A ‘Doomsday Fish’ Washed Up in California and May God Have Mercy On Our Souls

A bunch of athletic do-gooders heralded the apocalypse* over the weekend when they found a 12-foot-long creature floating dead in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, and decided to drag it to shore on a paddleboard. You know, instead of just pretending it hadn’t happened, like normal, anxious people.

[*This is a lie.]

Exuding typical levels of Southern California enthusiasm and positivity, the swimmers notified officials about the creature — for science or whatever — who were thrilled with the find and planned a necropsy to see what killed it.

So, what is this massive sea serpent-looking thing? A giant oarfish, that’s what: a be-mohawked deep-sea longboi whose entire family has been nicknamed “doomsday fish.” (Cool.)

Oarfish can grow up to 36 feet in length, making them the longest bony fish on Earth, and usually hang out thousands of feet underwater. Oh, yes — and this is the most important part — despite having incredibly derpy faces, the oarfish are said to be predictors of earthquakes, and prophets of death and mayhem and mortal danger to all our lives**.

[**This is also a lie.]

The earthquake theory posits that because oarfish live so close to the bottom of the ocean, they can sense when seismic activity is afoot, and rush to the surface in a panic. (Kind of like the way San Franciscans all run around looking for a table to hide under when we get those Shake Alert texts.) According to some corners of the internet, multiple oarfish were spotted in Japan before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and a couple of oarfish washed ashore in the Philippines before a 6.6 earthquake in 2017. Which thoroughly suggests that when human bystanders see an oarfish, it definitely means that we’re all going to die.***

[***Another lie.]

If, like me, you are incapable of staying calm in the face of these harbingers of doom, try and find comfort in the fact that apparently, oarfish also showed up in California in 2013, 2014 and 2015 without major catastrophe befalling us all. Keep everything crossed.