Hallelujah, it’s raining… fish.
A remote community in the Australian outback was shocked over the weekend when small, live fish began falling from the heavens.
Locals in Lajamanu, on the northern edge of the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory, said the scaly phenomenon occurred during a heavy rainstorm.
“We’ve seen a big storm heading up to my community and we thought it was just rain,” Central Desert councilor Andrew Johnson Japanangka told ABC News.
“But when the rain started falling we’ve seen fish falling down as well.”
Japanangka said the fish were still alive as they fell, and were about “the size of two fingers.”
“Some are still hanging around in the community in a puddle of water,” he told the outlet.
“Children are picking them up and keeping them in a bottle or a jar.”
Incredible, this wasn’t the first time Lajamanu experienced a seafood shower, either. The bizarre event has been periodically reported as far back as 1974, according to ABC News.
“I got up in the morning, I was working in the school at the time, and the dirt streets outside my home were covered in fish,” Penny McDonald recalled of a time fish rained from the sky above the community in the mid-1980s.
“They were small fish and there were a lot of them around. It was just amazing.”
In 2020, a similar event also took place in Yowah, Queensland.
Queensland Museum ichthyologist Jeff Johnson identified the first that fell over the weekend as spangled perch, or spangled grunters, which are a common freshwater fish in Australia.
Michael Hammer, the curator of fishes at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, told ABC News that the phenomenon was “not unusual.”
Hammer attributed the fishy sprinkles to floods in local waterholes, though he also cited the possibility of sea life being picked up by strong storms, like tornadoes, and “dropped in other places.”
“It just depends what the local weather patterns are,” he explained.
“What forces would be needed to lift them out of the waterhole specifically, and then up into the air, would be pretty interesting.”
Hammer also encouraged Lajamanu locals to study the phenomenon themselves.
“I think next time it rains you just need to be out there with a net, catching the fish as they fall, and properly document it,” he said.
“Get some citizen science going and start to build a picture.”
Meanwhile, Japanangka described the fish rainstorm as “the most amazing thing we’ve ever seen.
“I think it’s a blessing from the Lord,” he mused.
