Distinctive, slender deep-sea creature, also known as ‘doomsday’ fish, seen wriggling on Baja California beach. A shimmery, slinky oarfish – a deep-sea creature that is rarely seen near the surface – was spotted in Baja California Sur, along Mexico’s Pacific Coast, this month. A group of people visiting the area noticed the shiny, wriggling fish along the beach, and tried to guide it back into the water.
The slender creatures live at depths between 660 and 3,280ft underwater, and on the rare occasions that they have been seen by humans, they have usually been dead – washed ashore after storms. In Baja California Sur, Robert Hayes of Idaho, who was visiting the beach with his wife, saw a live fish and quickly began filming it.
Hayes told the Washington Post he had never seen an oarfish before, but recognized the species – which has inspired centuries of folklore and are sometimes referred to as “doomsday fish” due to their mythical reputation as predictors of natural disasters.
The fish spotted in Baja California Sur appeared relatively small. Oarfish are typically about 10ft long, though the largest recorded oarfish measured 36ft in length, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. They live in the mesopelagic region of the ocean, where light cannot reach, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes as the “least explored ecosystem on the planet”.
The oarfish Hayes came across appeared injured, he told the Post, and was reportedly taken to a marine biologist. This oarfish was spotted not long after a black seadevil anglerfish – which also lives thousands of feet underwater – was observed near the surface off the coast of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Oarfish were spotted in California three times last year, and scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said that changes in ocean conditions could be partly responsible for the increase in sightings.
Historians have disputed the modern idea that Japanese folklore identified the fish as harbingers of doom, though one told NPR that they could be one of several creatures that people have identified as “messengers of the Dragon Palace” in fairytales.
