US: Rare 12-foot ‘doomsday serpent’ discovered floating off San Diego Coast

A long, serpent-like creature from the deep was discovered by snorkelers in La Jolla Cove, sparking speculation that this mythic beast could signal an impending earthquake in California.

In a discovery that could be the opening scene of a disaster movie, innocent snorkelers, and kayakers saw an unusual glistening fish meets sea snake floating out of place in La Jolla Cove. Twelve feet long, they couldn’t miss the formidable creature that experts from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography rushed to identify.

The mythic messenger of the sea god surfaces: an omen

In an official statement, an oarfish sighting is so rare, it holds mythic and even foreboding meaning to our ancestors. As a sea beast that lives where little light reaches and only expert divers can reach, barely, but slithers across the world, in Japanese, it is known as “Ryugu no tsuka” or “the messenger from the sea god’s palace.” The oarfish is considered to be an omen, which is based on an ancient myth: an earthquake is coming, as per USA TODAY.

As the NYPost reported, this deep sea silver vessel with eyes (thus the name makes sense) begins to reach swallow waters in the face of death as a creature from the mesopelagic or the “Twilight Zone.” That’s 650-3,300 ft deep. Only 20 have surfaced in California in over a hundred years, which imbues its appearance with connotations of “doom” as “the doomsday fish .”

While the connection between the appearance of the oarfish and impending natural disasters remains scientifically unproven, experts are investigating its cause of death. After being transported back to shore on a paddle board and then loaded onto a pickup truck for a necropsy at the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, scientists are examining whether the fish’s death could be linked to seismic activity on the seafloor, with concerns about a potential earthquake in California.

The oarfish: just a cool, rare sighting perhaps

In 2013, two oarfish were purported to have washed up on Californian shores because of seismic activity as prior to an earthquake, “there can be a build-up of pressure in the rocks which can lead to electrostatic charges that cause electrically-charged ions to be released into the water,” Dr. Rachel Grant said in the Independent , a lecturer of animal biology at Anglia Ruskin University.

As a result, it can stimulate hydrogen peroxide to form, which is toxic, and so are the charged ions which can kill fish or drive them closer to the surface.

In the NY Post , the surfacing of dozens of oarfish in Japan a couple of years before the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami sent waves of fear throughout the country. So, the omen might not be exactly a fact or a sign that an earthquake is coming tomorrow, but perhaps “the day after tomorrow,” as in the climate change film starring Dennis Quaid. In a couple of years, in other words.

But on a less bleak note, USA TODAY thankfully mentions that these “ majestic creatures ” have popped up all over the world, including Maine and New Jersey, and in non-earthquake-prone areas as well. All the same, to conclude, Dr. Grant, perhaps the star of the environmental flick that this sighting inspires, “will be watching California over the next couple of weeks,” as per Independent , “closely.”