Maltese Monster? Weird Fish Skeleton Washes Up In Selmun Following Last Week’s Stormy Spell
Sea monsters, giant squids, Mothman, Bigfoot… every country has something, but Malta’s mythical creatures are too few and far between. Well, that could all change very soon, and it’s all thanks to one long boy found in Selmun last weekend.
On Saturday afternoon, a photo uploaded from Selmun drew the attention of one man’s Facebook friends for one very glaring reason; chilling on the seaside rocks next to his dog Alfie was an elongated and rather large skeleton of a sea creature.
“What fish did Alfie find?” the man, Peter England, asked on Facebook. Well, we’re not saying it’s a radioactive monster that emerged from the depths after some alien testing… but it loos like a radioactive monster that emerged from the depths after some alien testing.
“That looks like a dinosaur,” one of the earliest comments read. “You never know what is in that sea.”
“A baby Nessy,” one sarcastic comment chimed in, with another affectionately dubbing the skeleton Selmuness.
Beyond the cheeky comment or two, though, people were quick to suggest a couple of more terrestrial explanations.
“Probably a gallina that big,” one person said, referencing the spiny, croaking, sometimes poisonous (and quite frankly alien-looking) piper gurnard. However, the skull of this particular specimen alone looks nearly as large as what entire gurnards usually grow to.
“It could easily be a tuna,” another chimed in, with another person proposing the notoriously large blue fin tuna as a possible contender.
“With that head, acciola?” one more suggestion read, looking instead at the amberjack, a carnivorous species that mainly feeds on squid. If it does turn out to be an acciola, though, it would definitely be among one of the largest specimen in the world; a record-breaking, 57-kilo monster amberjack caught in the Gulf back in 2014 looked just about the same size.
And for those of you thinking it’s all some elaborate hoax, we’ve got some news for you…
“It’s real,” Peter told Lovin Malta when contacted for a comment. “I’ve got no idea what fish it is though.”
He even shared some more snaps of the monster, including a close-up which I’m sure will haunt my dreams for at least a couple of days.