Elusive Water Monster found?!?!

This is a picture from the New York Times showing the elusive magical fish called the OARFISH.  This extremely rare, 14 foot, female oarfish was found washed ashore in California.  It also had 6 foot long ovaries with hundreds of thousands of eggs.  Five days prior, there was another oarfish, male this time, that was found in Santa Catalina Island, California also.  This amazing creature has gotten marine biologists excited because people just do not know much about them since they are never really caught in nets or by hooks.  According to Dr. Milton Love, a research biologist at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara, they are, surprisingly, bad swimmers because their long bodies are still while their fins undulate to propel themselves.
Some more interesting facts about these oarfish from the NYTimes article are:
- large larval tapeworms and spiny-headed worm were found in the intestines of the male
- some posterior parts of the male oarfish were missing, which ichthyologists speculate that they can shed parts of their bodies below the abdomen like lizards do with their tails
- they are the world's largest bony fish
- some say they live 500-1,000 feet below surface, others say they spend most of their time near the surface. (now that would a super scary encounter in the water!)
- they may be able to change gender as in life stages
- Japanese myths say that washed-up oarfish are a sign of a coming earthquake! (~20 oarfish washed up in Japan before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami)