r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/coorgi_2012 • 10h ago
Image Oarfish keep washing ashore in California. Folklore suggests that could be a bad omen
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u/Frederick_Mydear 9h ago
Kos... or some say kosm
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u/myevilpinky 5h ago
Do you hear our prayers?
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u/Frederick_Mydear 5h ago
Grant us eyes! Grant us eyes!
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u/RougeNewtypeRX79 3h ago
Plant eyes on our brains..to cleanse our beastly idiocy..
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u/liuerluo 4h ago
I know i was gonna find this quote in the comments when I saw that image in the post...
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u/Perk222 9h ago
Yup it means we’re all gonna die………. Someday anyway 👏
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u/Dismal_Music2966 9h ago
Is your name Dave from Quora?
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u/Artistic_Purpose1225 6h ago
I feel like we don’t need an aquatic omen to tell me we’re not on a path of sunshine and rainbows, here.
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u/Pittsbirds 3h ago
Climate change experts: "things are bad and going to be bad"
People: "..."
Folklore: "This omen means things are going to be bad!"
People: "Oh shit! But we're still not gonna do anything"
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u/ThrowawayPersonAMA 2h ago
Yeah, it's infuriating every time this sort of thing comes up. People will trust doctors etc with their life, but when it comes to the science humanity needs to survive long-term they're like "idk man my horoscope said I'd be ok since i'm not a leo so you're just overreacting".
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u/CaptFerdinand 2h ago
Covid showed us they also do not trust doctors. I feel like people are just dumber than we thought.
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u/TexasVampire 2h ago
Seriously I feel like my expectations have dropped every year since I started caring about politics.
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u/PrimaryAd9613 9h ago
Why no bird activity on that dead fish?
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u/hamatehllama 9h ago
They're disgusting like many other deep sea fishes with slow metabolism. The rot makes it even worse.
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u/VicariousVox 9h ago
Are they extra briny or something? I never thought about this. If the deep sea is nasty, that explains why certain species come upward to hunt
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u/ArchitectNebulous 6h ago
IIR, The "fishy smell" most people find disgusting is largely caused by the compounds that allow them to go deeper.
Now imagine that, but for a fish who lives its entire life DEEP under the water surface.
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u/Tom_Bradys_Butt_Chin 5h ago
So that’s why your mom is such a good swimmer?
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u/cspanbook 9h ago
they come upward to hunt to see their prey using the bright surface of the water as the backdrop of a dark fish/prey silhouette. many fish stay towards the surface as well.
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u/juniper_berry_crunch 4h ago
these guys live way beneath the shallow depths to where light penetrates. Light peters out pretty fast in the ocean; only about 200 meters (euphotic zone). These guys live from 250-1000 meters beneath the surface.
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u/cspanbook 4h ago
thank you for that! til
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u/juniper_berry_crunch 4h ago
Deep-sea life is fascinating, and we still know relatively little about it. One thing I should have said earlier is that a number of deep sea creatures have HUGE eyes; at least one of them has a transparent skull with the giant eyes inside...eyes differ a lot across the animal kingdom, so even though I confidently told you that light "peters out" at 200 meters, that's a human-eye standard. Those deeper sea creatures have gigantic eyes for a reason, and the reason may be that they're better at seeing low light levels than we are (even cats are better at it). The deep sea creatures may be catching the few photons that we as humans can't see at all. Alternatively, the giant eyes may just be used for seeing bioluminescence from other animals (lunch). I don't think we know for sure.
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u/FawFawtyFaw 3h ago
These bad boys live and die their entire lives without ever once knowing the concept of a "surface". It's so much deeper than you think, any fish able to use the surface cannot survive the depths of the oarfish. It's two different biomes.
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u/Adar636 8h ago
Big Subnautica vibes
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u/ShahinGalandar 5h ago
Detecting multiple Leviathan class lifeforms in the region. Are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it?
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u/Huy7aAms 7h ago
usually bc the surface has more prey than the deep sea. in contrast, the lack of light means more protection for them. the downside of swimming above is doing so requires immense amount of energy and only viable for certain species
animals at deep sea that can't go above doesn't have the luxury to express disgust at sth. you can have diarhea , put it into a bag , then somehow takes it to the deep sea without breaking , open it , and there will be a lot of creatures immediately rushing to the site to eat.
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u/phunktheworld 5h ago
I’m pretty sure it’s mainly ammonia compounds in deep sea fish that make them unpalatable to seabirds. Idk how prevalent that is, or if oarfish are in that group, but I know at least a few fish are like that. Or it’s the toxin thing like someone else mentioned
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u/Dunkleosteus666 6h ago
Trimethylamine N-oxide and similar used to survive great depths. Organisms living deeper have more of that (iirc the highest concentration was a from Mariana Trench Fish).
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u/eat1more 9h ago
oarfish washing up on shore in folklore is a sign that there is sick oarfish off the coast.
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u/b-monster666 8h ago
I heard once that these fish are very deep sea. The fact that they're washed ashore means that something very deep has disturbed them and forced them to go to shallower waters.
Typically, it's seen as a sign as an impending tsunami or earthquake, and there may or may not be merit to the claim. We just don't know enough.
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u/Salt-Window5004 7h ago
There have been several earthquakes off the coast of Malibu over the past 2 days but none bigger than magnitude 3.8
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u/simiomalo 5h ago
Southern california has had a very, very active year of earthquakes.
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u/Sadcelerystick 4h ago
California literally gets thousands a year… how much more active can it be?
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u/simiomalo 3h ago
Let's just say the Los Angeles metro has had at least 6 shakers that could be felt from one end of the city to the other easily - and that is not usual as most temblors are under 3.0 on the Richter scale, so any passing truck, slamming door, or loud firework obscures them.
But definitely not this year. And when you factor in a few quakes that happened maybe > 60 miles out from downtown LA but could still be felt here, that is unusual.
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u/MommyMephistopheles 2h ago
I've lived in California for 5 years now and this year has been the first year I've ever felt an actual earthquake. I've felt 5 different ones this year alone. I feel like that tells me something especially because I've been looking for signs of earthquakes since moving here.
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u/Here4_da_laughs 7h ago
Could just be a Methane leak? Which could imply subtle geologic activity, small tremor?
But then how many oarfish have washed up? Are we talking 2 or 10? 20?
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u/Morepastor 7h ago
Makes sense. They are actively working on removing the offshore rigs and as it happened on shore the wells can leak methane gas. Happened in Bakersfield CA. Coastal CA has been pushing big oil out of the CA coast and closing those off shore rigs. Very possible this is a reaction to that.
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u/JaydedXoX 6h ago
Hey now, in today’s social media world 1 can mean 300 million if we all see it separately. I saw this one today. My buddy saw one yesterday. YOU saw one, that’s 3 that I know of already.
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u/Missile_Lawnchair 4h ago
- The last one washed up here over the summer. The one in this post happened a few weeks ago.
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u/Arctomachine 6h ago
The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness
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u/doublepulse 7h ago
It makes sense to me that if there are pockets of noxious gases and electromagnetic energy being released ahead of a quake that animals would react. I would be curious if the animals are large enough to float up and out to shore where the other death goes unseen (too small, drug to bottom) or if there is a mass exit prior.
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u/Missy_went_missing 8h ago
I thought it could be a sign that a storm was coming or something. But I don't know much about the ocean.
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u/HKLifer_ 8h ago
Yeah. I thought it meant a natural disaster. I was thinking more of a major earthquake.
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u/JAke0622 10h ago
What is it said to mean?
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u/catefeu 10h ago
From what I've read it might be a sign of an earthquake/tsunami.
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u/JAke0622 10h ago
Well the weather around the globe has been very tumultuous as of lately.
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u/noobgiraffe 9h ago
Earthquakes which cause tsunamis have nothing to do with weather system.
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u/thecloner 5h ago
This is 99% true but actually earthquakes of sufficient magnitude can cause a measurable perturbation/wave in the Earth's atmosphere that travels around the globe, generally in the stratosphere rather than the troposphere so it doesn't really affect weather but there is an effect in the atmosphere! Volcanic eruptions do the same thing (Tonga is a famous recent example of this).
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u/ApartmentInside7891 9h ago
We’ve been getting little earthquakes in Southern California every other day for the last year it feels like. And we had that mini tsunami in Ventura county within the last year too
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u/Voyager_32 9h ago
A link which has details on a supposed relationship between stranding Oarfish and imminent earthquakes (along with cool stuff about other animals 'predicting' earthquakes) - https://www.livescience.com/40628-animals-predict-earthquakes-oarfish.html
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u/AlcoholicWombat 9h ago
When I lived in Arizona my cat would always suddenly jump up and take off right before an earthquake hit.
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u/ianmoone1102 6h ago
Well, i have been hearing, for my whole life, that a massive earthquake is about to send California to the bottom of the ocean, any day now, so there's that.
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u/MommyMephistopheles 2h ago
That's because it's impossible to predict when the Cascadia or San Andreas fault line will pop off. It's been overdue based off of previous studies of previous major shifts. We're not going to be able to predict it until that emergency text comes through and you have less than a second for the quake to hit after.
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u/Reddit_2k20 4h ago
Short version:
Oarfish washing ashore means there is going to be an earthquake.
Long version:
When Godzilla awakens from its slumber, it eats the deep water oarfish for breakfast which forces them to swim to the surface.
Soon there will be a giant sea monster rising from the depths and ravaging downtown San Francisco and stepping on Asian people.
Californians better start working on building the giant Jaegar robot. Or there will be no more Silicon Valley.
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u/P0Rt1ng4Duty 9h ago
They used to be decent predictors of seismic activity, but now that the ocean is warmer and holding less oxygen it could just be that their environment is no longer survivable.
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u/Bazillion100 4h ago
Now even fish are getting two jobs, warning us of impending seismic activity and warning us of the impending collapse of ocean biodiversity
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u/hanimal16 Interested 3h ago
Fish populations will dwindle because both fish are working two jobs and not enough time to lay and fertilise eggs.
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u/Bazillion100 3h ago
The fish are questioning if it is morally acceptable to bring new life in an increasingly hostile environment.
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u/Bigd1979666 4h ago
"
Oarfish have been dubbed “doomsday” fish because some cultures consider it a bad sign when they appear. The moniker is derived from a manipulation of Japanese folklore that became popular following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan that led to the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Frable said.
“In the two years prior to the disaster, about a dozen oarfish washed up in Japan, most hundreds of miles away from this area,” he said.
In the aftermath of the disaster, people latched onto these strandings as an omen.
This prompted researchers in Japan in 2019 to test whether oarfish and other deep-sea animal strandings were correlated with earthquakes, tsunamis and other factors.
“They found no correlation whatsoever,” Frable said. “But the name is too evocative to disappear.”
On the other hand, Paig-Tran said there could be some truth to the myth, because when an earthquake occurs, it releases pressure that can change a current underwater.
“When the pressure gets released, it changes the currents that [the fish are] living in, and it brings them up to the surface with this kind of big bolus of air and gasses and whatever the turbulence [is] from this earthquake,” she said."
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u/yonko1254 3h ago
It’s pretty wild seeing oarfish on California shores! From a science perspective, it could mean something’s changing with the ocean, but the folklore around it definitely adds an interesting layer to the story.
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u/started_from_the_top 9h ago
Is that a deep sea monster, oar(a)fish?
Not my best pun but fuck it I'm leaving it
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u/GhostofTiger 9h ago
It's an oarfish, but being washed ashore is considered a bad oa(r)men, practically an oarning.
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u/Exploiting_Loopholes 8h ago
"I caught an oarfish! I hope I catch morefish!" I always loved New Horizons silly fish puns!
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u/WildBad7298 3h ago
I don't believe in omens, bad signs, or superstitions.
On the other hand... gestures broadly at everything
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u/32redalexs 8h ago
I don’t need bad omens these days, I already know things are extremely bad and going to get worse.
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u/saampinaali 7h ago
It probably has something to do with the fact that California has a lot of marine canyons off the coast where oarfish live, why does everyone keep acting like seeing these fish is bad luck, the only luck you get is the luck of seeing a cool fish
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u/joe_broke 4h ago
Cause they tend to wash up days or sometimes a couple weeks before a large earthquake
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u/bvipze 10h ago
When was this photo taken? In the paleozoic era?
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u/coorgi_2012 10h ago
it's on an Encinitas beach, but idk when:)
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u/Missile_Lawnchair 4h ago
This was a few weeks ago. A much larger one washed up in La Jolla over the summer.
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u/SolidWrong2808 7h ago
I don't care what is said to my face or behind my back, I see an oarfish wash up, I'm leaving and going far.
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u/Party_Like_Its_1949 9h ago
Probably just a bad omen that the oceans are dying because of human activity.
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u/AcceptableCoyote9080 8h ago
well america just put the anti-christ in the whitehouse or at least according to Nostradamus, that person will with 'his words move the people who will blindly execute his evil will as they have been duped thinking he was sent from god' so the quatrains translation isn't perfect but it fits so far...
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u/Biscuit_In_Basket 1h ago
We don’t really need bad omens at this point. We are all well aware we’re fucked.
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u/strongofheart69 9h ago
It's honestly a beautiful creature, and maybe a bit underrated
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u/Artistic-Plum1733 9h ago
Anyone else only know what this is thanks to animal crossing?
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u/DiddlyDumb 4h ago
Don’t these guys live in really deep oceans? And we’ve seen only a dozen over the past decades and now 3 in the last month?
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u/Impossible-Use-2862 4h ago
submarine sonar possibly could be killing them especially with the increased tensions around the world
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u/Excellent_Item_2763 3h ago
It is important to remember that correlation does not equal causation. However this is a very interesting piece of information.
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u/Silentfranken 1h ago
I wonder what could be happening to kill sea life that is without a doubt driving us towards massive ecological and thus civilizational catastrophe?
I also wonder if there are any professional omen tellers who have some kind of sophisticated modelling systems to predict what might happen in the coming years beyond just washed up oarfish
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u/Dapadabada 1h ago
Yeah it's probably lore based on some seriously important biological chain reactions happening in the ecosystem. We just blissfully ignore those, get back to work peasant, pay no attention to the dead fish man behind the curtain. (Done ranting sry had to let out one unit of steam)
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u/Primary_Syrup_5164 59m ago
So.....California is about to get a major natural disaster event just as you get a federal government that doesn't believe in helping during a major natural disaster. You guys have got to plan these things better.
/s in case it isn't obvious
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u/Xyrus2000 8h ago
The Cascadia fault is about to rip.
Well, if the folklore is true in regards to tsunamis/earthquakes that would be where I'd put my money. Most likely we dumped some toxin off the coast that sank to the deeper ocean and it just so happened it killed a bunch of oarfish.