The authors discovered the grotesque-looking fish on an expedition to West Antarctica in 2018. They noticed that in two species of crowned notothen, around 30 percent of specimens had the tumors. They were pale pink, raised, rough, and often covered more than a third of the surface of fish's bodies. The researchers had visited that same area, which includes Andcord Bay and Dallmann Bay, four years prior, but found no examples of fish with these tumors.