Poisonous puffer fish found dead on Dutch island beach

DutchNews.nl, Thursday 30 October 2014

The beached puffer (NOS/Ecomare)

A dead puffer fish has been found washed up on the beach of the Wadden Sea island of Texel.

The bizarre find was made by staff of the Ecomare marine centre during a walk. The fish, 51 centimetres long, has the latin name Lagocephalus lagocephalus and is only found in tropical and sub-tropical eastern Atlantic waters.

‘It was a real tropical surprise,’ Ecomare workers Pierre Bonnet and Arthur Oosterbaan said on the organisation's website.

Frozen

The fish has now been frozen until the centre’s experts decide what to do with it. It had been attacked by gulls and is not suitable for public display.

The fish, which could blow up like a balloon when alive, has prickles on its belly and four teeth in its hard beak as protection against predators.

Known as the oceanic puffer in English, the fish does not yet have a Dutch name.