Here’s an exciting find. Scientists have recently released what is believed to be the first ever footage of a live oarfish in the wild. Over the past several decades, only a handful of these ultra long fish have washed ashore on beaches across the United States, but they’ve fueled legends of sea monsters for centuries. But because these fish live at such extreme depths, they’ve never been filmed in their natural habitat, that is until now. This video was captured by a Mako Technologies ROV while conducting seafloor and water column surveys of marine life on August 15, 2011 in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The ROV was in the process of being recovered by its parent vessel when it captured almost ten minutes of the huge oarfish swimming vertically at a depth of 62 meters (approximately 203 feet).
Surprisingly, this wasn’t the only sighting of the rare fish. According to the information posted on YouTube, a total of five oarfish sightings were made in the area, each of which was detailed in the Journal of Fish Biology. While the footage was captured in 2011, the scientific article was just published on June 6th of this year.
Story via GrindTV. Special thanks to Chris Brenes for sending it our way.
