Second rare oarfish carcass found on California coast

[Buster's Uncle]

Second rare oarfish carcass found on California coast
Reuters
By Jonathan Kaminsky 1 hour ago



(Reuters) - A rare oarfish has washed up on the California coast for the second time in less than a week, authorities said, leaving experts stumped.

The second carcass of the eel-like species was discovered on Friday on a beach in Oceanside, a city police dispatcher said.

The 14-foot (4.3-meter) fish, which has a pug-like face and a skeleton of bone, was found five days after a marine instructor snorkeling off Santa Catalina Island, about 50 miles to the west, spotted a dead 18-foot (5.5-meter) oarfish in shallow water.

The back-to-back discoveries of beached oarfish are highly unusual, scientists said. The fish is an elusive creature that dives to depths of 3,000 feet and is thought to have inspired legends of giant sea serpents.

"It may have happened some place on Earth before but it certainly doesn't happen very often," said Milton Love, a research biologist at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Love is awaiting tissue samples of the larger oarfish that he will pass along for DNA sampling. He suspected the deaths of the two giant creatures were not coincidental and doubted they were linked to human activity.

He speculated the oarfish, who are not strong swimmers, were carried toward shore by a powerful current and then battered to death by strong swells.

"There may be ones lying in 50 to 100 feet of water we'll never know about," Love said.

The creatures are as thick as a human torso and can grow up to a length of 56 feet. They are found in all temperate to tropical waters, but because they dive to great depths they are rarely seen and remain largely unstudied.

Little is known about the behavior or numbers of oarfish, Love said. Scientists are split on whether they constitute one or more species, a division that DNA samples taken from the recently-discovered carcasses could help resolve.


http://news.yahoo.com/second-rare-oarfish-carcass-found-california-coast-033937318.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Second Oarfish in a Week Washes Ashore
LiveScience.com
By Megan Gannon, News Editor  1 hour ago



A 14-foot-long oarfish washed ashore in Oceanside, Calif., on Friday, Oct. 18.


     
For the second time in a week, a rarely seen type of deep-sea creature was found along the coast of California.

The carcass of a 14-foot-long (4 meters) oarfish washed ashore in Oceanside, just north of San Diego, on Friday (Oct. 18), according to the The Los Angeles Times.

The find came less than a week after a science instructor on Catalina Island, off the coast of Southern California, dragged in an 18-foot-long (5.5 m) dead oarfish that was floating just offshore on Sunday, Oct. 13.

Oarfish are thought to lurk below 3,000 feet (915 m), and they are rarely found near the shore. The fish typically only arrive on the coast once they are sick or dead, Jeff Chace, with the Catalina Island Marine Institute, told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet last week.

The 18-foot specimen that turned up on Catalina Island last week appeared to have died of natural causes, Chace said.

The oarfish that washed up in Oceanside was cut up into sections and carted away to be examined by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), The Times reported.

Oarfish get their name from the long paddle-like appendages that help them balance. The animals are the world's longest bony fish and are thought to grow up to 50 feet (15 m) long.

The last time a large oarfish was discovered in the region was when a group of Navy SEALS found a 23-foot-long (7 m) specimen in 1996 off Coronado. Two years ago, researchers glimpsed the creature in its natural habitat, capturing a rare video of a live oarfish using a camera deployed deep underwater in the Gulf of Mexico.


http://news.yahoo.com/second-oarfish-week-washes-ashore-212915599.html

[Lord Avalon]

Those are some pretty big fish.  I saw pics of that 18-footer.