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We Can’t Tell If Rare ‘Doomsday Fish’ Found By Snorkelers Is A Fish, Alien Or Something In Between

Bank's Oarfish

(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Ilan Hulkower Contributor
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A group of kayakers and snorkelers found a 12-foot long oarfish that washed up in a Californian cove last weekend, according to a post by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The oarfish is “a rare deep-sea fish” and only 20 such fish have “washed up in California since 1901,” the Scripps Institution write in their Facebook post. The post contained photos of the odd looking fish. (RELATED: Rare Hoodwinker Sunfish Over 7 Feet Long Washes Ashore In Oregon)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service and California Sea Grant members assisted the group in transporting the oarfish to a government facility where a necropsy will be performed to determine the cause of the fish’s death, according to the post. “After the necropsy, the specimen will find a home in the Scripps Marine Vertebrate Collection — one of the largest collections of deep-sea fish in the world — where scientists will be able to further study this mysterious species,” the Scripps Institution adds.

A video obtained by WKYC Channel 3 shows kayakers congregating around the oarfish and lifting it onto their kayaks. It then shows them closing in on the beach.

Another video posted on YouTube by a kayaking account appears to show the team hauling the fish onto a truck.

Oarfish are also known as “doomsday fish” due to legends that the sightings of these strange looking creatures are harbingers of disasters like earthquakes, a blog from 2023 by Ocean Conservancy noted. Japanese folklore dubbed the creatures as “ryugu no tsukai” — messengers from the sea god’s palace, Discover Magazine reported.

Several dead oarfish washed up on Japanese beaches in 2010 before the March 2011 earthquake that left almost 20,000 dead and triggered the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident, the outlet reported. Dead or dying oarfish were reported as washing up on the shores of the Philippines just days before an earthquake struck the country, the outlet noted.

A 2019 study published in the Seismological Society of America’s Bulletin found no pattern between the emergence of “deep-sea fish” and earthquakes. The study concluded that the folklore surrounding these fish was “a superstition attributed to the illusory correlation between the two events.”