Fishing Report Update: Expert Says Stargazer is a Toadfish

Heading out of Port Jefferson Harbor for a day of blue fishing at the middle grounds (possibly practicing for the ) Mt. Sinai resident, Sean Reilly Jr., 13, snagged what he described as an "organge blub with eyes looking up at me" on Thursday.

His father (also Sean Reilly) quickly snapped a few pictures of the unusual creature and sent it over to Patch.

"A stargazer," the senior Reilly said in a text along with the photo.

But what he initially identified as a Northern Stargazer (Astroscopus guttatus) may just be an Oyster Toadfish (Opsanus tau) instead.

We originally reported it as that but after the initial report went up, Patch reader, Donna Edgar emailed us asking if the fish was possibly misrepresented.

"This fish looks a bit like a toadfish," she wrote in an email. "Is it possibly an Oyster Toadfish-Opsanus tau?"

For further proof, Edgar then provided a link to a website with a handsome picture of a toadfish in a tank, along with some additional information.

"This is a photo of an oyster toadfish-Opsanus tau," she said in the follow up email. "I think the 'stargazer' might have been a toadfish instead."

Edgar should know her fish. She graduated from Southampton College in 1972 with a major in Marine Science.

"Actually the first woman to graduate with this degree from Southampton-LIU," she said.

With her degree, Edgar has been studying the waters around Long Island for decades, teaching Marine Biology at Bayport-Blue Point High School for 20 years, SCUBA/Marine Science at Southampton College for 30 years and SCUBA at Kings Point U.S. Merchant Marine Academy for 30 years.

"I have been enjoying the waters and amazing marine life of  Long Island my whole life," she said. "I think it is important to know what is in our backyard in order to protect it."

She takes her students to collect marine life in the Long Island Sound and the Great Sound Bay to "identify it and eventually return them back" because as she said, "you can't protect what you don't know you have."

During the school year Edgar sets up ten saltwater fish tanks  of local bay species  so her students can "observe animal behavior and learn to appreciate the marine treasures we have right here in the Great South Bay or the Sound."

According to njscuba.com, a website dedicated to scuba diving in New Jersey and Long Island, "toadfish are favorite laboratory subjects, and have even flown in orbit on the Space Shuttle."

They have "ugly ogre-like faces" and "make loud croaking noises during breeding season."

If you caught an odd or rare fish in the waters around Port Jefferson send us an email with a photo and some details to lon.cohen@patch.com.