A doomsday fish, said to only appear when disaster is near, was caught by a fisherman shortly before the deadly earthquake that rocked Taiwan earlier this week.
The oarfish usually lives at depths of up to 3,300 feet (about 1 km), but Japanese legend has it that it appears in shallow waters when a seismic event is imminent.
It has now emerged that the fish was caught in the Philippines shortly before neighboring Taiwan was hit by its worst earthquake in 25 years, reports Metro.co.uk.
It was found near Kalanggaman Island, about 900 miles (about 1,450 km) south of the epicenter, about 30 hours before the quake.
Brenzheng Kayon, whose fishing vessel MB Starlight made the catch at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, believes it was no accident.
Yesterday he said: “According to superstition, this is a bad omen. And it may be an omen because just this morning Taiwan was rocked by an earthquake.
“I didn’t believe before, but now I started to believe. I am the owner of the fishing boat and there were three fishermen on board. The crew didn’t know what kind of fish it was – they were seeing it for the first time.
“They were going to throw it back, but I stopped them; I told them to bring it to shore. When I saw it, I recognized it immediately; I’ve seen fish before, but not this big,” he shared.
Kayon, 53, said the fish was almost one and a half meters long and weighed 15kg. But he disagrees about the animal’s sinister reputation, which has earned it the nickname “the doomsday fish.”
He said: “Everything that is happening is healing for our mother earth.
“Natural disaster is always there. I believe in God and that’s why I’m not afraid.”
The 7.4-magnitude earthquake in Taiwan has so far killed 13 people and injured more than 1,000, according to the island’s fire department.
Its epicenter was 11 miles south of the city of Hualien, a coastal town in the east of the island.
Belief in the eerie nature of the oar gained new popularity after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan.
In 2010, environmental seismologist Kiyoshi Wadatsumi suggested that the legend of this creature may have scientific basis. He told the Japan Times: “Deep-sea fish living near the sea floor are more sensitive to the movements of active faults than those near the sea surface.
However, a 2019 report in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America failed to establish a link.
The authors write: “From this study, the spatiotemporal relationship between the occurrence of deep-sea fishes and earthquakes was almost entirely absent.
‘Therefore this Japanese folklore is considered a superstition due to an illusory correlation between the two events’.
Translation: GlasNews.bg
