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| It wasn't this one, this is a recreation in pixel art. |
I created this page after seeing a sticker that looked familiar... it had an oarfish, this long, silvery deep-sea fish with red fins, a beautiful crest, and a very interesting caption: "AFTER SEEING THIS, YOU'LL SEE PISTRIX EVERYWHERE".
Of course, I didn't think anything special about that sticker at the time: there are a lot of weird stickers where I live. I mean, I like fish, but just having a picture of a fish somewhere doesn't make me obsessed. Actually, well, I have to be sincere with you: the regalecus, or oarfish, is one of the most important animals my team is looking for, but we just call it regaleque, regalecus, oarfish, not "pistrix". What was that word?
But then something... strange started happening. I started seeing this creature, the pistrix, everywhere, literally. For those of you who ended up on this page after seeing one, I want to first clarify what this entity called "pistrix" is.
The pistrix (from the Latin pistrix -ĭcis and pistris or pristis (Greek πίστρις or πρίστις) in Greek and Roman mythology is a legendary sea monster with a serpent's tail. A very long fish, crested in red, like the oarfish.
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| The constellation Cetus illustrated by Johann Bayer in the 17th century. |
A name that may seem generic, therefore, the pistrix as a precursor of sea monsters, as a primordial crested serpent... fascinating... but that's not all.
As you know, there are many other sea monsters, creatures like Nessie, which many trace to the plesiosaur, or the gigantic, monstrous Leviathan, more similar in size and body-type to the whale.
No, the pistrix (pistrices? The plural can be pistrices, I think) are creatures that can be traced back to a specific animal: the oarfish. And this fish, probably the longest bony fish in the world, has a mystical aura all its own, even without becoming a monster.
The family name, Regalecidae, derives from the Latin regalis, which obviously means "royal."
They call it the "doomsday fish." In Japanese, it's known as "the messenger from the palace of the sea god." We don't know much about this fish.
No, really, we know almost nothing. What are its habits? How does it reproduce? Why does it often swim upright in the water like a knife, with its head up and its tail down? Why do they autotomize so often (that is, they autonomously lose parts of their body, shortening themselves from the tail, sometimes even by meters) and how do they survive such a process? Almost all known oarfish, and certainly all adult ones, have lost some part of their body.
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| United States Navy SEAL candidates holding a 23-foot (7.0 m) giant oarfish, in September 1996 |
We don't know the maximum length these animals can reach. We can't breed them in captivity at all: although their eggs were hatched in one experiment, the larvae didn't survive after just a couple of days.
We can't even keep the adults alive.
They live all over the world, widespread in all seas, including the Mediterranean, but we see them very rarely. And when we do see them, oh... when we see them often, things happen.
In 2005, more than six of these "doomsday fish," which inhabit the deep sea, washed ashore on various beaches around the world, in May and June. Popular tradition holds that this is a sign of a great misfortune that is about to come, probably an earthquake. Scientists (and I'm a scientist myself, so I understand there's a big difference between causality and correlation) reassured the public, saying that there was no connection between those findings and the Earthquakes.
Then, on July 29th, the earth shook: magnitude 8.8, the sixth largest earthquake ever recorded.
Sea serpents are impressive animals. Beautiful. Mysterious.
And they gave rise to pistrix, sea monsters, all over the world.
All cultures have their silvery sea monsters, with blood-red fins, everywhere around the globe. Their pistrix.
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| Oarfish that washed ashore on a Bermuda beach in 1860. The animal was 16 ft long and was originally described as a sea serpent. |
On March 3, 1860, what everyone described as a sea serpent landed on a beach in Bermuda: it was 16 feet (4.9 m) long. We have a drawing of that creature: it was an oarfish.
A Red Herring
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| Kipped herrings |
There is no fish species called like this.
I was thinking... It probably has little to do with it, but it still reminds me of oarfish. Because herrings aren't red. And oarfish (who are, even if partially, really red) are also called "king of herrings".
The term red herring probably refers to how prepared herrings look, when they're split open, salted, and artificially colored, but it still makes me wonder... a red herring is mainly know to be something used as a narrative device to lead readers or characters down a path that leads them away from the truth. What if the red herring (the opened and processed one) was a device to lead us away from the real red herring, the king of herrings? Okay, okay, this is a tinfoil hat and conspiracy thing, but it was too funny not to mention.
Pistrix as... people.
An interesting thing about pistrix is that, as sea monsters, they are often depicted as having two front legs... two arms, if you will.
They have strikingly similar characteristics to the regalecus—the same enormous size, the same gleaming bodies, and, above all, the full-length dorsal fin, which makes them instantly recognizable—but these... arms are often added. And sometimes, the arms also have hands.
That sea monsters have hands, and are therefore capable of grasping objects, is an interesting idea. The ancients certainly saw the shape of the "oars" (the long, colorful pelvic fins which give the regalecus its common name of "oarfish") as legs or arms.
Stories often imply a kind of wisdom on the part of these fish. Sometimes they are just intelligent animals, other times... they are even smarter than us humans.
For the Akkadians and Sumerians, the Apkallu are semi-divine beings, half man and half fish, who emerged from the Apsû, the primordial abyss, sent by the god Enki (Ea in the Akkadian language) to teach humans the Me, that is, the arts, crafts, the moral code and in general the principles of civilization. Deep-sea fish, with human arms, a human torso, a human face, but so intelligent that they can be considered superior to humans in every way.
The reason I started to reflect on this comparison between the pistrix and some human civilization is that a colleague of mine, Sangreal, told me that some call his people "pistrix." Really. They are people who live on the sea and for the sea, apparently, and somehow history wanted to conceptually merge them with the creatures of the abyss.
Or is there something more?
I find this omnipresence of the concept absolutely fascinating. What do you think? Why are pistrix associated with people? And why do I have the distinct impression that, given the diffusion of the concept, its iconography, its meaning, have absolutely nothing to do with the classic "merfolk"?
Sea serpents have inspired nagas, dragons, sea serpents, deities, angels. And we still know nothing about them. So next time you look around, ask yourself... how has the pistrix changed my life? How has it impacted what I love? And why, now... do I see them everywhere?
What? You don't believe that oarfish are in the collective unconscious of humanity? Want some examples? Here are just a few.
- In Pokémon, Gyarados and Milotic are both inspired from the Regalecus: Milotic embodies its extreme rarity, its gleaming body, and its beauty, while Gyarados represents the "wrath" of natural forces that can destroy entire coastal cities, as in the legendary version of this creature, which brings earthquakes with it. They're monsters (pocket monsters!) inspired by oarfish, that makes them both pistrix.
- In the Basilica of Aquileia, the Regalecus is depicted in connection with the legend of Jonah. The "Immense Pistrix" (or in Italian, "la Pistrice immane" o "il Pistrice immane"[1][2], a creature both powerful and good-natured, seems to be the fish at the center of this biblical phenomenon.
- Have you ever seen the Reaper Leviathan in the video game Subnautica? Inspired by the Regalecus... and since it's a sea monster inspired by one of these fish, we can safely classify it as a pistrix.
Naga (ナーガ Nāga) is a gigantic, incredibly long, monster-oarfish in the videogame The Ocean Hunter. It is the second and final sub boss in Tartarus Deep. Beautiful, and scary, and oh very, very much a pistrix.
Naga - In the very popular video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the oarfish it is one of the catchable fish. Why? That's a deep sea fish, you couldn't... you couldn't catch it so easily. Why are they made common in such a mainstream videogame? Despite it not being a real "pistrix", but just an oarfish, it's nevertheless fascinating.
- Jonah and the whale... oh, I mean, Jonah and the pistrix! [20]
Scylla. Daughter of Cetus (the immense creature from which the constellation of the whale takes its name, but which was not a whale in ancient times) and Phorcys, Scylla is one of the most famous sea monsters in Mediterranean culture. Perhaps you know her from the Odyssey, when Ulysses must pay a tribute of six men to pass through her lair, or perhaps from the Aeneid, or even from the perennial legends of shipwrecks and destruction. Who is Scylla? "From the middle up the face, neck, and chest / of a woman and a virgin; the rest, / of an immense pistrix" [4] A pistrix, once again.
Terracotta plaque depicting Scylla,
Melos, 460s BC,
now in the British Museum.
In Animal Crossing The Ancient Egyptian Hyppocampos, the deity Ḥȝyšš [3]: long fins, and the colors of an oarfish.. Another one, anothe pistrix regarded as a divine creature. Isn't it fun?
[The list is always expanding! I just need the time to write all the freakin' pistrix I encounter every day! What does this mean? What does this MEAN?!]
Oarfish in guise of divine creatures (angels, with stars) 
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Perseus and the Sea Monster, print on Dutch paper. Object number: RP-P-1935-1343 
Perseus with the severed head of Medusa, above the sea monster to which Andromeda has been sacrificed. Production Maker: printmaker: Johannes Josephus Aarts (signed by his own hand) Date: 1881 - 1931 
The 'sea serpent' as sighted by the man at the wheel of the Sacramento, en-route from New York to Melbourne, 24 November 1877 
Giant Oarfish reconstruction, Science and Technology Gallery at the Naval Marshals School Complex in Taranto. _Oarfish.jpg)
Fish trail Colonna 1 Colonna 2 colonna 3 Colonna 1 Colonna 2 colonna 3 Colonna 1 Colonna 2 colonna 3 Colonna 1 Colonna 2 colonna 3 Colonna 1 Colonna 2 colonna 3
- Paperblog.com, Il pesce mostro di positano
- Altmann-Wendling, Victoria (2023), "Ḥȝyšš, the Egyptian Hippokampos – Mythical Monster or Giant Oarfish?". Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
- «Nel destro lato è Scilla; nel sinistro / È l’ingorda Cariddi. Una vorago / D’un gran baratro è questa, che tre volte / I vasti flutti rigirando assorbe, / e tre volte a vicenda li ributta / Con immenso bollor fino a le stelle. / Scilla dentro a le sue buie caverne / Stassene insidïando; e con le bocche / de’ suoi mostri voraci, che distese / tien mai sempre ed aperte, i naviganti / Entro al suo speco a sé tragge e trangugia. / Dal mezzo in su la faccia, il collo e ’l petto / ha di donna e di vergine; il restante, / g’una pistrice immane, che simíli / a’ delfini ha le code, ai lupi il ventre. / Meglio è con lungo indugio e lunga volta / girar Pachino e la Trinacria tutta, / che, non ch’altro, veder quell’antro orrendo, / sentir quegli urli spaventosi e fieri / di quei cerulei suoi rabbiosi cani.»
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"Jonah and the Pistrix: Figurative Genesis of a Sea Monster", in S. Betume, P. Tomassini (edd.), "Fantastic beasts in Antiquity. Looking for monster, discovering the Human", Louvain 2021, pp. 153-166.
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