Snorkelers Find 18-foot Oarfish off California Coast

A group of snorkelers off the coast of Southern California had the surprise of a lifetime when they came upon a rare, 18-foot-long oarfish in the waters off Catalina Island.

The snorkeling group, led by Jasmine Santana of the Catalina Island Marine Institute, found the oarfish dead in the water around Catalina's Toyon Bay, about 22 miles away from the Port of Los Angeles.

Jeff Chace, a program director at the Catalina Island Marine Institute, told local news station KTLA-5 that the fish was so big that "It took 15 or 20 of us to pick it up."

After snapping photos of the massive fish, which has eyes the size of silver dollars, Chace and his colleagues began looking for a place to store it.

But they might have a hard time finding a space suitable to keep an 18-foot fish on ice.

"We can't even really fit it into our freezer," Chace said.

They may bury the fish in the sand, along the beach where it was brought ashore, unless a more viable alternative arrives.

Oarfish, the longest boney fish in the world, can grow as up to 50 feet long and dive to depths up to 3,000 feet.

The deep water oarfish typically swim in makes spotting one quite rare. Mark Johnson, a longtime staff member at Catalina Island Marine Institute told the Long Beach Press Telegram that "In 32 years here, I have never seen anything like this."

Recently, the first video of a live oarfish swimming in the sea was recorded in the Gulf of Mexico by researchers at Louisiana State University.