A fish that was alive during James Madison's presidency was caught off the coast of Alaska.
The aquatic elder is most likely the oldest rockfish ever discovered. Troy Tydingco of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said the oldest Rockfish he knew of was 175-years old and was 32 and half inches long, according to Discovery News.
Henry Liebman broke the record when he caught a fish that was 41 inches long and weighed close to 40 pounds.
Samples of the fish have been sent to a Juneau lab where scientists will look at the fish's ear bone called an otolith to determine its age. The small bone has growth rings similar to a tree's.
Scientists still don't understand much about animal's lifespans besides the fact smaller members of a species tend to live longer than larger specimens. They believe shorter lives in larger creatures may have to do with more opportunity for abnormal cell growth, which can lead to cancer.
The oldest known creature was quite small, a quahog clam picked up in the waters of Iceland. Experts believe the mollusk was about 400 years old.
"I knew it was abnormally big, [but I] didn't know it was a record until on the way back - we looked in the Alaska guidebook that was on the boat," Liebman told the Daily Sitka Sentinel according to Discovery News.
Liebman plans to mount the giant rockfish on his wall so he can continue telling the story in the years to come.
Rockfish are fierce hunters; they have been known to eat "sand lance, herring, flatfishes, crustaceans" and even other rockfish, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game stated.
The fish often make permanent homes; some even live their entire lives on one rock pile.
The species are very vulnerable to overfishing. They are not endangered yet, but the department worries they will be in danger soon if the species is not protected.
