Dog walker discovers rare fish linked to dark legend on windswept Aussie beach
Sybil Jethro describes Tasmania's west coast as wild, and consequently, it's not unusual for her to come across whales, dolphins, or seals washed up on Ocean Beach near Strahan. 'But I hadn't seen anything like this, certainly nothing this big,' she said.
The glistening creature she'd stumbled across was a 175cm-long oarfish, a long creature that's colloquially referred to as the 'doomsday fish' because of its connection to a dark Japanese legend.
How rare oarfish are remains a mystery, because it inhabits waters 250 to 1,000 metres below the surface, and it's uncommon to see one alive. Two dead oarfish were discovered in California in August and November last year, prompting an investigation by UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
After the first was found by swimmers in waters off San Diego, a 4.4 magnitude earthquake was detected in Los Angeles, reviving talk of their unproven connection to these natural disasters. Associations between oarfish and earthquakes date back to 17th-century Japan, and were renewed in 2011 after 20 were spotted ahead of the earthquake that sparked the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Although there is no scientific evidence the two are connected.
It was 16 degrees, the wind was strong, and rain was threatening to pour, so visitors to the beach were keeping to the lookout, and no one else likely saw the oarfish in person. While her bounding, 25kg dog was interested in its body, he didn't try and take a bite out of it, which was unusual behaviour.
When Sybil returned home on Monday morning and shared images of the fish to social media, a friend immediately contacted her. 'She said it's an oarfish, they're bad juju, you don't want to go near it,' she said.
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But Sybil feels lucky to have seen the strange creature, as it wasn't long before it vanished. 'It was so shiny, pretty and beautiful. But it isn't anymore, because I went back in the afternoon and it had been mauled. It was a good feast for the eagles and crows,' she said.
'When I got back a few hours later, there was no head, and the body was almost gone. I was really lucky to see it in such beautiful condition.'
Authorities were later seen examining what remained of the carcass, and Yahoo is working to confirm whether samples have been taken.
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