Major Earthquake coming? Another oarfish washed up on the beach

[Rogue Trader]

Rarely seen metres-long ‘doomsday’ oarfish washes up on Tasmania’s wild west coast​

Petra Stock
Tue, 3 June 2025 at 4:17 pm SGT·3-min read

Sybil Robertson discovered the enormous oarfish while walking on Ocean beach near Strahan, on Tasmania’s west coast.Photograph: Sybil Robertson
At first it looked like a great silver streak on the sand. An oarfish, fantastically long and rarely seen, had washed up on Tasmania’s rugged west coast.

Oarfish, one of the ocean’s longest fish, are astonishing creatures that grow up to eight metres long. Nicknamed the “king of herrings” or more unkindly the “doomsday fish”, some legends and stories consider the animals to be harbingers of disaster.

Sybil Robertson made the unusual discovery while walking on Ocean Beach near Strahan, on Monday.

“When I go out there, I’m the only person on the beach,” she said. “It’s really wild. There’s nothing between here and Argentina.” On Monday, she walked in a different direction than usual and noticed a group of sea eagles inspecting the fish, which she estimated was around three metres long, on the sand.


“I’m five foot nine, and I’ve got a reasonable stride, [it was] a good three-and-a-bit paces,” she said.

“It was fantastic,” she said, although not realising what it was. “I just knew it was something unusual and weird.” But her find was quickly identified as an oarfish when she posted a photo on the Citizen Scientists of Tasmania social media page.

“Its exceptionally unusual to see anything like that,” said assoc prof Neville Barrett, a marine ecologist at the University of Tasmania. Oarfish are an “epipelagic” species, he said, living in the open ocean at mid-water depths of 150 to 500m, from where they are rarely seen or caught.

“We’re just not out there,” Barrett said. “We’re not looking, we’re not diving, we’re not even fishing in that part of the ocean.”

Oarfish are “a phenomenally big fish” he said, which can weigh more than 400kg. He described them as a lazy fish with very little muscle that tends to float around, often vertically in the water, eating various types of plankton.


“They’re not active feeders. They don’t chase their prey. They’re just nibbling on whatever’s there. So they don’t have to be very strong, or great swimmers,” he said.

Very few people have seen an oarfish in the wild. Marine biologist Jorja Gilmore is “one of the lucky ones”.

In 2022, she was leading a small tour group of snorkellers on the Great Barrier Reef near Port Douglas when they spotted something strange in the water below them.

This one was a juvenile, long and thin like a ruler, with tendrils that made it look a bit like a giant lure, Gilmore said.

“It was so bizarre”, she said, “like something from the deep sea”.

The incredibly rare encounter is thought to be the first recorded with this species on the east coast of Australia. “It’s still the best thing I have seen in the water to this day,” Gilmore said.


Robinson feels fortunate to have come across the fish in such good condition. A few hours later the head was gone, and the body was already decimated by crows and eagles, she said.

“It’s just so interesting what you can find if you just keep your eyes open whilst you’re looking around. It’s just amazing.”

 

[Rogue Trader]

Shimmering oarfish rarely seen near ocean surface pops up on Mexico beach​

This article is more than 3 months old
Distinctive, slender deep-sea creature, also known as ‘doomsday’ fish, seen wriggling on Baja California beach

Maanvi Singh
Tue 25 Feb 2025 02.15 GMT
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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.


A giant oarfish: the mirrored harbinger of earthquakes
Helen Sullivan

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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.

The idea that they foretold earthquakes gained popularity after about 20 oarfish were found on beaches in Japan following the 2011 earthquake there. In 2019, however, Japanese researchers found no relation between oarfish sightings and earthquakes.