If one oarfish landing on a beach is a sign of disaster to come, how bad would it be if three of them washed up in quick succession?
The 10-foot-long, silvery oarfish has popularized tales of sea snakes among fishermen and has been considered a harbinger of natural disaster in some cultures.
Seeing oarfish up close in California is rare. According to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, only 22 ships have stranded since 1901. But in the past three months, three of them have surfaced on Southern California beaches.
The latest was on November 6, when Alison LaFerrier, a doctoral candidate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, discovered an oarfish at Grandview Beach. The other two washed up in La Jolla and Huntington Beach.
The last time a series of oarfish landed in California and other parts of the world was over a period of several months in 2013 and 2014. Misty Peigtran, an associate professor of biological sciences at California State University, Fullerton, studied four of the oarfish cases.
Every time an oarfish appears on the sand, it’s a spectacle for scientists as well as the general public for several reasons.
First of all, no one expected the 8-foot-long behemoth to come so close to the California coast, Paigtran said.
“What’s special about them is that when they’ve just died, or are just about to die, when you look at their skin, you can actually see [looks] It’s like a mirror,” she said.
Its length, combined with its silvery skin and bright red-scarlet fins, gives it a mysterious appearance.
Since the 1500s, sailors have been talking about sea monsters throughout their ships and even created maps warning of areas of the ocean where such creatures live. Their depiction appears to depict an oarfish.
Oarfish typically live in the upper waters at depths of about 300 feet to about 3,000 feet. Scientists call this part of the ocean the “twilight zone” because the fish that live there essentially live in darkness and can only see small amounts of light, Peigtran said. he said.
The Twilight Zone is too deep for divers to reach and explore, which adds to the fascination of this species.
If an oarfish happened to swim up to the surface, a sailor might see a long, crawling creature with a spike on its head and believe it was a sea monster, Paigtran said.
Although an unpleasant sight, oarfish are by no means dangerous. Scripps said oarfish are bottom feeders, primarily feeding on krill (small shrimp-like creatures) using their powerful mouths shaped like vacuum nozzles.
The oarfish’s body is so delicate that if you pick it up, the jelly-like bones will snap it in half, Paigtran said.
Another factor that adds to the mystique of this creature is its history and daily routine, including how it mates, when it lays eggs, what its behavioral patterns are, and how often it feeds. There is a lack of knowledge regarding.
Scientists can only study the creatures if they wash up on shore.
“When a body is found, we can look at the biology and physiology and try to make our best guess, but we can’t see a living body in its natural environment,” Peigtran said. “It’s a totally open-ended question about what’s going on with these fish.”
Why are the carcasses of oarfish washing up on beaches?
Scientists don’t know why these oarfish died and washed up on shore.
The latest oarfish discovered in Encinitas was recovered by a NOAA Fisheries team and transported to the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, where researchers will study oarfish biology, anatomy, genomics, and life history, Scripps said. An autopsy will be performed to learn more about the animal.
The deaths of the three fish that surfaced “may be related to changing ocean conditions and increasing numbers of oarfish off the coast,” said Ben Freble, manager of the Scripps Oceanogaphy Marine Vertebrate Collection. Ta.
“Sometimes it’s related to broader changes, such as El Niño or La Niña, but that’s not always the case,” he said.
A weak El Niño occurred earlier this year, and this launch coincided with recent red tide and last week’s Santa Ana winds. But many other factors could have played a role in these strandings, Frebble added.
Another possible explanation is that the oarfish got stuck in the current and was unable to return to deeper water.
Oarfish are not good swimmers. They mainly rely on their dorsal fins, but strong swimmers use their caudal fins or hindquarters, Peig-Tran said.
An oarfish caught in the current and pulled to the surface has no way to get off.
“If you’re a deep-dwelling fish and you get stuck on the surface, you’re in trouble in a way,” she said.
What is the origin of the name “Doomsday”?
The oarfish is called the “fish of the end.” This is because some cultures believe that the appearance of an oarfish is a bad omen. The nickname comes from a manipulation of Japanese folklore that spread after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Frebre said.
“In the two years before the disaster, about a dozen oarfish washed up in Japan, hundreds of miles away from this region,” he said.
In the aftermath of natural disasters, people took these strandings as harbingers of disaster.
This led Japanese researchers in 2019 to examine whether strandings of oarfish and other deep-sea animals are correlated with earthquakes, tsunamis, and other factors.
“We didn’t find any correlation,” Frebble said. “But the name is too evocative to go away.”
On the other hand, Paigtran said there may be some truth to this myth, as earthquakes release pressure that can change the flow in the water.
“When the pressure is released, the flow changes; [the fish are] These kinds of large clumps of air and gas, and any turbulence, pulls them up to the surface. [is] From this earthquake. ” she said.
So, are the oarfish that have surfaced in Southern California a sign of a major earthquake? Probably not, according to Peig Tran.
Source link
