If one fish washed ashore is a sign of impending doom, how bad would it be if three wash up in quick succession?
A silvery creature up to 10 feet long, the oarfish has fueled fishermen’s tales of sea serpents — and in some cultures has been a harbinger of natural disasters.
It is rare to see oarfish near California; only 22 have washed ashore since 1901, according to UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. But in the past three months, three of them have appeared on Southern California beaches.
The latest was on Nov. 6, when an oarfish was discovered at Grandview Beach by Alison Laferriere, a doctoral student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The other two are in La Jolla and Huntington Beach.
The last time a string of oarfish came ashore in California and other parts of the world was for more than a few months in 2013 and 2014. Misty Paig-Tran, an associate professor of biology at Cal State Fullerton, has studied four of them.
Every time an oarfish appears on the sand, it is a spectacle for scientists and the general public for several reasons.
First of all, no one expects a behemoth up to 25 feet long to come close to the California coast, Paig-Tran said.
“What is important about them is that if they have just died or are about to die, then look at their skin, actually [looks] like a mirror,” he said.
Its height combines with its silver skin and crimson wings to give it a fairy-like appearance.
Since the 1500s, sailors have talked about sea monsters as long as their ships, and have even drawn maps that warn of places in the sea where such creatures live. Their illustrations seem to describe oarfish.
Oarfish usually live in the upper layers of the ocean’s depths, from about 300 feet to about 3,000 feet below the surface of the water. Scientists call this part of the ocean the “twilight zone” because the fish that live there basically live in darkness and see little light, Paig-Tran said.
The twilight zone is very deep for divers to reach and explore, which adds to the attraction of this species.
If an oarfish swam to the surface of the sea, a sailor could see a long, slippery creature with spiky protrusions on its head and not believe it was a sea monster, Paig-Tran said.
It’s a surprising sight, but oarfish are harmless. Oarfish are bottom feeders, meaning they eat mostly krill (a small shrimp-like creature) using powerful beaks shaped like pickers, according to Scripps.
The oarfish’s body is so soft, that if you pick it up it might crack in half because of its jelly-like bones, Paig-Tran said.
Another factor that adds to the problem of this creature is the lack of knowledge about its history and daily life, including how it mate, when it lays eggs, how it moves and how often it eats.
Scientists were only able to study the creatures when they washed ashore.
“When an organism evolves, we can do our best to look at biology and physiology and try to make the best guesses, but we can’t see it living in its natural environment,” Paig-Tran said. “It’s a completely unanswered question as to what happened to these fish.”
Why do dead fish wash up on the shore?
Scientists don’t know why the oarfish died and washed ashore.
The latest oarfish sighted in Encinitas was recovered by a NOAA Fisheries Service team and taken to the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, where it will be necropsied so researchers can learn more about the oarfish’s biology, anatomy, genomics and life history, according to Scripps. .
The deaths of the three fish that have emerged “may be related to changing ocean conditions and an increase in the number of paddlefish on our shores,” said Ben Frable, curator of the Scripps Oceanogaphy Marine Vertebrate Collection.
“Sometimes it can be linked to broader shifts, like the El Niño and La Niña cycles, but not always,” he said.
There was a weak El Niño earlier this year, and this shower coincided with the recent red tide and Santa Ana winds last week. But many other factors could have contributed to the association, Frable added.
Another possible explanation is that the oarfish got stuck in the water and was unable to return to deeper water.
Oarfish are not strong swimmers. They mainly rely on their dorsal fin, while strong swimmers use their caudal fin, or tail, Paig-Tran said.
An oarfish that is caught by the current and carried to the surface does not have a good way to return to the bottom.
“If you’re a deep-dwelling fish and you’re stuck on the surface, you’re hosed,” he said.
Where does the word “doomsday” come from?
Oarfish has been called the “doomsday” fish because some cultures consider it a bad omen when it appears. The moniker is derived from a Japanese mythic hoax that became popular following the Fukushima disaster, Frable said.
“In the two years before this disaster, almost all the fish called oarfish washed up in Japan, many kilometers from this place.” he said.
After this natural disaster, people stick to this folding as a sign of disaster.
This prompted Japanese researchers in 2019 to examine whether oarfish and other marine animal species were related to earthquakes, tsunamis and other factors.
“They found no correlation,” Frable said. “But the name is too exciting to disappear.”
On the other hand, Paig-Tran said there may be some truth to the myth because when an earthquake occurs, it releases pressure that can change the current water table.
“When the pressure is released, it changes the currents [the fish are] sitting in, and raising itself up in this kind of great bolus of air and gases and any commotion [is] in this earthquake,” he said.
So, is the oarfish that appeared in Southern California a sign of a major earthquake? According to Paig-Tran: probably not.
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