Oarfish on Lanzarote misinformation

News sites last week printed several stories claiming that a rare oarfish had appeared at Playa Quemada, Lanzarote. Many of the stories repeated the legend that these fish are only seen when an earthquake is imminent.

However, the sighting does not appear to have taken place in Lanzarote at all. Other reports place it on a beach in Baja California, Mexico, and this is certainly backed up by the video in which American tourists approach the fish.

The confusion seems to have arisen because of similarity of the name of the Mexican beach – Playa La Quemada. To the fishing village on Lanzarote. This, along with the recent sighting of another deep-sea fish called a Black Sea Devil near Tenerife recently, could have caused the misinformation.