"Tony Cheesman, who lives in the seaside town of Penguin, was walking his two dogs, Ronan and Custard, along the beach at Preservation Bay on Friday morning when something silvery and surrounded by gulls grabbed his attention. When I got to it, I saw this massive fish, then I noticed the beautiful colours, and it had these long fans coming out of its chin and the top of its head, he said. I'd never seen anything like it."
"They're a very unusual looking fish, he said. They're super long and skinny, kind of like a ribbon, and they have a continuous dorsal fin. One Australian newspaper even reported the discovery of a supposed sea serpent' at Penguin, Tasmania in 1878, with an engraving that looked very much like an oarfish. Photograph: Tony Cheesman Giant oarfish could grow up to eight or nine metres, he said, but because they lived 200 to 1,500 metres below the surface, they were rarely seen."
A three-metre oarfish washed ashore at Preservation Bay in Penguin, north-west Tasmania. The animal displayed long chin and head filaments and colourful markings. Oarfish are very long, ribbon-like fishes with a continuous dorsal fin and can reach eight or nine metres. They inhabit depths of about 200 to 1,500 metres and rarely surface except when sick or dying. In Japanese folklore oarfish are known as ryugu-no-tsukai, the sea god's palace messenger, and their appearance was traditionally linked to earthquakes or tsunamis. Scientific study finds no reliable link between oarfish sightings and imminent disasters. Beached specimens are valuable for research.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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