Thousands of fish washed up on the beach following an earthquake.

The small, silvery sardines were found flapping along the shore, sparking a frenzy among fishermen and locals in Masbate province, the Philippines, on February 22.

Footage shows families collecting the stranded juvenile herrings in buckets less than a week after the province was struck by a powerful magnitude 6 quake.

While residents saw the plentiful haul as good luck, others that it could be a prelude to a terrifying tsunami.

Resident Marnel Torrefiel said: ‘It happened days after the earthquake and during Ash Wednesday. It could be a sign pointing to something but I'm unsure if it's good or bad.'

However, Provincial Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources official Nonie Enolva said the sardine beaching was not due to the quake.

She said: ‘It can be due to the sudden water physicochemical changes or oxygen depletion due to inclement weather.'

The town of Mandaon, where tons of fish appeared on the shore, was about 84.5km or almost three hours away from the recent earthquake's recorded epicentre in Batuan.

The Philippines is an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands inside the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the majority of Earth's volcanoes and earthquakes take place.