Several years ago _The National Geographic Magazine_
published a description of the angler fish, well known along the
New England coast because of a device by means of which it lures
and catches other fish. This device consists of filaments or
tendrils resembling seaweed, which are attached to the head.
When the angler is hungry, it hunts out a convenient place in
shallow waters, where its color and markings make the fish
indistinguishable from the sea-bottom. Here it lies quietly,
often as if dead, while its floating filaments, kept in motion
by the tide, decoy other fish, which never discover their
mistake until too late to escape from the angler’s merciless
jaws.
A bulletin by Theodore Gill, “Angler Fishes, Their Kinds and Ways,”
recently published by the Smithsonian Institution, and from which these
notes are obtained, says that the most extraordinary of all the anglers
are those that carry lanterns to see with.
“Some stout-bodied anglers resorted to deep and deeper waters,
where the light from the sun was faint or even ceased, and a
wonderful provision was at last developed by kindly nature,
which replaced the sun’s rays by some reflected from the fish
itself. In fact, the illicium (a prolongation of the spine)
has developed into a rod with a bulb having a phosphorescent
terminal portion, and the “bait” round it has been also modified
and variously added to; the fish has also had superadded to its
fishing apparatus a lantern and worm-like lures galore.
“How efficient such an apparatus must be in the dark depths
where these angler fishes dwell may be judged from the fact
that special laws have been enacted in some countries against
the use of torches and other lights for night fishing because
of their deadly attractiveness. Not only the curiosity of
the little deep-sea fishes, but their appetite is appealed to
by the worm-like objects close to or in relief against the
phosphorescent bulb of the anglers.”
(759)