Harry Rietze hauls the 70-pound ragfish to a freezer in the Haines Packing Co. for storage. Brad Badger photo.

As the tide ebbed down the beach outside his house Friday, Harry Rietze discovered a mysterious sea creature that one scientific paper described as “a puzzling fish with soft bones.”

The brown, frozen animal Rietze found is a ragfish, and little is known about them. A few have washed up on beaches in Gustavus and Juneau,…