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NOAA Fisheries researcher David Csepp identified it as a manefish, and was immediately puzzled.

Fourteen Alaska manefish have been preserved. All but the Lynn Canal specimen have been netted in unprotected, open waters off the eastern Bering Sea and the western Aleutian Islands.

Csepp's findings are due out in the winter edition of "Northwestern Naturalist," a highly respected journal of vertebrate biology.

"A big reason why we publicized this is to try to get the information out to the general public," Csepp said. "It may create a spark of interest in the scientific community to take a little more interest in rare and unusual species and document and preserve them."

There's very little known about the family of manefish. Scientists began learning about the creature in 1903. They're thought to travel as individuals, rather than in schools. Thus, they are difficult to find.

The oddly shaped fish, called the "northern angel fish" by Csepp, are extremely compressed, with a deep, narrow body and a flat face. The top of its head is almost square. Its dorsal fin begins inches from the top of its head and lends the fish its "mane" prefix.

"We don't see these deep-dwelling fish very often," said Bruce Wing, a NOAA research biologist who's studied Southeast Alaska species since 1962. "Whether or not this came in as part of an unusual surge of water across the shelf into lower Chatham Strait, or whether it's representing a population that reproduces here in Inside waters, that's still unknown.

"But it's important to understand that these waters that we have are in direct contact with the central Gulf of Alaska," he said.

No stomach sample has been conducted on an Alaska manefish, so its diet is unknown. Csepp speculates that the fish mainly feed on shrimp and smaller fish.

"There's a lot of water out there to study, and there's so much we don't know about what's out there," Csepp said.

The Lynn Canal fish was caught in 820 feet of water in a deep channel west of Vanderbilt Reef.

NOAA Fisheries scientists pulled it up with an assortment of juvenile and adult pollock during a small-sample, mid-water trawl survey control study on the decline of northern sea lion populations.

"We caught this one little guy toward the end of the survey and identified him and realized that none had been caught in protected waters," Csepp said. "A light went off in my head, and I got kind of excited. This could be a brand new habitat since this fish has only been seen in open waters before."

The Lynn Canal manefish is preserved in NOAA's containment building at its Auke Bay laboratory.

At 6 inches long, the fish is the smallest of the 14 preserved manefish discovered in Alaska. The largest is 13.5 inches.

Most of those 14 were netted between 1983 and 2003 in the unprotected waters of the Eastern Bering Sea and the western Aleutian Islands by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center's North Pacific Groundfish Observer Program during mid-water commercial pollock trawling.

Two manefish have been caught in deep, open waters off British Columbia, one near Vancouver Island and one near Queen Charlotte Islands.

Many of the 14 are preserved at the University of Washington. Duane Stevenson, a Ph.D. student in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the university, saw a preview of Csepp's findings and realized it was a chance to update the existing literature on the habitat of manefish.

"Just by catching one, it tells us a lot about potential," Csepp said. "He was so far inland, he wasn't on the edge, so there's a good chance that this is his actual habitat. This could be a rearing area, some type of protected area for juveniles. We just don't know."

The manefish dwells so deep, it would be unlikely for a sportfisherman to find one without jigging at a depth greater than 700 feet. More plausible is that a rockfish trawler would pull one from the bottom.

It would take at least a dozen Lynn Canal specimens to build somewhat plausible information on what the manefish is doing in this area and what it eats.

"We do have a pretty good handle on all the species that are in Lynn Canal, but there's always new species to find," Csepp said.

Csepp once found two new species, a kelp perch and a black-eyed Gobi, while beach-seining along the Queen Charlotte Islands.

"We were beach-seining in an area which hadn't been beach-seined," he said. "When you're in a new area, you have to keep your eyes open and you have to be vigilant. And when you see something new and unusual, you have to read the literature to verify they haven't been found before."

• Korry Keeker can be reached at korry.keeker@juneauempire.com