An unidentified beauty posed with a very strange sea-beast in this photograph taken for the Tacoma Times in August, 1948. Al Meissner and E.C. Berg were trolling for salmon off Neah Bay when this denizen of the deep, an unidentified fish came swimming by their boat. They brought him back to Tacoma with them and no one in Tacoma or in Neah Bay knew what they had caught. The fish had a long, slim eel-like body, 5' 3" long, barely 2" wide and 9" deep. Its skin looked like it was painted with aluminum. Its red fins ran nearly the full length on both the dorsal and ventral sides, and the body tapered to an almost indefinable tail. It had huge, protruding, owl-like eyes and a retractable snout giving it the appearance of a sea horse. Since then it has been determined that the fish was a King-of-the-salmon (Trachipterus altivelis).
