Kayakers and snorkelers exploring the Southern California coast spotted an extremely rare oarfish, nicknamed a “doomsday fish” since they are seen in some parts of the world as harbingers of imminent disasters. It’s one of less than two dozen confirmed sightings of an oarfish in the state in over 120 years, according to UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The oarfish is a “strikingly large, odd-looking fish” with a long, silvery, ribbon-shaped body, according to the Ocean Conservatory. The fish can grow to more than 30 feet long, and have large eyes and “foreboding” red spines in a crown-like cluster. Typically, these fish are deep-sea dwellers and thrive in waters that are the least explored by scientists.
I understand that this is an extremely rare fish sighting, but seeing all these smiling people touching a dead fish they’re currently in the water with is so weird and creepy. Don’t touch dead things! You don’t know why they’re dead!
Damn it, now we have Doomsday fish AIDS. I hope you’re happy now oceangoers.
Stop getting fancy with it. Everyone knows diseases are named animal name-pox so it’d be doomsdaypox lol /s
I wonder if their tendency to appearance before an earthquake is just coincidence, or if there are signs, like changes in water temperature, changes in current, bursts of electromagnetic energy, etc, that can indicate that an earthquake is going to occur several days in advance; and oarfish are sensitive to it, resulting in them surfacing and dying from depressurization.
Considering other animals have been known to leave areas, there seems to be something we are missing or currently unable to detect/measure.
It’s clearly the other way around. These animals leave, causing plates to slip because of reduced weight.
It could be. Maybe it surfaced because of some detection, then the depressurization killed it.
I caught one of these in 2020 during the height of the pandemic (in Animal Crossing).
I had no idea what a “doomsday fish” was, making it a pretty confusing headline, I nearly skipped the story. If on the other hand it had just said “oarfish” I would have known exactly what they were talking about and found the headline more interesting.
Catching these in Animal Crossing is such a thrill
