Another 'doomsday fish' washes up in California

A rarely seen oarfish, believed to be a harbinger of disaster, has washed ashore in California for the second time this year.

Last week, Alison Laferriere, a doctoral student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, discovered a nearly 10-foot-long oarfish on the beach in Encinitas, Southern California, NBC News reported.

An oarfish washed ashore in California in 2013. (Photo: Mark Bussey/Oceanside).

The oarfish is described as a 'large, strange fish' with a long, silvery, ribbon-like body. It can grow to over 30 feet long, and has large eyes and 'ominous' red spines that grow in clusters like a crown. It lives in the deep sea and thrives in waters least explored by scientists.

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this mysterious fish remains largely unstudied by scientists.

The rare oarfish, whose enormous size and strange shape have inspired thrilling tales for centuries, is also known as the "doomsday fish" because it often appears just before natural disasters or earthquakes.

In 2011, 20 oarfish washed ashore in the months before Japan's most powerful earthquake on record, a magnitude 9.0. That was followed by a devastating tsunami on March 11 that killed more than 15,000 people.

The first 'doomsday fish' appeared this year in California. (Photo: Michael Wang/Owyn Snodgrass).

According to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, oarfish are extremely rare. Since 1901, only 21 oarfish have been recorded washing up on California shores, according to the organization.

The first oarfish to appear in California waters this year, a 12-foot-long (3.65 meter) fish, was spotted by kayakers this summer in La Jolla Cove. It was found just two days before a 4.4-magnitude earthquake struck the area and shook Los Angeles on August 12.

The fish was then transported to NOAA's Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla for further study.

The fish carcass was then displayed at the Scripps Marine Vertebrate Collection - one of the largest collections of deep-sea fish in the world.