a catch while fishing on Rhode Island’s Aquidneck Island late at night for striped bass.

After two hours of waiting, he finally scored big with a ‘thunderous goal’ that cleared the line. But he was stunned by what he got.

“It was beyond anything I’ve caught before,” he told the Journal. ‘I knew it was something big, monumental. I feel happy. It’s a memory I will have forever. I’m grateful.’

As Czernik dragged the just under six-foot fish along the beach, he noticed it dancing on its tail in the darkness.

“That’s a behavior that’s unique to tarpon. But it still wasn’t registered. Who goes out into the Rhode Island surf and thinks they’re going to catch a tarpon?’

Rich Mann, a sales manager from Halifax, Massachusetts, also managed to hook a slender 6-foot tarpon while bait fishing for a bluefish off East Beach on Chappaquiddick during the annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby in September.

He described how the fish took the bait at around 8pm and ‘shot straight off the beach without stopping’.

‘Normally they run back and forth and leave at an angle. It was weird,” he remembers.

‘All I could see was a silvery reflection, but I thought that was just the fish’s splash. It was this two-meter-long slender fish that exploded out of the water.

“My friend started yelling, Tarpon! Tarpon! Tarpon! Then I realized I had a very large, rare fish on the end of my hook. “I was in shock – probably a one-in-a-million event,” he told the Journal.

Capt. Tom Weaver also secured a 6-foot tarpon weighing between 80 and 100 pounds while searching for red drum near the Hoopers Island Lighthouse in Dorchester County, Maryland.

“When you run out of Annapolis, you don’t expect to run over a tarpon an hour and a half later. My brain needed a few minutes to process this,” he told the newspaper Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

In one short video shared by Weaver, a school of seven or eight tarpon could be seen swimming on the surface of the water.

Erik Zlokovitz, recreational fisheries outreach coordinator for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said, “We have historically seen tarpon in the Maryland portion of the bay, but the number of fish spotted recently is unusual.

“This year is the first time we’ve had multiple reports of schools of tarpon, and not just a stray fish.”

Although this extremely athletic fish has been sighted around the southern Chesapeake Bay and in coastal waters off the eastern coast of Virginia in the summer, it has rarely been seen swimming around Maryland.

Marine biologists and scientists theorize that climate change and the resulting warming of normally frigid waters are causing the northward migration of tarpon and other tropical fish species.

According to the agency, DNR monitoring stations have shown a spike in water temperatures of one to two degrees since 1999.

The summer of 2024 was also particularly hot, with monitoring stations recording above-average temperatures near Hoopers Island.

A number of warm-water fish species, including the Florida Pompano, Cobia, Cutlassfish and Pompano dolphinfish, have also become increasingly common sights in the Chesapeake Bay and along the Atlantic Coast.

Tarpon are mainly found in shallow coastal waters and estuaries, but can also be found in open sea waters, around coral reefs and in some freshwater lakes and rivers.

They grow slowly, usually reaching maturity at six or seven years old, and have a special ability to swallow air at the surface if they are in a habitat that does not provide enough oxygen.

According to the Coastal fishing in clear waterThis is when they tend to dance on their tails when pulled to the surface by a fishing line – they are trying to breathe in oxygen.

Tarpon usually begin their season in the Florida Keys during late winter, reach the shallow beaches of Boca Grande in late spring and make their way to Tampa Bay before heading into the Gulf to spawn in September.

Boca Grande is known as the ‘Tarpon Capital of the World’, with the best time to catch the fish between April and July, according to the Florida Inshore Xtreme.

The Silver King may only be fished recreationally in Florida, South America and the Bahamas. They can be owned for trophy purposes for $50 per tag.

The majority of recreational fishermen practice catch-and-release fishing because the fish is not considered to have food value due to its powerful odor and numerous small, difficult-to-clean bones.