CRYPTOLINK: Giant ’sea serpent’ of an oarfish carried hundreds of thousands of eggs

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

LOS ANGELES — A 14-foot (4.2-meter) oarfish that washed ashore in Southern California last week was ready to become a mommy.

The serpent-like fish — one of two discovered along the coast last week — was dissected Monday and marine biologists found that the healthy female was ripe to spawn, H.J. Walker of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Tuesday.

The silvery fish’s 6-foot (1.8-meter)-long ovaries contained hundreds of thousands of eggs that were nearly ready to be released, Walker said.

The fish had lost its tail somehow while alive and it had disc-shaped wounds from cookiecutter sharks, but those injuries wouldn’t have been deadly, Walker said.

In fact, it’s unclear why the creature died, although Walker said it was possible the deep-water fish came too close to the surface, where it may have been knocked around by waves.

The oarfish washed up on a beach in the San Diego County coastal city of Oceanside on Friday. Several days earlier, a snorkeler found the carcass of an 18-foot (5.4-meter) oarfish off Catalina Island and dragged it to shore with some help.

The cause of death for the larger fish also remains a mystery.

Read on...