The Ultimate Fish Story : Encounter With Huge and Mysterious Oarfish in the Sea of Cortez Is Truly an Experience of a Lifetime

For William Shachtman, snorkeling with dolphins and sea lions in the blue-green sea outside La Paz was memorable enough.

But the face-to-face encounter with an 18-foot silvery, snakelike creature with saucer-shaped eyes and a crimson mane will stay with him forever.

“I was awe-struck,” said Shachtman, a 53-year-old ophthalmologist from Ft. Collins, Colo. “If I could have walked on water I would have at that point. I had no idea what its intentions were, and it was headed straight for me.”

Had Shachtman brought back only this story to tell, his friends would probably think he was the one in need of an eye doctor. There are no such things as sea serpents, after all. They are merely mythical creatures conjured up in the minds of weary sailors of another era.

But Shachtman, no fool, not only went home with a fish tale to beat all tales, he went with proof: photographs, videotape and witnesses who watched in awe as this serpent-like sea monster approached him, and then as captain Greg Willis jumped in, climbed on its back and rode it.

Eventually, the great beast beached itself and died, whereupon it was towed to La Paz and identified by a University of Baja California Sur biologist as an oarfish, a little-understood denizen of the deep that just happens to look like a sea serpent.

Oarfish, Regalecus glesne in scientific circles, are so-named because of the two long, oar-shaped fins that dangle from either side of their bellies. They live in warm and temperate waters around the world and are believed to reach lengths of 55 feet, maybe more, making them among the longest of all fishes.

Their narrow, scaleless bodies are shiny silver and blue, marked with streaks of brown and red. Their hatchet-shaped heads are crowned with vivid red plumes. Their dorsal fins, also bright red, run the length of their bodies. They have tiny mouths, huge eyes and no teeth, and propel themselves swiftly and gracefully through the black ocean much as a snake moves over land, feeding on tiny plankton-like creatures such as krill and sea jellies.

Other than that, little is known about the oarfish, simply because so few of them have been seen or studied.

“It’s not easy to get a handle on these fish because so few are available,” said Robert J. Lavenberg, acting deputy director of the research and collections department of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. “We don’t know exactly how big they get or how deep they go, but juvenile oarfish have been caught in trawl nets at [1,200 to 1,800 feet] and we think they might be found as deep as 3,000 feet.”

So what was the oarfish doing swimming toward Shachtman at the surface in the shallow emerald cove of a small island north of La Paz?

Probably dying. Live oarfish are rarely encountered, but a few dozen have been found washed up on beaches around the world, usually in an advanced state of decomposition.

In 1808, a 56-foot serpent-like creature--probably an oarfish--washed onto a beach in Scotland.

In 1901, a 22-foot oarfish drifted ashore in Newport Beach and, according to one reference book, “was the basis for many sea-serpent stories told by local bar patrons for more than a decade after its discovery.”

More recently, a 10-footer washed ashore at Point Fermin on the Palos Verdes peninsula and a 6-footer beached itself in the Santa Monica Bay. In La Paz, Edgardo Ochoa, a biology professor the University of Baja California Sur, said three oarfish have washed ashore in the area in the past few years.

What makes Shachtman’s and Willis’ encounter so rare, then, is the fact that it was with an oarfish that was still very much alive. “The ultimate fish story,” Shachtman calls it.

Shachtman, his wife, Beverly, his son, Steven, his sister, Judy, and her husband, Lennie Schwartz, had flown to La Paz for the first time in mid-July and boarded the 54-foot yacht, Wild Guess II, for an extended diving and fishing trip, which was eventful from the beginning.

“Greg [Willis] couldn’t have scripted a better trip,” he said. “The first day we snorkeled with dolphins at the Bajo [a popular seamount in the gulf], and with sea lions at Los Islotes [a sea lion colony on a nearby island]. The next day we had a tremendous day of fishing, catching these huge tuna, snapper. I even hooked a marlin and caught a 60-pound dorado.

“Between all that we went scuba diving at El Bajo, and that was impressive.”

On the third day, July 16, the conditions around them seemed to change. What had been a lively ocean suddenly became strangely quiet. The fish stopped biting, the dolphins stopped playing. The group decided to spend the night at Espiritu Santo Island and pulled into a sheltered cove there about 6:30 p.m.

Shachtman put on his mask and snorkel and jumped overboard for a late-afternoon swim. As he made his way to shore, Judy Schwartz noticed a long, dark figure moving toward her brother. She and Willis, thinking it might be a large shark, started to yell. But by the time Shachtman heard them the figure was only a few feet away.

“I turned around and saw its head breaking water, leaving like a wake behind it,” Shachtman said. “I couldn’t quite get a good look at it so I went underwater and just as I go down I see this crest of red, almost like a large rooster’s comb. And then I see its body slanting way down into the water. If somebody could have taken pictures of my eyes, they probably would have seen these giant saucers.”

The oarfish swam past Shachtman, much to the delight of his family and the crew.

Willis, 39, who has spent the last 17 years fishing in the region, wasn’t sure what to do, but when he saw that the fish had showed no aggression toward Shachtman, he grabbed his mask and snorkel, a small gaff for protection, and jumped in and swam toward the mysterious fish.

“The first thing I saw was the large eerie shadow cast by the fish moving along the bottom in front of me,” he wrote in his log after the encounter. “The next thing I saw was the tail, a giant silver scythe whipping in the water. . . . The turbulence nearly knocked my mask off and the excitement made me choke for air. When I recovered, the fish began to slow down, which allowed me to get a better look.

“As I hovered over its tail, I noticed that there seemed to be something wrong. Of course I had never seen a live oarfish tail before, but what I saw looked like it had been damaged or hurt. I dove down for a closer look and could see raw flesh and teeth marks where the rest of the tail should have been. It looked like a shark or seal had attacked it. Suddenly I realized why this fish was here in shallow water: It had come here to die.

“The fish seemed to be more aware of my presence now and started swimming faster. I swam as hard as I could but my progress was measured in inches and it seemed to take forever to catch up to its head. As long as I live I will never forget what I saw next, and I knew how Dr. Shachtman felt when he thought he had come face to face with an alien.

“First there was an eye, a large saucer-shaped eye with a black pupil, set into a huge silver face crested by long, lucent red fins that the fish arched higher as I approached from behind.

“As I drew up alongside, I was relieved to see that there was nothing to fear from its teeth--there were none. Only a large, soft downward-pointing mouth that gave it the appearance of a giant guppy.

“Its huge eye followed my every movement. I could sense a terror in its eye and it made me feel sad that such a great fish should be resigned to such a fate.

“We were approaching shallow water now and the oarfish sped up again and made a turn, passing in front of of me with the full length of its body. Fearing that I wouldn’t be able to keep up, I latched onto its body by cupping the small hand-gaff under its belly and grabbing onto its dorsal fin with my hand. To my amazement this worked, and for 20-30 seconds I rode on the back of a live oarfish!”

The oarfish eventually shook Willis off, disappeared for a few moments, then resurfaced, swimming hard toward a rocky section of beach. Once on the rocks, it began to thrash about in what Willis said seemed to be “a final show of strength.”

Thinking that an undamaged specimen would be better than a damaged one, Willis waded carefully up to the fish and wrapped his arms around its head. His deckhand arrived in a skiff, the two roped the fish and pulled it to a sandy stretch of beach before hoisting it onto the Wild Guess II and heading to La Paz.

“When we reached the dock 1 1/2 hours later, everyone was still in a state of shock over what was laying across the back of the boat and what we had experienced,” Willis wrote. “It seemed so surreal and hard to believe that each one of us had gone back to the swim-step several times during the trip back, just to assure ourselves that what we encountered wasn’t just a dream.”

It was no dream. In La Paz the oarfish taped out at 18 1/2 feet with a 50-inch girth and, since there was no scale big enough, it was estimated to weigh 500 pounds.

The scientists came, cut the fish into three pieces and carted it off to the university. “In a way it makes me sad and happy,” Shachtman said. “I was happy to see this beautiful creature, but sad to see that it had come up from the abyss to die.”