TikTok user @slimith_jimith posted a video of a giant oarfish that washed up to the shore in La Jolla in San Diego County on August 11. On August 12, a 4.4-magnitude earthquake hit Southern California. Is an oarfish discovery preceding an earthquake purely coincidental? Maybe. But, then again, maybe not.
Oarfish are deep-sea animals, and humans rarely see them. When humans do see oarfish, some people say it’s a bad omen. In fact, some even call these animals “doomsday fish” or “harbingers of death.” In the past, oarfish have surfaced from the deep before a natural disaster hits, like an earthquake or a tsunami.
This time, the gigantic dead oarfish did, in fact, foreshadow an earthquake.
Watch some beachgoers bring the oarfish into a truck bed using a paddle board here (local news reports they turned it over to Scripps Institution of Oceanography):
Comments on the video include “doomsday fish” believers and non-believers.
One person said: “These are DEEP sea creatures that only come to the surface when the depths have been disturbed . . . Whatever is coming will arrive from the ocean.”
Creepily, she was right. (As far as we can tell, her comment was made prior to the earthquake.) Other people called the oarfish’s bluff.
“8 years ago I found a dead oar fish at La Jolla Cove. No disaster happened after,” another person wrote.
Do you believe an oarfish could be a sign of a disturbance in the deep sea that might precede a natural disaster?