Mysterious ‘doomsday’ oarfish, feared to be omen of quakes, spotted in Australia

An oarfish, a rare and one of the ocean’s longest species, considered a harbinger of earthquakes, washed ashore on the ocean beach near Strahan, Tasmania, on Monday. The three-metre-long ‘doomsday’ fish was spotted by local resident Sybil Robertson while he was taking a walk along the beach.

“I’m five foot nine, and I’ve got a reasonable stride, [it was] a good three-and-a-bit paces. It was fantastic. I just knew it was something unusual and weird,” Robertson said.

Robertson said that she had never heard of the oarfish until she posted its picture on the social media page of Citizen Scientists of Tasmania, said a report in The Guardian.

Her post was later shared on Reddit, and it soon went viral.

One Reddit user said, “The ocean is very unhappy with humanity’s disdain for it.”

“Makes sense that they would be ‘harbingers of disaster’. It takes a lot of turbulence to force something that far down to the surface. The kind that might cause a tsunami,” said another in a comment.

A third user wrote, “The world DOES seem to be ending more frequently lately.”

‘The king of herrings’ and ‘harbinger of danger’

The deep-sea creature, capable of growing up to eight metres in length and weighing over 400 kg, is called the king of herrings and is considered a ‘harbinger of danger’. The discovery of the oarfish is surprising, as it lives deep in the ocean, nearly 150 to 500 metres, and is rarely seen or caught.

Neville Barrett, a marine ecologist at the University of Tasmania, said, “It’s exceptionally unusual to see anything like that. We’re just not out there. We’re not looking, we’re not diving, we’re not even fishing in that part of the ocean.”

“The oarfish is a slow-moving and lazy fish with very little muscle. It usually just floats gently in the water, often in a vertical position, and feeds on plankton,” Barrett added.

As per old Japanese belief, the oarfish is referred to as the doomsday fish because its appearance near the surface is believed to be a forewarning of natural disasters.

In some cases, people reported spotted oarfish washing ashore before major earthquakes, especially in Japan. They then assumed that the oarfish can sense underwater seismic activity and hence rises to the surface to warn humans.