Scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography have completed a necropsy on a deep-sea oarfish, which washed up earlier this month, providing a rare look and scientific data, it was announced Thursday.
Kayakers and snorkelers in La Jolla Cove ran into the already dead fish on Aug. 10 — just the 20th of its species documented to have washed up on California beaches since 1901.
The fish was transported to the NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla. On Friday, a team of scientists from UCSD, Cal State Fullerton, and NOAA were able to examine the short-crested oarfish, performing a necropsy, or animal autopsy, to learn more about the organism.
“Rare encounters like this provide an amazing opportunity to learn more about this species and how it lives,” said Ben Frable, ichthyologist and manager of the Marine Vertebrate Collection at Scripps, and part of the necropsy team. “We are fortunate to have a large community of researchers and world-class collection that mobilized quickly to examine and preserve this fish.”
The fish was an adult male, measuring 12.25 feet long, 1.14 feet in depth and weighing in at 74.3 pounds. The fish has a scaleless, long ribbon- like silvery body with dark spots. A long red dorsal fin crest, measuring 2.17 feet in length, extended from the top of the head, according to the necropsy data.
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