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It’s pretty rare to encounter an oarfish in the wild when you consider they spend most of their lives thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean. They’ve been nicknamed “doomsday fish” due to the belief any spotting is an omen of bad things to come, and if you buy into that theory, you won’t be thrilled to learn one recently popped up on a beach in Mexico.
The ocean is overflowing with some gnarly-looking aquatic animals, including thousands of species you only end up encountering if you make your way past the “euphotic zone” and down into the depths where sunlight is largely unable to penetrate.
That includes oarfish, the serpentine creatures that hold the distinction of being the largest bony fish in existence thanks to their ability to grow up to 26 feet long.
Oarfish are typically found between around 250 to 1,000 meters under the sea, as their bodies are largely unable to endure the conditions they’ll be exposed to if they go any higher.
Many of the ones that have perished after doing exactly that have ended up washing on the shores of countries around the world—including Japan, which is responsible for the “doomsday fish” moniker that’s frequently used to describe them due to the centuries-old belief their appearance is a portent of an earthquake or tsunami on the near horizon.
While that belief is firmly rooted in confirmation bias, plenty of people pointed out that an inordinate number of oarfish appeared on various Japanese beaches in the two years that preceded the earthquake and tsunami that claimed the lives of around 20,000 people during the disaster that struck the Tōhoku region in 2011.
2024 saw oarfish end up on land in the Philippines, Thailand, and California, and another one has now appeared in the vicinity of the San Andreas fault just a few months after the most recent made an appearance.
According to Fox Weather, an incredibly rare scene unfolded on the shore of Playa El Quemado in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur earlier this month when a live oarfish was filmed wriggling around in the water as a small crowd looked on.
SEE IT! The rarely seen deep-sea known as an ‘oarfish’ has washed ashore in Mexico!
Legend has it that the creature, known as a ‘doomsday fish,’ only surfaces from the depths of the ocean when something catastrophic is going to happen. 👀 pic.twitter.com/U5j68io7jx
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 18, 2025
The fate of the oarfish is currently unclear (it’s unlikely it would have been able to survive for much longer in those conditions), although the man who was seen touching it at the end of the video reportedly said he was planning to contact a marine biologist in the hopes of increasing its chances.