On October 13 an 18-foot, 200-pound oarfish was found dead in the shallow waters of Toyon Bay at Catalina Island in California. Just days later, another one measuring 14 ft washed up on a beach in San Diego County. As a rarely seen species this was certainly an unusual occurrence. Although oarfish occasionally beach themselves, especially after a storm, the sudden appearance of two in such a short span of time could be an indicator of other environmental conditions.
Oarfish are long, eel-like creatures with a dorsal fin spanning their entire length, long pelvic fins, and small to nearly absent pectoral, anal, and caudal fins. They are the longest bony fish on Earth. It’s very likely that early sightings of these creatures were the source of the many old folk tales of sea serpents. They’re scale-less and silvery in colour, often giving off and pink or blue sheen and may have markings in the form of dark streaks and dots. This is the fish that Milotic, “the most beautiful of all Pokémon,” is thought to be based on. However, oarfish spawn do not look like Feebas. They are small, nearly-transparent ‘larvae” that feed on zooplankton and live near the ocean’s surface. One of the washed-up oarfish was pregnant with hundreds of thousands of eggs in its 1.8-metre-long ovaries.
Unlike most fish, and unlike one would intuitively imagine, oarfish swim in a vertical orientation. Their heads face upwards and they are propelled from side-to-side with undulating movements in their dorsal fins. This allows them to see the silhouettes of their prey from below. Oarfish diets include zooplankton, shrimp, and even other small fish, jellyfish and squid. They lack teeth and instead tend to filter tiny organisms in through their gills. Often frequenting depths of 1,000 m, adult oarfish tend to surface only when spawning, sick, or dying.
Scientists are still unsure about the cause of death for the oarfish. However, given that their style of swimming isn’t particularly powerful or efficient, it is speculated that they were accidentally beached when unable to fight the current and waves. It is also thought that the appearance of dead oarfish signify an imminent earthquake, although there is little scientific proof for that belief. Many dead oarfish were said to have been found in the time between the Chilean earthquake of 2010 and the particularly disastrous one that hit Japan in 2011. They happened to have been found close to the epicentre of the latter quake, and thus were thought to have been indicators of disaster. Despite the lack of scientific evidence, perhaps studies should be conducted to test the myth, as deep sea fish do respond more to seismic activity than other fish would.
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