Harbinger of doom: rare oarfish spotted in California a few days before Los Angeles earthquake

Two days before the earthquake struck off California, beachgoers found a rare giant oarfish. It has a mythical reputation and is considered a "doomsday fish" that brings natural disasters.

These fish live in the depths of the sea and are rarely seen by humans. By a strange coincidence, an earthquake struck the region just two days later, Live Science reports.

The 3.6-meter-long short-crested oarfish was found on August 10 by a group of snorkelers and kayakers in La Jolla Bay, north of downtown San Diego. According to Ben Frable, a fish expert at the institute, this is only the 20th time an oarfish has washed up in California since 1901. On August 12, a 4.4 magnitude earthquake hit Los Angeles.

"There's this thought that they're a doomsday fish or a bad omen and that they seem to signal things like tsunamis or earthquakes," commented Zachary Heiple, a doctoral student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "There didn't really seem to be any correlation," the scientist adds.

Heiple pointed to a 2019 study that found that any alleged link betweenoarfish sightings and earthquakes is pure superstition.

Researchers do not yet know why the oarfish washed up in San Diego, but it ended up on a shallow reef between La Jolla Cove and La Jolla Shores. That day, a group of current and former marine scientists were snorkeling and kayaking on the reef. The fish was near the bottom of the reef, so they pushed it to the surface and then sent it to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where researchers took samples to learn more.

However, there is also an opinion that there is some truth in the legend about the connection between the appearance of this fish as a harbinger of disaster.

"It’s theoretically possible because when an earthquake occurs there can be a build-up of pressure in the rocks which can lead to electrostatic charges that cause electrically-charged ions to be released into the water," The Independent quoted Rachel Grant, a lecturer in animal biology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, as saying.

"This can lead to the formation of hydrogen peroxide, which is a toxic compound. The charged ions can also oxidise organic matter which could either kill the fish or force them to leave the deep ocean and rise to the surface," she explained.

The scientist also added that before an earthquake, large amounts of carbon monoxide are released, which can affect oarfish and other deep-sea creatures.

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