A dead oarfish , an “incredibly rare” creature considered a symbol of impending doom in Japanese folklore, was recently spotted along the Southern California coast just months after another surfaced in a different location.
The first oarfish was recovered in August by a group of “sciencey” kayakers and snorkelers swimming at La Jolla Cove in San Diego while the other was spotted ashore Grandview Beach in Encinitas last week by Alison Laferriere, PhD candidate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
The oarfish in Encinitas was “smaller” than the one observed in San Diego, measuring between 9 and 10 feet, Scripps said in a news release. The deep-sea fish are considered “incredibly rare” since less than 25 have been seen in Southern California waters in over a century, Ben Frable, Scripps’ in-house fish expert and a museum scientist, previously shared with USA TODAY.
The elusive specimen, like the one collected in August, will undergo a necropsy to determine cause of death and later be preserved for future study, becoming part of the Scripps’ Marine Vertebrate Collection, one of the largest collections of deep-sea fish in the world.