The fantastic creatures of a Murmansk fisherman have captivated the British media. Goblin fish and ghost shark. New photos of creepy sea creatures from Roman Fedortsov Fedortsov Twitter

A resident of the Vologda region, who once caught a “hefty ide,” now has a serious competitor in popularity. The Murmansk fisherman became famous abroad, and was already called an “Internet hit.” Major publications such as Mirror, The Independent, The Sun, Mashable and others wrote about him and his catch.

Screenshot from the movie "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"

Let's not waste time and present the translation of the article Daily Mail about the fantastic creatures of the Murmansk fisherman. But I’ll warn you right away that these inhabitants of the aquatic depths are not very photogenic:

Scary alien creatures from the depths:
Russian fisherman becomes an Internet hit
after posting his strange catches on Twitter

.Murmansk resident Oleg Fedortsov unveiled a terrifying catch
. A fisherman works on a trawler in a port in northwestern Russia
. The catch consists of eight-legged arthropods and fish with dagger-like teeth.

It's easy enough to forget that another world lives right below us - a mysterious ecosystem of the deep ocean, beneath the surface of which the creatures from your nightmares lurk. But one Twitter account will make you think twice before dipping your toes in the water at the beach.

Murmansk resident Oleg Fedortsov showed a terrifying catch from eight-legged arthropod fish to fish with dagger teeth.
A fisherman working on a trawler in a port in northwestern Russia shared his amazing findings earlier this year, The Moscow Times reports. In addition to his Twitter account, Fedortsov also shares images of his catches on Flickr.

Among the many creatures discovered was the frilled shark, an elusive eel-like shark with rows of fearsome teeth. Due to the presence of primitive features, the frilled shark is called a “living fossil”. The fisherman also posted a photo of the chimera, a fish known as the ghost shark.

Chimeras are known for their winged fins and long, whip-like tails - images taken by Fedortsov show their glowing green eyes. But this glow only occurs when exposed to light. In the darkness of the sea, ghost sharks appear to have sunken, “dead” eyes.

Like sharks and rays, chimeras have a cartilaginous skeleton. Fedortsov may have a better understanding of deep-sea creatures than most, but some of the catch baffles even him.

Below a photo of a strange creature with a massive jaw and sharp teeth, the fisherman wrote: “People are still arguing...who is this?”
On Twitter, many joined the discussion. Many argued that the sample about which we're talking about, - black malacoste, deep-sea fish from the genus Malacosteus.
But not all he catches are fish.

One photo shows a huge orange "sea spider" - a marine arthropod with long, thin legs about the size of a human hand.

Similar creatures were recently discovered in the Arctic and southern oceans, where their paw span reaches 25 centimeters.
These sea "spiders" are actually pycnogons, a type of primitive marine arthropod. They grow to enormous sizes as a result of a phenomenon known as polar gigantism, but scientists don't know why.

A scary fish with large teeth is also on the list of surprising fish caught in the trawl. According to Fedortsov, this is a sable saber fish.

Another strange fish, with bulging red eyes and lips, was identified as a type of longtail.

It is also known as grenadier, and can be found deep underwater almost anywhere (from the shores of the Arctic to Antarctica).
While deep sea creatures tend to have alien species, it is also known that changes in pressure can affect the appearance of some creatures when they are brought to the surface.

Thousands of feet below sea level, deep-sea creatures are exposed to extremely high pressure.

Some of the creatures can withstand significant vertical migrations, but the lower pressures of the upper world are known to cause metabolic problems in other creatures, and can even affect their shape.

This effect is clearly visible in the example of the blobfish, a creature that has become the “ugliest animal” in the world according to surveys.

The most terrible animals live at the bottom, the most bizarre - off the coast of Africa

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We are accustomed to this world. There is a lot of amazing and beautiful things in it, but behind the everyday monotonous rhythm of life, everyday worries and difficulties, we do not notice anything around us. Let's calmly pass by a bud of rare color and not pay attention to the northern lights overhead.

Roman Fedortsov from Murmansk made a small revolution in social networks: forced thousands of people to look at photographs of unusual sea ​​creatures and remember about Mother Nature. Komsomolskaya Pravda spoke with a sailor whose photographs are known to the whole world. But few people know who makes them and how.

"Not scary, but interesting!"

Roman has been going to sea for 17 years. In 2000, he graduated from Moscow State Technical University with a degree in Fishing Industry Technological Engineer, and then was assigned to the Murmansk Trawling Fleet.

I’ve always loved photographing unusual underwater inhabitants,” Roman Fedortsov tells KP. - For a long time he worked in the Central-Eastern Atlantic, off the coast of Africa: Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau. Those waters are rich in strange fish. Currently I work in the Norwegian and Barents Seas. Here, too, sometimes you come across interesting specimens. I took photographs and sometimes posted them on Instagram. But popularity came after I registered on Twitter and began posting photos there.

Roman publishes many of his photographs directly from the ship, where there is Internet. Some pictures appear already from land - in one flight so much material is collected that you have to keep posting and posting. By the way, Roman himself is not photographed.

The popularity of photographs of unusual fish, which often look like aliens from other planets or revived heroes of pagan legends and traditions, was similar to the acceleration of a racing car. The photos instantly spread across the network, and in a matter of days they were published by dozens of media outlets and thousands of users in Europe, the USA, and Asia. The Japanese and Chinese, who love everything unusual and creepy, were especially delighted.

- Roman, aren’t you scared and disgusted to take these fish in your hands? It’s impossible to look at some of them without shuddering.

I'll say it differently, interesting! It may have been scary before, but now it’s interesting! The only thing I can say is that you need to be careful when processing your catch in fisheries off the coast of Africa. There are many poisonous fish in those waters.

By the way, some fish actually look quite normal. Just watch popular science films about marine life, for example, about commercial fish. Smooth scales, normal sized eyes, ideal body proportions for swimming. But when fish are pulled from the depths to the surface by trawl, a sharp and large pressure drop occurs. The case when the eyes pop out of their sockets, the belly swells or, conversely, decreases. And it turns out to be a monster. As Roman says, even the usual halibut can be photographed in such a way that you do not recognize it as a valuable commercial fish. But many of the characters in the sailor’s photographs look alien even in their native habitat.

- Where are the most strange fish? IN northern seas or southern?

The further south you go, the more amazing and beautiful fish you can find. In my work, I encountered the most interesting specimens in the fishery in Atlantic Ocean, in the region of Guinea-Bissau, Africa,” says the Murmansk resident.

By the way, sometimes other things get into the trawl. For example, whale bones or an empty 200-liter barrel. Sailors do not like such greetings from the blue world, because they can break the gear, especially if trawling takes place in bad weather, which is not uncommon in the work of fishermen.

Throw it away or eat it?

Roman Fedortsov often photographs the inhabitants of great depths. How do fish that live in the kingdom of darkness and cold end up in a trawl along with those that swim almost at the surface? As Roman explained, fishing can also take place at great depths. For example, in the Irminger Sea off Greenland, trawling takes place at a depth of about 950 meters. Enough to hook the monsters. For them, getting caught in the net is certain death.

Due to the sharp pressure drop, almost all “monsters” do not survive, explains Roman Fedortsov. - Incidental catches such as chimeras are thrown overboard.

Fishermen don't taste monsters. Probably, their colleagues from Asian countries would not be against such a culinary adventure, because the fish that seems inedible to us may turn out to be a delicacy in Japan. But for Russians, familiar dishes create an appetite.

Sailors are resourceful people! - Roman laughs. - They can cook unusual fish if they want. But we didn't experiment. Although they ate grenadier and salted lumpfish caviar. There is more than enough food on board, and for fish soup there is nothing better than perch, halibut and cod.

Where there is fame and talent, there is always dangerous mediocrity. As soon as Roman Fedortsov’s social networks became popular (there are already more than 119 thousand subscribers on Twitter alone, and 190 on Instagram), people immediately appeared who wanted to cash in on it. The Murmansk resident’s accounts were hacked, and the network was flooded with fake pages.

It's inevitable. It's unpleasant, but that's the reality. Much, by the way, depends on the support services of a particular social network. For example, Twitter responds very quickly to requests to remove fake pages. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the Instagram support service,” the sailor is judicious about the situation.

See Roman Fedortsov’s real accounts in “Verified by KP”.

There is no life without the sea

It is possible that someday our sailors’ trawl, and at the same time the lens of Roman Fedortsov, will catch a fish unknown to science and considered extinct (read “Competently”). This has happened more than once when, for example, a prehistoric shark was accidentally discovered in a fishery. So far, the sailor has been able to recognize all of his characters, including thanks to users of the World Wide Web, among whom there are many specialists in marine flora and fauna.

Roman's subscribers are waiting for his new photos - the army of fans of fantastic fish is growing every day. And the sailor himself promises that there will be photographs.

For 17 years I have become accustomed to this mode of work and lifestyle, and with very with great difficulty I imagine what it would be like to work on the shore. More precisely, I have no idea yet,” says the Murmansk resident.

By the way, Roman loves to photograph beautiful fish and seascapes. So we'll be waiting for new pictures from him for an entertaining after-school nature lesson.

COMPETENTLY

Even scientists, who, it would seem, have seen this more than once, look at the sailor’s photographs with interest.

Roman may also come across a species unknown to science, the find of which will be devalued by the lack of information about the full appearance of the fish and its location, says senior researcher at the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute (MMBI) Oksana Kudryavtseva.- Therefore, we would like photographs of these rare or unusual fish to contain not only individual fragments of the body, but also the entire fish with its fins spread, from all angles.

When a fish is trawled to the surface, it often changes its appearance due to pressure drop and “crush.” Photo: Roman FEDORTSOV

Many of the fish in Roman Fedortsov’s photographs live at depths under high pressure, where there is little light, and the water temperature drops to -2. This is why they look so strange, but as Oksana Kudryavtseva explains, there are no “pathologies”. All the features are just like in the textbook:

Big head, but thin body, thinning towards the end like a tail;

Large teeth and stomach;

The muscles and bones are soaked with water so that pressure does not hurt (but if such a fish is pulled to the surface, it will swell, its eyes will bulge, and its insides will come out);

VERIFIED "KP"

Official pages of Roman Fedortsov, where you can follow his photographs.

A sailor from Murmansk, Roman Fedortsov, who works on a fishing vessel, continues to publish on his social networks photos of fish that he comes across while fishing. The inhabitants of the bottom of the sea in his photographs are one more terrible than the other, although Roman sees special beauty in each of them.

Now you can follow the fisherman on Telegram, where he publishes photos not only of fish, but also of the inside of the ship.

Since Roman became famous throughout the country for his shocking photographs, a lot of interesting things have happened in the man’s life. Firstly, Roman tries to keep up with modern trends, and therefore started a telegram channel called “Notes from a Bottle.” There he now publishes not only photos of terrible creatures from the bottom of the sea, but also talks more about life on the ship itself.

This is, for example, what the galley on their ship looks like.

And so is the everyday work process.

Roman started his Telegram channel on January 1 and with his first message he notified all his subscribers (there are 1,626 of them so far) that New Year was forced to cope on the ship, all in work.

For example, admire the expressive eyes of this sea bass.

And in the eyes of this fish you can drown. After all, her pupil is a copy of Saturn.

The look of the fish below proves that cats aren't the only ones who can be unhappy. Even the grumpy cat Merlin may have yet to train to reach that level.

The frilled shark's specialty is its teeth, from which no prey can escape.

Some fish are beautiful in such a specific way that we will probably never appreciate it.

Halibuts, for example, completely break all stereotypes about the appearance of fish (just like body-positive models with a beard) and show off eyes that are not quite symmetrically located.

Despite the fact that the fish and I are so different, Roman’s photo shows how much we have in common. Isn't this what we look like when we've had too much of an invigorating drink?

And this fish is clearly on Monday and hasn’t gotten enough sleep.

The American hydrolag, according to some users, looks like a rapper.

Some animals are more reminiscent of some mythical characters. For example, this is what a goblin fish looks like (yes, that’s its real name).

And so - the Japanese spider crab, which allows algae and small crustaceans to live on it. Somewhat reminiscent of Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean.

And here the dragon arrived. As Roman clarifies, the photo is not retouched at all.

It happens that Roman also gets his hands on cuties like sea anemones that look like persimmons.

New artifact for Stalker. Disgusting beauty from the depths.
It's alive
A new artifact for Stalker.
Living Disgusting Beauty from the Bottom of the Sea

— Roman Fedortsov (@rfedortsov)