Dog walker discovers rare fish linked to dark 'doomsday' legend washed up on beach
4 June 2025, 16:04
The 'doomsday fish', that washed up in remote Australia, is considered a bad omen as it came from the depths of the ocean.
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Dog walker Sybil Jethro found the 9ft-long creature on Ocean Beach on the Western coast of Tasmania.
Oarfish are considered a bad omen when seen outside of their natural habitat as they dwell 250 metres to 1,000 metres below the ocean's surface.
Two dead oarfish were last discovered in California last year. After the first was found by swimmers in San Diego in August, a 4.4 magnitude earthquake struck Los Angeles.
20 of the fish were reportedly spotted ahead of the 2011 earthquake in Japan that sparked the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
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Sybil shared the images on Facebook which was widely shared.
She said a friend immediately contacted her: "She said it’s an oarfish, they’re bad juju, you don’t want to go near it."
“It was so shiny, pretty and beautiful. But it isn’t anymore, because I went back in the afternoon and it had been mauled. It was a good feast for the eagles and crows,” she told Yahoo!News.
“When I got back a few hours later, there was no head, and the body was almost gone. I was really lucky to see it in such beautiful condition.”
Oarfish can grow up to 36 feet in length and weigh over 441 pounds.
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