Some tourists sit next to the carcass of a giant fish sent onshore in Quang Binh on Tuesday morning. Locals in the central province of Quang Binh discovered a live giant oarfish onshore on Tuesday morning, but failed to rescue it.

They tried to bring the fish, which was 4.1 meters long and weighed 40 kilograms, back to the sea, but it died soon later.

Some locals then gave the fish a ritual burial, saying that they believed the fish was a holy creature.

Last June, an angler in central Vietnam caught a 4.2-meter-long fish, believed to be an oarfish, near the coast of Thua Thien-Hue Province.

Oarfish is recorded as the world’s longest bony fish but it is rarely seen.