Chilling footage shows the moment researchers encountered a terrifying deep-sea creature, in what is thought to be the first video of an adult so close to the surface.
Scientists believe it may be the first-ever sighting of a fully-gown abyssal fish, known among researchers as Melanocetus johnsonii, from the family Melanocetidae, or “black sea monster” in Greek.
Commonly referred to a Devil or a Demon, the predator has a terrifying row of sharp teeth and females have a dorsal appendage which is full of bioluminescent symbiotic bacteria used to lure unsuspecting prey.
It was spotted in off the coast of Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands.
Photographer David Jara Boguñá, a scientist with Condrik Tenerife NGO shared a video of the encounter on social media, and used Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera: Overture as a fittingly ominous sound track.
In his post on Instagram, Boguñá wrote that the creature is a “legendary fish that few people will have had the privilege of observing alive”, and believes it’s the first time an adult has been “alive, in broad daylight and on the surface”.
The creature was seen during Shark Research Campaign by the NGO, who are unsure as to why the fish (which is normally found between 200 and 2,000 below the surface) came up to shallow waters, The Indepedent reports.
Condrik Tenerife said it may have been due to “illness, an upstream, fleeing a predator, etc”.
Past sightings have “mostly consisted of larvae, dead adults, or specimens spotted by submarines during deep-sea scientific expeditions,” it said.
The organisation researches sharks and rays in the Canaries, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa.
The creature is also known as also know the humpback anglerfish, anglerfish, viperfish or fangtoothfish, according to Animal Encylopedia Animalia.
Condrik Tenerife said the remarkable sighting “will be remembered forever”.
