August 16, 2017 — Todd Goodell didn’t know what he’d hauled up. Offshore at Hydrographer Canyon aboard the Kingfisher, he opted for some deep drop fishing before pressing his hunt for tuna again. With a dual-hook sea bass rig weighted with sash weights and baited with squid, he’d pulled up familiar fish: cod, pollock, tilefish, redfish, and conger eels from 700 feet down.
But the hot yellow, orange, and pink coloration of a foot-long fish that eventually came aboard wasn’t something the veteran commercial fisherman had seen before in New England. It looked tropical, he said, and he treated it with caution, alert for hidden, potentially venomous spines.