Divers spot rare “earthquake fish” off the coast of Taiwan

Orvish Bank, circa 1850 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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The giant oarfish (Regalecus glesne) is a deep-water creature that lives at depths of 200 to 1,000 metres. This species is also the longest bony fish in the world, reaching 4 meters or more in height. It is assumed to be the real animal behind some of the sea serpent scenes. In Japan, this species is traditionally known as “Ryugu no tsukai” or “Jinja him” and is believed to be a messenger warning people of impending earthquakes and tsunamis.

At least a dozen paddlefish had swarmed the Japanese coast in the year before the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and subsequent tsunami, leading many to speculate about the supposed link between the sightings and the post-disaster earthquakes.

Just a few days ago, divers photographed a paddlefish in shallow waters off the northern coast of Taiwan. Taiwan lies along a subduction zone, where the Philippine plate slides below the Eurasian plate. The island is also traversed by a number of minor faults and is at moderate to high earthquake risk. Online articles have covered the sighting including the idea of ​​paddlefish as “earthquake fish”.

In July 2015, a paddlefish was caught near Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California. It was the third paddlefish spotted in 19 months in the waters around the island or washed ashore. Subsequently, the media had already searched for a connection between sightings of paddlefish and earthquake activity along the San Andreas Fault, but none had been found.

Biologists have proposed various explanations for why oarfish are periodically spotted at the surface of the sea. At the depths where paddlefish live, there are little or no currents. As a result, they build little muscle mass and are not very good swimmers. Seasonally driven currents can easily push them to the surface, where they eventually die from exhaustion.

But as some researchers have noted, the most likely relationship between frequent sightings of paddlefish has been found with phases of anomalous sea surface temperatures. Research published in 2018 shows a relationship between paddlefish filaments and El Niño years. During El Niño, the temperature at the sea surface is several degrees higher than at the depths where the fish live. While the paddlefish feeds on plankton and small fish, and is more abundant in warm water, the paddlefish also follows its preferred food to the surface.

Oarfish braids by year, with El Niño years.

Finney and RNLea 2018 / Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences

Currently, there is no statistically significant evidence linking animal behavior to seismic activity.

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