Snorkeler Spots Tiny Fish Wearing Man’s Lost Wedding Ring

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wedding ring around fish https://app.asana.com/0/1135954362417873/1200317627082329/f Credit: Susan Prior

An Australian snorkeler recently spotted a little fish with a big golden ring around its neck… like a flashy chain.

Incredibly enough, the species of fish is what’s known as a sand mullet.

The blinged out mullet fish was spotted by Susan Prior, an experienced snorkeler and an environmental conservationist, writer, and editor from down under.

She explained that she has frequently seen objects like hair ties and plastic beverage rings wrapped around fish necks like a collar. The objects get stuck around the fish while they’re rummaging for food through sand on the ocean floor.

However, she knew the fish she spotted on her recent dive was wearing a different kind of jewelry.

She photographed the ring baring fish and uploaded the pics to her blog on the internet.

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From there she remembered that someone had previously posted on the local community Facebook page about a man’s wedding ring that had gone missing in the same body of water and she wondered if it could be the same ring.

There is hope that the ring can be retrieved. But for that to happen Ms. Prior told Newsweek that a team of people will relocate the fish and catch it with a net before carefully trying to remove the gold ring from the fish’s neck.

“It’ll be no easy task. The sand mullet is very skittish and keeps on the edge of the school.

We need to get quite a few of us in there to corral it and then use a throw net to try and catch it. It really is going to be difficult.”

She added that she’s hoping to return the aquatic piece of jewelry to the man who lost it.

“Always trying to find the positives of any given situation, I see this as an incentive to encourage someone to relieve the poor fish of its handicap.

Here’s hoping we can deliver a happy ending to his story and for the owner of the wedding ring! The mullet has a life to live and it’s only fair he gets to live it.”

The diver who photographed the special little fish used attention from the incident on her blog to raise awareness for proactive anti-pollution efforts aimed at keeping plastic, garbage, and other lost items out of the ocean where they can cause ecological harm.

According to her, some of the best ways reduce your environmental impact on the ocean is to snip the plastic rings that come around beverages and avoid polluting the waters with other garbage — even items like golf balls, which eventually disintegrate and pose a serious environmental hazard.

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