"Doomsday Fish" Discovered Off Southern California Coast - GreekReporter.com (original) (raw)
Oarfish, also known as Doomsday fish. Credit: (cropped image) flickr / NOAA Photo Library CC BY 2.0
Yet another rare oarfish has washed up on the coast of San Diego County in Southern California from the deep sea. The “doomsday” fish was found by Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers at Grandview Beach in southern California.
The oarfish is considered to be the largest vertebrate currently swimming in the ocean and lives exclusively in the depths of the sea.
This is the second time this year that an oarfish has been discovered dead in San Diego County. The first one was discovered at La Jolla Shores but was a little smaller than the one newly discovered, measuring only 9 to 10 feet long.
Researchers transported the organism to a lab
After researchers stumbled upon the oarfish, they helped transport the doomsday fish to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center so that the specimen could be preserved and studied.
The manager of the Scripps Oceanography Marine Vertebrate Collection said, “Like with the previous oarfish, this specimen, and the samples … taken from it will be able to tell us much about the biology, anatomy, genomics, and life history of [oarfish].”
A rare "doomsday fish" made its way from the deep sea to the Southern California Coast this month. It's the second time this year that such a creature, which is actually an oarfish, has been discovered dead on the shore.
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Why is the oarfish known as a “doomsday fish?”
Oarfish are known as “doomsday fish” due to their association with natural disasters in Japanese folklore. The fish is mostly known for its physical characteristics, including a dorsal fin that looks like a string and long, narrow bodies that can grow up to a staggering 30 feet long.
The oarfish’s reputation as a bad omen for natural disasters is what brought the species to fame, but unlike popular legends, being rooted in centuries-old storytelling, recent incidents have shown that the fish might actually be a doomsday fish.
For instance, back in 2011, more than 20 oarfish washed up on the shores of Japan just before the 2011 9.1 earthquake suffered by the island. Despite this coincidence, Japanese academics have dismissed the connection, labeling it a “typical illusory correlation.”
Coming across oarfish is extremely rare
The odds of coming across a doomsday fish are ridiculously slim, particularly in California. Up until this year’s finding of the two oarfish, there have only been 20 confirmed reports of doomsday fish sightings on the coast of California since the early 1900s.
This being said, it remains increasingly ominous that two specimens have washed up on the Golden State’s coast in the last six months. Researchers at the institute suggested that the most likely explanation is changes in the conditions of the ocean, with others saying it is most likely due to the shift of the natural phenomenon of “El Niño to La Niña.”