An anglerfish’s search for the sun goes viral, but science has a different story

In recent days, the anglerfish has become a symbol of hope and light for the extremely online — which is very nice but not exactly based on truth.

Last week, scientists spotted an anglerfish near the surface of the water off the coast of Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands, far from the depths of its usual home. Anglerfish typically live in the deep sea and are famous for using a bright little orb at the end of its lure to attract prey and eat them with razor-like teeth. You might remember this guy from Finding Nemo.

The fish aren't as big as you might think, and the specific fish that was spotted off the Islands was only about six inches long. A little baby, one might say. The internet saw this little baby leaving the depths of its home and floating toward the sun and gave it a bit of its own story — albeit one that's likely pretty far from the truth. One post on X said, "She finally saw a light she didn’t create." (Anglerfish don't really create their own light, another user pointed out; it's produced by tiny glowing bacteria called photobacterium on its lure).

People created fan art, poems, and TikTok videos and even got tattoos depicting the anglerfish's "search for the sun." One of the most-liked images shows a painting of an anglerfish rising to the surface with the words, "And for my last day, I will go see the sun."

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It's all a very sweet message. But, as many scientists and anglerfish aficionados online have pointed out, the likely reasons this little fish went to the surface are far less romantic than a final, life-long dream to see the sun.

"It’s possible that the anglerfish ate a fish with a swim bladder or gas gland, and as that gas kept expanding, it drew the predator upward in the water column," Bruce Robison, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, told National Geographic. "It’s the sort of thing that, once you get started, it’s hard to control it."

Ben Frable, the senior collection manager of marine vertebrates at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Southern California, told the New York Times that the anglerfish in the video seemed to be sick, stressed, or injured.

"A lot of things could be going on," Frable told the Times. "The animal could have been in distress, or worked its way into shallow water accidentally, or was being pursued by a predator."

There's no reason to believe this animal was moving toward the surface because it wanted to see the sun or because it spent its life with some unbelievable drive for warmth. But, hey, the art is good.