‘Ghost Fish’ Discovered In The Mariana Trench

Around 1.5 miles under the sea, a new type of eel-like fish has been discovered by ocean scientists at the Mariana Trench. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Okeanos Explorer team just recently released a new video of the rare find.

#Okeanos scientists image ghostly fish that has never been seen alive -- until now: https://t.co/BniyP2Ay2i pic.twitter.com/Wc1hCiFWmR

— NOAA Ocean Explorer (@oceanexplorer) July 1, 2016

The Mariana Trench - located near the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean - is known for its mystery: largely undiscovered and full of wildlife. The fish, according to The Telegraph UK comes from a family never seen alive before.

The creature is from the little-known family called Aphyonidae - which were so rare that their existence was only previously confirmed by dead samples plucked out of the ocean using long trawls, reported Newsweek.

Bruce Mundy, a fisheries biologist with the NOAA shared, "I am sure that this is the first time a fish in this family has ever been seen alive. This is really an unusual sighting."

He also said, "Some of us working with fish have had wish lists, bucket lists, for what we might want to see. A fish in this family is probably first on those lists for a lot of us."

The discovery of the species is only just the beginning. As Mundy noted, there are a few questions that need to be answered. For instance, do the creatures, which have only been found dead before, may dwell in the water column or down near the bottom of the ocean? The research mission, reported Fox News, seem to suggest the latter.

NOAA also said in a statement that the fish's skin has no scales and is "transparent" and "gelatinous." Team leader Shirley Pomponi even compared the species to a creature from a classic 1984 movie, saying that "Our interns think that the fish looks like Falkor, the dragon from the NeverEnding Story."