Last Monday, Oregon State Parks (OSP) officials announced on their social media that specimens of lancetfish (“Alepisaurus ferox”) have been spotted on the state’s beaches in recent weeks. This unusual appearance and stranding of these cannibalistic fish, with giant eyes and dagger-like fangs, along a coastline of some 290 kilometers have baffled experts.
Lancetfish normally live in tropical and subtropical waters at depths of 200 to 1,000 meters. They are known to migrate as far as the Bering Sea to feed, and they can grow up to two meters long. They have no scales, have pores on their lateral line, and their muscles are gelatinous. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has confirmed this information.
According to OSP officials, no one knows why these fish are showing up on Oregon beaches. One of NOAA’s biologists, Daniel J. Kamikawa, has suggested that there could be several possible explanations for these strandings, such as incapacitating diseases, the drag effect of storms, or a phenomenon known as temperature shock. The latter occurs when a fish is suddenly exposed to a body of water that is much colder than its normal temperature range. The expert noted that these are all unproven theories and that more data is needed to determine the exact cause of the appearance of these lancetfish on Oregon beaches.
This type of phenomenon is not common and does not occur regularly, according to experts. The rarity of this appearance and stranding of lancetfish has led scientists to continue research and gather more information to better understand this phenomenon.