Southern California's coastline is getting fishier and fishier.
Less than a week after an extremely rare, 18-foot oarfish was discovered near Catalina Island a second has washed ashore at nearby Oceanside.
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The long, slippery fish, whose lore dates back to sightings of sea monsters and mermaids, was pulled from the water Friday before its carcass was measured at an astounding 13 1/2 feet long, UT San Diego reports.
Though a whopping length — with concerned beachgoers initially reporting it to police as a possible beached whale — the monstrosity of the fish was actually puny in comparison to the 50-foot size it can grow to.
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As the area's marine biologists flocked to the scene Friday so did a reported crowd of 75 people hoping to bear witness to the spectacular creature, which is the largest and rarest bony fish in the world.
The fish was then cut into sections before packed into coolers for transport by an official with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U-T reports.
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It wasn't immediately clear what NOAA plans to do with the creature. A request for comment wasn't immediately returned.
Despite its smaller size the find will undoubtedly prove fascinating to marine biologists with it coming not only with several days but several miles of the last.
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Scientists reason that their sightings are extremely rare because they live at depths of more than 3,000 feet below the ocean's surface.
When they are seen it's usually only after they've died and their bodies have risen to the top.
The oarfish collected five days earlier by the Catalina Island Marine Institute had tissue samples and footage of the find — which required more than a dozen people to lift up — sent to a fish expert with the University of California at Santa Barbara for analysis, CIMI previously told the Daily News.
CIMI's program director, Jeff Chase, said that he hoped to bury the rest of the body on the beach later so that it could naturally decompose, revealing its skeleton before collection again.
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