Could a dead fish be warning us that the end is nigh?


According to some, the answer is a definitive “yes” if it’s a “doomsday fish,” more officially known as an oarfish. And if that is the case, Australia may need to start preparing for shit to hit the fan, as fishermen caught the extremely rare fish last month.


The oarfish was spotted and subsequently caught off the coast of Melville Island, part of the Tiwi Islands. Sightings of these silver, eel-like fish are rare, and catching one is even rarer, as oarfish are typically deep-sea dwellers that almost never come anywhere near land. 



While oarfish can sometimes grow up to 100 feet long, they are not considered a direct threat to humans, mainly due to the fact that they have no teeth and are not poisonous. But even though an oarfish attack is incredibly rare, when a “doomsday fish” is seen, many believe it to be a harbinger of doom.


The origin of the “doomsday fish” comes from Japan, as the legend goes that spotting an oarfish, known as "ryugu no tsukai" which roughly translates to “the messenger from the sea dragon god's palace,” is a bad omen that warns of terrible things heading your way. According to Discover Magazine, the oarfish is also “linked to the legend of ‘jinja hime’ another servant of the sea god.”


“This underwater creature was said to have a snakelike body with a woman’s head,” Stephen C. George wrote. “Both legendary creatures were purported to possess similar supernatural abilities, mainly in foretelling the future, especially when it came to issuing warnings and predicting disaster”



The extremely bad vibes created by “doomsday fish” are most commonly associated with earthquakes, and it was reported that up to 20 oarfish washed ashore before the earthquake and tsunami in 2011 that left approximately 20,000 dead in the Tōhoku region.


This doesn’t just apply to Japan either. “Doomsday fish” believers can point to a dead oarfish discovered near the shores of La Jolla Cove in San Diego on August 10th. Two days later, a 4.4 earthquake struck Southern California, though, fortunately, there were no fatalities.


Despite experts largely dismissing this as the scientific phenomenon known as a coincidence, many non-science types are still convinced that the oarfish really is “the messenger from the sea dragon god’s palace.”



In the end, the science and the legend might go hand-in-hand anyway, as climate change may cause the kind of devastation that the displaced habitat of the oarfish foretells.