An oarfish — a super rare fish commonly referred to as the “doomsday fish” — recently washed ashore on a beach in Mexico, leaving beachgoers stunned.

The fish typically surface when they are dead, according to reports, but this one appeared to be alive and swimming.

“The fish swam straight at us, lifting its head above the water about two inches,” Robert Hayes, who said he was a witness, told Storyful. “We redirected it three times out to the water, but it came back each time.”

According to Storyful, the fish was spotted along shallow waters of a Baja California Sur beach on Feb. 9.

Hayes shared video of the encounter with Storyful. In the footage, which is circulating on social media, a man is seen touching the fish and attempting to put the animal back in the water.

Someone off-camera comments that oarfish tend to live a mile deep in the water and are “almost never” seen alive.

Hayes told Storyful “the man seen holding the oarfish in the footage said he would bring it to a marine biologist, assuming the fish was injured.”

In early November, an oarfish was found dead in California. Scripps Institution of Oceanography previously said doctoral candidate Alison Laferriere made the sighting.

The organization shared several images of the fish on Instagram on Nov. 13, noting that Laferriere spotted the fish washed up on Grandview Beach in Encinitas, California.

That was after a 12-foot oarfish was found in California waters by a group of “lucky” kayakers and snorkelers in August.

“This cool creature is a bit smaller than the one recovered in La Jolla this August, measuring roughly 9 to 10 feet long,” Ben Frable, who is manager of the Scripps Oceanography Marine Vertebrate Collection, noted in an Instagram post.

Frable said he contacted a NOAA team to recover the fish, and it was taken to the Southwest Fisheries Science Center. He said his team took samples and froze the specimen for more research.

“Like with the previous oarfish, this specimen and the samples taken from it will be able to tell us much about the biology, anatomy, genomics and life history of oarfishes,” he said.

He also offered an explanation as to why not one — but two— oarfish were found dead in California within just a few months.

“It may have to do with changes in ocean conditions and increased numbers of oarfish off our coast,” Frable said. “Many researchers have suggested this as to why deep-water fish strand on beaches. Sometimes it may be linked to broader shifts such as the El Niño and La Niña cycle but this is not always the case. There was a weak El Niño earlier this year. This wash-up coincided with the recent red tide and Santa Ana winds last week but many variables could lead to these strandings.”

In August, the organization said 20 oarfish have washed up in California since 1901. One found in 1996 reportedly measured 36 feet long.

The oarfish is often referred to as the “doomsday fish” because some people believe it “foreshadows natural disasters, such as earthquakes or tsunamis,” according to the Ocean Conservancy.

But experts debunked the myth as folklore, according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“A 2019 study found no correlation between oarfish or ribbonfish strandings and earthquakes in Japan,” the Scripps Institution of Oceanography noted on social media.

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