Paco Facullo - 7-8-2019 at 06:34 PM
Young fishermen find and rescue a rare oarfish on Baja beach
The young specimen measured about eight feet long and weighed between five and ten pounds
Two young tourists rescued a rare fish from a beach on the eastern coast of Baja California Sur a few weeks ago.
The encounter happened when Jacob Thompson, 17, and his brother Noah Thompson, 24, of Austin, Texas, were riding ATVs on a beach near Rancho Leonero
Resort, getting ready to go out fly-fishing.
Article taken from Mexico News Daily
When the brothers saw a silver object that had washed up on the beach, Jacob Thompson “knew exactly what it was, and he was thrilled,” his brother
told USA Today.
Jacob, who has been interested in fish since he was a child, had correctly identified it as an oarfish, a deep-sea fish that can grow up to 36 feet
long and is rarely seen near the surface.
“When I was young I’d always seen pictures of these things and dreamed of being able to hold one,” Jacob said. “Obviously I couldn’t believe
it at first. I was running up to this thing. I’d seen orange on him and I just lost it. I turned around and started screaming at my brother to come
look at this thing.”
The fish found by the Thompson brothers was a juvenile, about eight feet long and weighing between 5 and 10 pounds.
To revive the weakened animal, Jacob took it into the water and began pulling it backwards to fill its gills with water. After the fish was able to
hold itself upright, the brothers watched it swim away and disappear into the ocean.
John Ireland, owner of the Rancho Leonero Resort, told USA Today that in his 40 years in Baja California Sur he had never heard of an oarfish
sighting.
In Japan, sightings of the rarely-seen fish are believed to be a sign of coming earthquakes, and several oarfish were reported to have washed up on
Japanese beaches in the year before the 2011 quake in ***ushima.
Although most scientists have dismissed that belief, California was hit by two significant earthquakes just a few weeks after the Thompson brothers
found the oarfish.
DanO - 7-9-2019 at 12:31 AM
I suppose it can't be disproved, so it must be true. Or something.
DavidT - 7-9-2019 at 07:08 AM
It is on the internets so it has to be true.
msteve1014 - 7-9-2019 at 10:34 AM
And the beating of tom-toms has been proven to restore the sun after an eclipse....