Have You Seen This? Beachgoers encounter long, shimmering 'doomsday' fish

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — Some people come across seashells while walking along the beach or sea glass, shards of discarded glass worn smooth by the force of the ocean.

On her stroll in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, at the very southern tip of Baja California Sur, though, Monica Pittenger had a very different find — a pair of long, shimmering fish undulating on the beach, clearly struggling. They had the look of the sort of creature that might have haunted mariners in seafaring stories of yore.

"It was something out of like a fiction movie," she said in a video of the encounter, posted on March 3 to her Instagram page and then the We Love Animals YouTube page. "I have never seen anything like it before and I just remember thinking, 'Is this real?'"

The encounter with the deep-sea oarfish, as they're known, was indeed very real, and when she and others on the beach came across the creatures, struggling to get back into the water, they cautiously jumped into action. "I think a lot of people were hesitant because nobody knew what it really was. It's not every day that you see that and I don't blame them," she said.

The critters typically live at depths of around 650 feet, though they sometimes hover at depths of up to around 3,300 feet, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "This unusual fish is possibly a source for sea monster legends as its ribbon-like body can grow to 36 feet long in some cases," according to the museum

Eventually, the people who encountered the critters on the Mexican beach were able to prod one of the stuck creatures back into the sea and the other oarfish likewise made it to deep water.

"Afterward, they learned there have only been a handful of sightings along that coastline over the past few hundred years. While some people call them 'doomsday fish,' scientists say there's no evidence they're linked to earthquakes or tsunamis," reads some text accompanying the We Love Animals post.

The University of Florida said encounters with living oarfish are rare and that it wasn't until 2001 that a live oarfish was captured on film by a U.S. Navy crew. To be sure, it was a one-of-a-kind experience for Pittenger and the others, who returned to their beach chairs afterward to process the encounter.

"We kind of sit down and we're like, 'What was that?'" she said.