For the second time in the last six months, a Doomsday fish, a harbinger of the Apocalypse, or simply a belt fish – a rare inhabitant of the ocean depths, which was historically considered a harbinger of death and natural disasters – has been found off the coast of California in the United States.
This was reported by URA-Inform with reference to RMF24.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego reported that last week one of its graduate students came across a three-meter-long specimen on the beach in Enkinitas in southern California.
These creatures with long, ribbon-like bodies usually live in a zone of deep water called the mesopelagic zone, where light does not penetrate. They are sometimes called doomsday fish due to their mythical reputation as predictors of natural disasters or earthquakes: 20 of them were found on the beaches of Japan in the months before the 2011 earthquake. They are also called “king of herrings”, remneriba, and in Japan they are called “ryugu no tsukai”, which translates as “messenger from the palace of the dragon god of the sea”.
The dead oarfish was found just three months after a group of kayakers and snorkelers off the coast of San Diego discovered a 13-foot (4-meter) oarfish floating dead in the water.
It's an unusual sight. Oarfish have only been documented 20 times since 1901, said Ben Frable, a fish expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in a statement in August. Changes in the ocean could be the reason the unique creatures are surfacing more often.
Frable explained that researchers have pointed to factors like El Niño and La Niña, but scientists don't really know what causes the “messenger of the apocalypse” to surface.
The specimen found in California has been frozen and samples have been taken for further study and possible preservation in a marine vertebrate collection. Scientists have also studied a oarfish that washed up on the beach in August. The autopsy then allowed the researchers to analyze her organs and create the “first high-quality genome at the chromosome level.”
Recall that earlier it was reported that the “Doomsday” glacier began to melt rapidly: what scientists warn about and what they suggest.
