Almost any time a long, serpent-like oarfish washes up on shore, it makes news—and inspires rumors.

On August 8, one day before a magnitude 6.6 earthquake hit Luzon in the Philippines, two oarfish, one 12-feet-long and the other 14-feet-long, washed up on a beach on another island. Reports say they appeared to be in relatively good health and the larger one was a female.

In this instance though, the earthquake correlation is not so easy to make—the oarfish wound up over 800 miles from where the quake was centered.