Rare oarfish, seen as harbingers of doom, snagged off Japan island
tokyo — Two rare oarfish, giant deep-sea serpents long believed by locals to be a harbinger of earthquakes and tsunamis, have been caught off the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Fishermen were stunned to find a pair of the silvery fish — the bigger one measuring four metres — alive in their nets late last month as the number of sightings of the mysterious creature in Japanese waters continue to rise.
“I had only ever heard stories about this fish,” the Yomitan fisheries cooperative association’s Takashi Yamauchi said. “When I saw them at the port, I was quite shocked.”
The fish, caught off Okinawa’s southwest Toya port on January 28, both subsequently died.
More than 12 elusive oarfish — known in Japanese as “Ryugu no tsukai” have washed up on shores in Japan over the past year.
Oarfish live between 200 and 1,000 metres below the surface of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans and have serpentine bodies with red fins that give them a dragonlike appearance.
Japanese folklore has it that they move to shallower seas before underwater earthquakes, possibly due to electromagnetic changes that occur with tectonic activity.
Local media reported that a spate of sightings preceded the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that left about 18,500 dead or missing in northeast Japan, strengthening the myth. —