SHAH ALAM, 25 Dec: Yesterday, a strange phenomena where thousands of fishes, locally known as Tamban, beached themselves at the beach at Kampung Tambisan, at the East of Sabah in Lahad Datu, became a hot topic in social media sites, fearing that ‘something’ is bound to happen in the near future.
Comments of social media site users said that the phenomena of beached fishes seemed to be the same as when a tsunami or earthquake, or any natural disaster, is about to happen.
The two-minute thirty-five second video which was uploaded on Youtube received almost 20,000 visits, 16 hours after the video was uploaded.
The strange phenomena which happened yesterday at about 9.00am received the attention of many, to a point that several newspapers took the event yesterday and placed it on the front page of the newspaper and where important news are placed.
Quoting a newspaper report, the Meteorology Department said that this is the first time the phenomena has happened in the area and denied allegations that a tsunami is about to hit.
However, they will monitor the situation and the public has been advised to not panic because there have been no signs of a tsunami identified at the moment.
Day before yesterday, the department confirmed that an earthquake, measuring 5.7 on the Ritcher scale at the Mariana Islands, happened at 5.12pm, centred I the northeast of Tagum, the Philippines, about 2,842 kilometres from the northeast of Kinibatangan, Sabah.
According to local residents, Suzila Abdullah, said that this phenomenon has been happening since three years ago.
“But it is different this year because the number of fishes are exceptionally high,” she said, quoted from the Star Online.
Suzila said that she believed that strong currents and waves caused the fishes to come to shore during the current season but it only last about two or three days.
The villagers cooked the fish while some collected it and took it up to Lahad Datu and other districts to sell.
The Tamban fish is popular among villagers.
Previously, the tsunami which happened in Acheh on 26 December 2004 also recorded strange signs before the disaster hit.
According to the owner of the Facebook page ‘Ini Kali Lah’, this occurrence is not happening for the first time and that it has happened several times when the season for big fishes to beach themselves at the Tambisan waters to eat small fishes to save themselves from being hunted by big fishes.
“The beaching of fishes in Lahad Datu perhaps happened because the day before, there was a small scale earthquake that happened in the Philippines and the central passage of the quake was heading towards Kinibatangan,” he said.