iStockphoto / dottedhippo
A diver in Taiwan experienced the thrill of a lifetime when they came face to face with a rare oarfish, known as an ‘earthquake fish,’ and was even able to reach out and touch the fish.
The long and skinny oarfish have a magnificent chrome-like coloration that reflects light like a mirror. Though rarely seen, they swim upright and have very large eyes.
Their stunning appearance has invited countless comparisons throughout the years to ‘water dragons’ and looking at them it’s easy to see how primitive cultures might’ve seen an oarfish on the beach and assumed it was a dragon.
Here the diving instructor, Wang Cheng-ru, gets up close and personal with the oarfish that usually inhabits depths between 650 to 3,300 feet:
The diving instructor also shared some stunning close up photos of their dive with the oarfish.
These fish are often harbingers of earthquakes. Prior to Japan’s catastrophic 2011 earthquake, there was an ‘unusual number of’ slender oarfish which appeared off Japan from December 2009 to March 2010 and many of these fish washed up on the beaches.
This fueled the myth that these are ‘earthquake fish’ that show up before large earthquakes. There’s no scientific evidence that these Giant Oarfish have any connection to earthquakes but that hasn’t stopped the myth from carrying on.
A massive 13-foot oarfish showed up on a beach in Baja’s Pichilingue Bay in La Paz, Mexico back in July 2020 and had everyone on edge about an impending earthquake. It didn’t help anyone’s nerves that Oaxaca had experienced a 7.4M earthquake the month prior.
In 2016, an oarfish showed up in Japan after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake.
This video about ‘the Real Sea Serpent’ reveals some interesting oarfish facts:
As a deep water fish, there’s still so much we don’t know about the ‘earthquake fish.’