Rare oarfish caught on camera swimming off coast of Mexico

It’s not weird to see a couple of fish swimming in the ocean, but it is weird to see oarfish swimming around in shallow waters.

And it was all caught on camera.

The video posted to YouTube by the Shedd Aquarium shows the rare fish swimming right along the beach near a bunch of guests who were on a trip with the aquarium in Baja, California.

According to NBC News, the oarfish, the world’s largest bony fish, can grow up to 36 feet in length.

The video was posted on April 7 and has over 3 million views.

In the video, the oarfish swims under a kayak off the coast of Mexico in the Sea of Cortez and you can see how large the fish is. The videographer also takes the camera underwater and follows the fish a little ways, giving us a close up look at the creature.

According to the Huffington Post, when this rare fish strays from the ocean depths and makes it to shore, it’s often dead, which makes this encounter even more interesting.

“As far as is known all of the ones that somehow get close to shore wind up dying,” Milton Love, a research biologist at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California at Santa Barbara, told NBC News. “Their usual haunts are in deeper, quieter waters at least somewhat offshore. Why they wind up near shore is unknown, but likely at least sometimes the fish get carried into these turbulent waters by unexpected currents.”

Contact Kira Terry at kterry@reviewjournal.com. Find her on Twitter: @kiraterry