We have become all too accustomed to rain, snow and hail coming out of the sky, but today villagers in South Devon were greeted by a more unusual weather event – falling fish.
As they were waving their children off to school, a group of parents in Beeson, near Kingsbridge, witnessed the creature fall from the sky and land on the pavement nearby.
Resident Pete Moore said: “The children had just got on the school bus and a few parents were standing around having a chat. We heard a splat, we thought it was a rock or something. We went closer and saw it was a fish.
“I don’t know much about fish but I picked it up and took it home. A marine biologist friend of mine said it was a Zulu or Boar fish.”
The small orange-coloured fish are a rare sight around the shorelines of the UK, known to usually frequent deeper water.
Mr Moore, who says the fish was probably dropped by a passing seagull, decided to take it home and put it in his freezer.
“I run an education centre and I might show it to the children to make them think about nature and the environment – where did it come from and how did it get here?” he said.
Douglas Herdson, of Marine Fish Information Services, said: “Boarfish used to be fairly regularly seen in fish catches, but now are rarely caught locally but mainly found in deeper water and around the Isles of Scilly. However after the storms a number have been washed up on to the strandline around the area. These are usually dead but live ones have been found in pools on sandy beaches in Cornwall and in a rockpool at Wembury. So the best guess is that it was washed up on one of our local beaches, where it was found by a gull, but dropped whilst being taken to a quieter place to be eaten.”
