The carcass of a rare oarfish washed up on a California beach. This is a second beaching of an oarfish with a week.
What's wrong with the waters of California? Scientists are left baffled about why oarfish and whale carcasses are washing up on Southern California beaches. A marine science instructor Jasmine Santana spotted the carcass of an 18-foot oarfish off the Catalina Island jus recently . Two days later, another oarfish carcass was spotted at Oceanside harbor.
According to an Oceanside police dispatcher, the 14-foot-long oarfish came ashore in Oceanside, California, on Friday afternoon. A representative of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was called to haul the serpent-like fish away for study, she said.
It's not common to see creatures of this size lying around on beaches, especially because they swim thousands of feet below the surface, sometimes as low as 3,000 feet (914 meters). Oarfish can grow up to 50 feet in length. Little is known about their habits and life cycles, but the NOAA writes on their website they "probably only come to the surface when injured or dying." What makes these carcass findings all the more unusual is the frequency at which carcasses of giant creatures are washing up-shore.
"It may have happened some place on Earth before but it certainly doesn't happen very often," said Milton Love, a research biologist at the University of California in Santa Barbara, according to a Reuters report.
Scientists are awaiting tissue samples of the large oarfish that will be used for DNA sampling. Love speculates that the deaths of both oarfish were not co-incidental but due to human activities. According to him, both creatures were washed ashore by strong currents and then killed by strong swells of waves.
Oarfish are not the only creatures that have washed ashore over the last one week. Earlier on Thursday, the carcass of a rare saber-toothed whale was spotted in Venice Beach. Scientists were confused about how the creature managed to find its way so far north.
