An Oarfish has been found by a Marine Science instructor Jasmine Santana while snorkeling of Catalina Island. The 18 Foot long Sea serpant is a extremely rare fish i have only ever seen one other photo taken by some navy guys way back when of similar size .

This footage seems to have been taken soon after the fish has died as the fish is still in pretty good nick so we wanted to share this with everyone as it is an amazing find and makes us understand more and more how little we know about what our waters hold..

Her is what she said ..
Jasmine Santana, 26, discussed the once-in-a-lifetime find with the Daily News, starting with when she spotted the dead fish on the sandy floor of Toyon Bay.

"I was thinking, 'What could this be?' It's so big! We usually don't have anything that long in our bay. ... We snorkel here almost daily, so it's crazy to find this," she said.

Santana got nervous, and her heart started beating faster as she realized it was an oarfish because she had seen a rare video of a smaller one.
First, she tried to lift it by the head, which was too heavy, so she grabbed it by the tail and managed to propel herself toward the surface. It was too heavy for her to get onto the shore, but fortunately other instructors, who were returning from a boat trip at the time, rushed over to help.

"About 15 more of the staff got down to lug it out and bring it on shore," said Jeff Chace, a CIMI program director. "I've been here for a little over 10 years, and I've not seen one at all."

CIMI's longest-serving employee, Mark Johnson, has worked at Toyon Bay for 32 years, and he, too, has never seen anything like it.

Oarfish, which can reach 56 feet in length, live in temperate to tropical waters but are thought to dive more than 3,000 feet down into the darker depths of the ocean, which has rendered their behavior largely unobserved and unstudied.

Owing to this, an aura of mystery still shrouds the oarfish, but it's nothing when compared with its reputation centuries ago.

"People always wondered if old-time sailors saw this unusual animal in the ocean and wondered if it was some kind of sea serpent," Chace said.

"It used to scare people," Santana added. "It is believed that oarfish is what the (sea serpent) stories were based off because of its long tapered body."

Far from the ferocious monsters of legend, the oarfish has a that physiology suggests it is relatively harmless, Santana explained. It does not have a sharp, big jaw like many other ocean predators, but scientists simply do not know enough about it ... yet.

CIMI sent tissue samples and footage to Milton Love, a fish expert with the University of California at Santa Barbara, for analysis.
Keep the seas clean and fish resonsibly

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