Extremely rare "doomsday fish" found off Southern California coast
Extremely rare "doomsday fish" found off Southern California coast
Oarfish have a reputation as harbingers of disasters — and this one was spotted just two days before a 4.4 quake rattled Los Angeles.
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!
57Yeah, likewise. There's a shot of the mangled, rotting fish corpse on the sand surrounded in flies and people are just prodding it. Putting aside how bad it must smell, why the fuck would you want to touch it at all?!
4
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.
49Considering other animals have been known to leave areas, there seems to be something we are missing or currently unable to detect/measure.
34My understanding was that fault lines create low pressure waves that animals can detect before an earthquake occurs. I think these days we have equipment that can generally detect them before animals do.
3
I caught one of these in 2020 during the height of the pandemic (in Animal Crossing).
40I hope I catch morefish!
14
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.
27Ok
6The term is more familiar in Asia on countries along the pacific ring of fire, where fishermen and people living on the coasts see the surfacing of deep sea creatures as omens of a big disaster coming, usually an earthquake.
5
Catching these in Animal Crossing is such a thrill
13it looks like a beebee f'ing whale Jay, wtf is that thing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n2cIeIpzLA
1CBS News - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
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