Another one bites the dust: A dead oarfish has washed ashore on Catalina Island, roughly 22 miles (35 kilometers) off the coast of Los Angeles. It's the fifth of the mysterious deep-sea creatures to flop onto West Coast beaches within the past year.

Tyler Dvorak with the Catalina Island Conservancy spied the carcass while scanning a beach on the northeastern end of Catalina with binoculars on June 1. "I knew what it was immediately because of the one that washed up last year," the biologist says.

"It was a pretty weird thing to see," says Dvorak, who photographed it while his colleague contacted researchers in Los Angeles, who were eventually able to collect parts of the 14-foot (4.3-meter) long animal.