Most of us have seen strange and interesting animals underwater, and thanks to scientific advances, we’re able to determine just what we have seen, and even learn a bit about its life history. During the centuries when people first began exploring the open seas, tales of sea monsters were abundant. Stories about huge, snake-like creatures spawned widespread fear of sea serpents, for instance; now, scientists think that ancient mariners may have been describing oarfish in their stories.
Oarfish Basics
Oarfish are long and slender; much like other Lampriform fishes, they tend to inhabit water deeper than 100 meters. You’ll probably never encounter an oarfish while diving, though it is remotely possible.
These fish are rarely fished commercially as their flesh is gelatinous and most people find it unappetizing; this means that though they are sometimes brought up in nets as bycatch, they are not normally targeted and have the opportunity to grow to an amazing size.
With tapering silver bodies and an impressive pink or red dorsal fin that runs the fish’s entire length, oarfish have very small pectoral fins, which contribute even more to the oarfish’s serpent-like appearance. Coloration can be variable; sometimes dots, squiggles, and streaks mark the fish’s sides, however these fade quickly after death. The largest recorded oarfish measured 15.2 meters in length, but most specimens recorded measure between 1.5 meters and 10 meters long.
Despite their fearsome appearance, oarfish lack teeth; instead, their mouths are equipped with gill rakers, which allow them to feed on zooplankton, shrimp, and other crustaceans. They have also been observed consuming jellyfish, squid, and small fish.
Most oarfish encounters happen when the fish are sick and dying; during their last days, they tend to drift toward shore into shallow water, sometimes struggling at the top of the water column. It is easy to imagine how ancient sailors must have viewed a fish this size, with such an impressive appearance; it’s not surprising that they believed they were in the midst of an encounter with a sea monster.
Oarfish have recently washed up in places like Cabo San Lucas and Japan; this is not surprising, since they are known to range throughout the world’s oceans. Specific encounters with live fish are rare, and only once have scientists captured footage of oarfish swimming freely in their natural habitat. In the case of an Oarfish that washed ashore in Cabo San Lucas while still alive, a group of people attempted to deliver it into deeper water as it was clearly going through death throes. Despite beachgoers efforts, the fish perished, and its body was taken away for research.
Traditionally, Japanese lore has said that oarfish will wash up in large numbers before a major earthquake happens, and that is what happened between December of 2009 and March of 2010, just as a series of small earthquakes preceded the 2011 Fukushima earthquake. Whether these fish are truly “messengers from the Sea God’s palace” as Japanese folklore suggests, or if they are simply interesting ocean creatures, they are representatives from a world about which little is known – the world of the deep, mysterious sea.