The Atlantic oarfish is named Regalecus glesne, from the Norwegian farm of Glesnæs, where the first recorded specimen, described by Ascanius, was taken 130 years ago. Since then the species has been many times found on the shores of Great Britain and Norway, and once at Bermuda.
In this species the body is half-transparent, almost jelly-like, light blue in color, with some darker cross-stripes, and the head has a long jaw and a high forehead, suggesting the head of a horse. The dorsal fin begins on the head, and the first few spines are very long, each having a red tuft on the end. When the animal is alive these spines stand up like a red mane.
The creature is harmless, weak in muscle as well as feeble in mind. It lives in the deep seas, all over the world. After great storms it sometimes comes ashore. Perhaps this is because for some reason it has risen above its depth and so lost control of itself. When a deep-water fish rises to the surface the change of pressure greatly affects it. Reduction of pressure bursts its blood-vessels, its swim-bladder swells, if it has one, and turns its stomach inside out. If a deep-water fish gets above its depth it is lost, just as surely as a surface fish is when it gets sunk to the depth of half a mile.
Sometimes, again, these deep-sea fishes rush to the shore to escape from parasites, crustaceans that torture their soft flesh, or sharks that would tear it.
Numerous specimens have been found in the Pacific, and to these several names have been given, but the species are not at all clearly made out. The oldest name is that of Regalecus russelli, for the naturalist Patrick Russell, who took a specimen at Vizagapatam in 1788. I have seen two large examples of Regalecus in the museum at Tokio, and several young ones have recently been stranded on the Island of Santa Catalina in southern California. A specimen twenty-two feet long lately came ashore at Newport in Orange County, California. The story of its capture is thus told by Mr. Horatio J. Forgy, of Santa Ana, California:
"On the 22d of February, 1901, a Mexican Indian reported at Newport Beach that about one mile up the coast he had landed a sea-serpent, and as proof showed four tentacles and a strip of flesh about six feet long. A crowd went up to see it, and they said it was about twenty feet long and like a fish in some respects and like a snake in others. Mr. Remsberg and I, on the following day, went up to see it, and in a short time we gathered a crowd and with the assistance of Mr. Peabody prepared the fish and took the picture you have received.
"It measured twenty-one feet and some inches in length, and weighed about 500 or 600 pounds.
"The Indian, when he reported his discovery, said it was alive and in the shallow water, and that he had landed it himself.
"This I very much doubt, but when it was first landed it was in a fine state of preservation and could have easily been shipped to you, but he had cut it to such an extent that shipment or preservation seemed out of the question when we first saw it.
"At the time it came ashore an unusual number of peculiar fishes and sharks were found. Among others, I found a small oarfish about three feet long in a bad state of preservation in a piece of kelp. One side of it was nearly torn off and the other side was decayed."