Elephant Fish

The elephant fish is not a true bony fish but a chimaera, a relative of the sharks and rays with a smooth, scaleless body and a distinctive plough-shaped appendage hanging from the tip of its snout. It is typically silvery with darker mottling and large green eyes, and swims with a slow, wing-like beat of its broad pectoral fins.

It favours sandy and muddy bottoms where it roots for buried molluscs and crustaceans, moving inshore at times to spawn. Divers seldom encounter it in the open, but it is a familiar catch to Cape anglers and trawlers.