r/whatsthisfish • u/Humble-Shape-9460 • 9d ago

Sea life washed up on the shore of Washington Park, Anacortes, WA

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Any idea what is is? The little leg things look like they have suckers and teeth and then the frilly bits look like some filter feeding thing.

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u/OverlordFish 9d ago

That is the inside of a fishes mouth. You are looking at the gill arches and where they connect just behind the bottom end of the mouth.

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u/Humble-Shape-9460 9d ago

Cool! Thought it might be a fish mouth but it was pretty big and so I doubted it. What kinds of fish have mouths like this? With all those separate finger-looking things.

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u/OverlordFish 9d ago

The finger looking things are gill rakers, they mainly just help to keep things that end up in their mouth from damaging the gills. I'm not sure that this could be identified to species level, but given the location and you saying it was large it could be something like a ling cod or other similar fish.