Doomsday Fish
The oarfish is a very long fish people don’t normally see on account of it living deep, deep in the deep water, though three have washed up on the shores of Southern California in the last 3 months. The oarfish is referred to as the Doomsday Fish (a very cool name for a fish imo), because Japanese mythology considers seeing one of these fish, which can grow to be 30 feet, an omen of tsunamis or earthquakes. 12 washed up on the shores of Japan before the earthquake in 2011.
Don’t worry though because scientists looked into it and decided “the spatiotemporal relationship between deep‐sea fish appearances and earthquakes was hardly found.” Honestly, it’s a weird way to say “no the fish don’t mean an earthquake,” but it’s all we’ve got.
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7.0 magnitude earthquake hits off Northern California coast, tsunami warning issued. Via Jodi Ettenberg, who notes: "Uh, maybe those oarfish washing to shore in California WERE onto something."
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