A deep-sea creature only recorded alive on one other occasion has been seen for what's believed to be the first time in broad daylight. Per National Geographic, researchers from the Condrik Tenerife NGO working near the Canary Islands off the coast of Tenerife caught a glimpse on Jan. 26 of the frightening-looking humpback anglerfish, scientific name: Melanocetus johnsonii (check out video here). "It was like a dream come true," says marine wildlife photographer David Jara Boguna, who was on the vessel Glaucus when the fish, with its bioluminescent antenna and plethora of sharp teeth, was spotted. "When I was a kid, I had a book with some deep-sea creatures, and I loved the illustrations. They were crazy to me. The animals didn't look real."
The elusive 6-inch-long fish, also known as the black seadevil, has been seen up close and alive only once before, about a decade ago—and that time, it was swimming around nearly 2,000 feet deep. They can live as far as 6,500 feet below. "It's a really rare event to see a deep-sea critter like that close to the surface," Bruce Robison, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who recorded that 2014 footage, tells National Geographic of the most recent discovery. Oceanographic notes that the only other humpback anglerfish sightings that have taken place involved dead specimens, larvae, or images taken from submarines.
It's not clear why this particular anglerfish decided to take a swim at the surface, though some theories have emerged: It could've been forced upward thanks to a water column from nearby volcanic activity; it may have been captured or even swallowed by a larger predator that then released or spit it out closer to the surface; or it could've itself eaten a fish with a gas gland, whose gas subsequently expanded and caused the anglerfish to float higher up. Some anglerfish are also believed to rise to the surface during El Nino periods.
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The fish apparently died within a few hours of being sighted, and its body was collected and brought to Tenerife's Museum of Nature and Archaeology, where it will be studied further. Researchers both with the expedition and otherwise are still marveling over the sighting. "When I first saw the video, I honestly didn't believe what I was seeing," Rice University fish biologist Kory Evans tells National Geographic. "I thought it was AI." (More discoveries stories.)
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