Oakland (California) has a something for which everybody is trying to find a name. Some call it a fish and others class it with the serpents. As it was caught in the bay the fish theorists maintain that their position is correct, but the contrary minded point to the barrel-shaped body and the hideous head of the something in support of their belief that it is a snake, and an ugly one at that. At all events it is the queerest looking monster ever captured in the bay of San Francisco.
    Some people claim that the Atlantic seaside hotelkeepers have permitted the one, only and original sea serpent to get away from them, and there is something about the monster that bears them out. From the tip of its ugly nose to the end of its equally ugly tail the body is 5 ½ ft long. It is round in shape, and the body tapers from the head to a fine point at the tail. The captors state that it wriggled very snakishly through the water. The thing has fins just like any well-constructed fish. The head of the monster is enough to scare a delirium tremens patient into an insane asylum. It is a very large head, shaped like a sea-lion’s, with huge staring round eyes, two small ears that lie close to the head, and a very large mouth armed with two rows of formidable looking fangs and a forked tongue. The tongue, the captors aver, darted serpentwise in and out of the mouth when the thing was alive. The head has patches of black silky hair scattered over it.
    The captors were fishing off the north side of Goat Island, when they noticed the monster wriggling in the water. The boat’s painter was speedily converted into a lariat, and when the fish-snake poked his hideous head above the water it was made prisoner. The young men had a hard fight with the monster, but they finally landed it in the boat and conveyed it to Oakland, where it has been on exhibition.
    The monster weighs 18 ¼ lb.
    A professor at Berkely University who had been studying all day and far into the darkness over the matter, has found out what the something was and triumphantly pronounced its name. The professor’s designation of the snakefish is anarrhichilthys ocellatus [Anarrhichthys ocellatus, the wolf eel]—at least that is the telegraph operator’s version of it. At all events it is a very queer fish, and it is found only in the Pacific Ocean and the arms thereof.

From— Evening News (Sydney, NSW : 1869 - 1931) 2 July 1892. Trove. National Library of Australia.