But this creature is a deep sea fish with a slimy body, green glowing eyes and ribbed fins that look like feathered wings. This eerie catch is said to be a long-nose chimaera that branched off from sharks almost 400 million years ago
© Scott TannerBut this creature is a deep sea fish with a slimy body, green glowing eyes and ribbed fins that look like feathered wings. This eerie catch is said to be a long-nose chimaera that branched off from sharks almost 400 million years ago
Greek mythology has stories about Chimaera, a monstrous fire-breathing lion, goat and snake hybrid and one has been recently caught off the coast of Newfoundland.

But this creature is a deep sea fish with a slimy body, green glowing eyes and ribbed fins that look like feathered wings.

This eerie catch is said to be a long-nose chimaera that branched off from sharks almost 400 million years ago.

The fish was caught during a commercial fishing excursion off the Grand Banks and St. Pierre and Miquelon, reports CBC News.


Scott Tanner, the Lunenburg man who pulled the lifeless creature from the ocean, was about one month into the 40-day trip that was fishing for cod and red fish.

'There's lots of other weird stuff that comes out [of the ocean] but that one definitely stood out ... I don't imagine many people have seen one,' he said in an interview with CBC News.

'All the production stopped and everything so everybody could check it out.'

'Even the older guys that are 50, 60 years old, they've seen maybe one in their lifetime so they thought it was pretty neat and I snapped a couple pictures.'

The chimaera weighed between two and five kilograms, but was already dead when it was pulled from the net.

Tanner told News Nation that the sudden change in pressure was most likely the cause of death.

Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax, told News Nation that the chimera's eyes were likely bulging out because of how fast it was pulled from the water.

Long-nose chimaeras are one of three chimaera species in North Atlantic waters, but seeing one is quite uncommon because they live more than several hundred meters below the surface.

The spooky fish has a long nose, menacing mouth and a venomous spine atop its gelatinous body.

Although this creature looks like something from of a nightmare, it feeds on shrimp and crabs and is completely harmless to humans.

Like all chimaeras, the long-nosed species is a distant relative of sharks and rays and is one of the oldest species of fish in the world.

They also have cartilaginous skeletons, but until their relatives they have one external gill opening that is covered by a flap.

Its beady eyes are designed to find food along the dark sea floor, which only glow if they are exposed to light.

Sometimes called the ghost shark, it has a whip-like tail and can grow to around three feet long.

Their pectoral fins are wide and flat, similar to wings, which makes them seem as if they are 'flying' through the water.

Another report of the alien looking fish came from northern Canada back in 2013.

Caught near the northernmost province of Nunavut in Davis Straight, it was first believed the odd fish was the similarly freakish goblin shark until researchers confirmed it was the long-nosed chimaera.

'Potentially, if we fish deeper, maybe between 1,000 and 2,000 metres (3,000 to 6,000 feet), we could find that's there's actually quite a lot of them there,' University of Windsor researcher Nigel Hussey told CBC. 'We just don't know.

Hussey, who is credited with finally identifying the fish, says the mystery comes from the strange creature's rarity.

'Only one of these fish has previously been documented from the Hudson Strait,' Hussey said.