14 DAY TRIAL // As if having an 18-foot (5.5-meter) oarfish wash up on your shores isn't deranging enough, the people of California now have another myth to worry about.
It appears that a centuries-old Japanese myth associates gigantic oarfish carcasses with earthquakes.
According to ABC News, the Japanese predictions have come true before. Carcasses were recovered in Chile and Haiti in 2010, and large tremors followed.
An incredibly large oarfish was also spotted before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami near Sendai, Japan. However, scientists do not agree.
“The science and study just isn’t there. There’s a big difference between suggesting something like that and proving it. What did an animal sense that maybe we didn’t that told them about a coming event?” says Pat Abbott, seismologist at San Diego State University.