Australia: A oarfish fish, popularly known as the ‘Earthquake fish,’ was spotted by fisherman in Australia. This creature is also known as ‘doomsday fish’. This sparked worry in people as they think that a severe earthquake or tsunami might be on its way.
Curtis Peterson from Tiwi Islands Adventures caught the oarfish and shared the photo on Fishing Australia TV on Facebook. The islands are about 80 km from Darwin in the Northern Territory.
According to the Australian Museum, Oarfish or the ‘harbinger of doom,’ live in tropical areas at depths of 20 meters to 200 meters. Oarfish can stretch up to nine meters and look like a serpent when they surface. They look like a silver ribbon and filter-feed on krill and crustaceans.
The locals claimed that the fish is known as ‘earthquake fish’ and it is seen days before earthquakes strike an area. The fact that the ‘Earthquake fish’ was seen just a couple of days after the massive earthquake in Japan, caught the attention of locals residing on the Australian coast. A dead oarfish was also discovered off the coast of La Jolla, California, just days before a 4.4 magnitude earthquake hit Los Angeles. Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, stated that the fish has only been seen 20 times in the region since 1901.
“These fish only come to the surface when something very bad is about to happen, it has always been like this,” A local said.
The Japanese folklore has it that spotting an Oarfish in the shallow waters can be considered as a warning for an earthquake or tsunami. It is noteworthy mentioning that the fish is rarely ever spotted by humans.
Dismissing it as an old wives’ tale, experts have said that there’s no scientific link between oarfish sightings and natural disasters.
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