This week, two co-workers came across a huge deep-sea creature that was washed up on the beach of Catalina Island.

According to Amy Catalano, a conservation coordinator for the nonprofit Catalina Island Conservancy and among the people who found the oarfish on the beach, the fish has extraordinarily long ovaries and was reported to have been washed ashore just minutes before it was found.

Catalano told Reuters that it was amazing to see it; it appears to be an imagination. In October 2013, an even larger oarfish, which was 18 feet, or 5.5 m, was washed up at Catalina Island. And a few days later, a second oarfish carcass was seen on a beach, which is located north of San Diego. According to John Lundberg, curator of ichthyology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia, several of these giant creatures make landfall in Baja California, Mexico.

Lundberg told Live Science that it is still unclear why the fish was washed up and there's much to be revealed regarding these creatures.

According to Lundberg, "There's some suspicion that [oarfish], which live in deeper water, come closer to the surface because they're ill or because something disturbs them. And once they're out of their deep-water habitat, they tend to expire. Or it could just be old age, as far as I know".