King of herrings’ is one of ocean’s longest fish and can grow to eight metres long, living at depths up to 500m in the open sea
From The Guardian: Oarfish, one of the ocean’s longest fish, are astonishing creatures that grow up to eight metres long. Nicknamed the “king of herrings” or the “doomsday fish”, some stories consider the animals to be harbingers of disaster.
For example, in Japan, oarfish are considered highly predictable: they predict the future. In the months before Japan’s 2011 earthquake, one of the most powerful ever recorded, 20 oarfish were found on beaches. They’re known as “messengers from the sea god’s palace”, or jinja hime, “shrine princesses”.
See an oarfish, the story goes, an earthquake will follow.
One fish was found in India, another in Tasmania, Accuweather reports. “Fishermen in Tamil Nadu pulled a massive 30-foot oarfish from the water earlier this week. Described as shimmering silver with a red crest, the fish was so large it required half a dozen men to handle it. Onlookers shared images on social media, referring to the creature as the “Pralaya fish” which is a local term tied to ominous predictions of earthquakes or tsunamis.
“It’s 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. (Guardian)
BTW, How Stuff Works notes that despite the durability of the doomsday fish legend, there’s no scientific evidence that giant oarfish are omens of a natural disaster. While some have speculated that there may be a correlation, and that it may be due to some special sensitivity on the part of this species of fish, so far there’s no plausible theory of what this might be.
In May, there were also sightings in Mexico and Vietnam Nam.
