Imagine being in the water and stumbling upon a massive and rare 12 ft sea creature. That's what happened to a group of snorkelers and kayakers. At. What do you think that long? Oh, my goodness. That's the biggest fish I've ever seen. It looks like it's insane. Beachgoers couldn't believe their eyes. Oh, it's as long as a surfboard that could feed me for like a whole two months. This deep sea fish is incredibly rare to find. That kind of looks like a sea serpent. It's probably what is responsible for historic sea serpent myths. Scripps, institution of oceanography says this is only the 20th or fish to wash up in California since 1901. We covered a story in 1996 when Navy Seals found a 23 ft oarfish washed up in Coronado. The fish was that big? How big it took 15 sailors to hold it. The mysterious creature can reach up to around 30 ft in length. It's known in some areas of the world as the doomsday fish and has a mythical reputation to predict natural disasters. They wash up on the beach either before or after, depending on who you talk to uh earthquake or a major earthquake or a tsunami. Um And this has been centuries in Japanese mythology and folklore, oarfish normally swim around 600 to 3000 ft down and rarely come up to the surface because of their deep water habitat. Researchers don't know a lot about the oarfish or why they wash ashore in southern California. Researchers hope to answer these questions. The oarfish found over the weekend will studied and saved for future research. It will be kept at scripts and become part of one of the largest collections of deep sea fish in the world. We can have it preserved like these ones here for people in the future to continue to look at the specimen and continue to ask questions. Maybe that we aren't thinking about right now that they may be able to answer in the future. Jas Nora CBS eight.