The enormous wolf-fish has caught off the island of Hokkaido, near eastern Russia, by fisherman and adventurer Hiroshi Hirasaka, who is renowned in Japan for catching and eating strange things. “This guy is super cool!”
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Of his latest caught he wrote: “It was worth flying to Shiretoko [Hokkaido] twice within three months”.
Wolffish normally grow to around 4ft, but this big boy was closer to 6ft.
Visibly straining as he holds it aloft, a Japanese fisherman grimaces as he proudly displays a terrifyingly large fish caught in the waters off Japan.
But after it was confirmed that the beast was indeed a wolffish, many social media users pointed out that it was caught close to the site of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.
Three of the Fukushima’s six nuclear reactors went into meltdown in 2011 when the plant was hit by a tsunami – the result of a huge earthquake.
The earthquake – which claimed the lives of 18,500 people – caused what was the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. Normally found swimming in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, wolffish keep to the depths and thrive on creatures found near the ocean floor.
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Recent studies suggest that rising ocean temperatures are forcing the fish to migrate further north.
