Magnitude 4.4 Earthquake Occurs Two Days After Sandhairfish Discovery
No Scientific Evidence for Deep-Sea Fish and Disaster Superstitions
A carcass of a deep-sea oarfish, considered a so-called 'precursor to earthquakes,' has been found off the coast of California, USA, drawing attention.
Dead body of a sandfish found on the coast of California, USA, on the 10th (local time) [Photo by AP Yonhap News]
On the 15th (local time), US CBS News and others reported that on the 10th, a carcass of an oarfish approximately 3.66 meters long was found off the coast of La Jolla Cove in southern California. This oarfish was first discovered by people kayaking or snorkeling near the shore.
Oarfish generally can grow over 9 meters in length and are known to inhabit deep waters at depths of 200 to 2000 meters where sunlight does not reach. When they are sick, dying, or lose their sense of direction, they occasionally come close to the surface and are rarely found.
According to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), only 20 oarfish carcasses have been found off the California coast in the 123 years since 1901. Previously, in 1996, the US Navy discovered a giant oarfish about 7 meters long near the coast of Coronado, California.
In some parts of the world, oarfish are called 'doomsday fish' and are considered omens of disasters such as earthquakes. In fact, two days after the recent oarfish discovery, on the 12th, a magnitude 4.4 earthquake occurred in Los Angeles (LA), California, but no correlation has been confirmed.
In Japan, oarfish are known as 'Yonggung Saja' (Dragon Palace Lion) and there is a traditional story that they come up from the Dragon Palace to warn of earthquakes and tsunamis. Before the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, it is known that 20 oarfish were washed ashore along the Japanese coast.
However, the prevailing opinion is that the folklore related to oarfish lacks scientific evidence. In fact, research has been conducted in Japan to verify the correlation between deep-sea fish and major earthquakes. In 2019, a research team from Tokai University and Shizuoka Prefectural University analyzed the relationship between the appearance of deep-sea fish such as oarfish and earthquakes in Japan from 1928 to 2011, concluding that the folklore surrounding deep-sea fish is baseless superstition.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, together with the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, is conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of death of the recently found oarfish and plans to investigate why the carcass of this juvenile specimen drifted into shallow waters. Afterwards, the oarfish carcass will be exhibited at the Scripps Marine Vertebrate Collection, one of the largest deep-sea fish exhibition halls in the world.
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