A fishing boat off the coast of Izhuit Bay found some strange visitors in its seine nets — tropical fish called armorheads.

Three armorheads were caught on two different fishing boats in Izhuit Bay. One boat brought the fish to Rob Swanson, field station manager with the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Observer Program. The boat’s skipper said it was caught either Sept. 1 or Aug. 31. Swanson said he heard a report of a fourth armorhead caught off the coast of Duck Bay.

The fish are native to the southern Pacific and generally congregate around seamounts around Hawaii and other Pacific islands. According to an American Fisheries Society publication, they are called “armorheads” because their heads are encased in exposed bone.

Swanson said the fish are a rare sight in Alaskan waters. As far as he knows, the fish has only been caught a dozen times in Alaska waters and never in near-shore waters before Sept. 1.

In the 1960s and ’70s there was a commercial fishery for armorheads, Swanson said. Russian and Japanese boats fished the armorheads heavily and, according to Swanson’s research, the fish is down to .1 percent of its original population.

These days armorheads are a protected species since they are so close to extinction. The fish were an easy target. Although juveniles live away from the seamounts, adults return to spawn.

Fishing boats had little trouble finding them because, “they come back to the same place all the time,” Swanson said.

Mirror writer Andrew Wellner can be reached via e-mail at awellner@kodiakdailymirror.com.