Doomsday? Dead Oarfish Collected Off San Diego Coast

Here’s more from San Diego’s KUSI TV on the rare sighting of an oarfish, and the report also offers up a bit of doomsday speculation, given that oarfish have a habit of coinciding with impending disasters:

In some areas of the world, this species of fish is considered a preview of bad news or a natural disaster, like an earthquake or tsunami. As explained by Hook, this correlation has not been proven, though there have been reports of them washing up before such events.

In 2011 for instance, more than 20 oarfish reportedly washed ashore in Japan, just a few months before a 9.1 earthquake struck.

Just a couple days after the oarfish sighting in La Jolla, an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.4 shook Southern California about 2.5 miles south, southeast of Highland Park near Los Angeles. Whether or not these events are connected is questionable, though it does spark some curiosity.