The Most Haunting Sea Monsters Found In The Deep Explained In 6 Minutes

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]The giant squid. In November 2006, a Japanese research vessel operating 600 m below the Pacific surface captured the first live footage of a giant squid in its natural habitat. The creature was 8 m long. It approached the camera slowly.

[00:00:14]It did not flee. It studied the light source for 4 minutes before disappearing back into the dark. For centuries, sailors reported tentacled creatures dragging ships underwater. Scientists called them myths. Then, in 1873, a fisherman off Newfoundland watched one of his crew get pulled overboard. He cut the tentacle free with an axe. The severed arm measured 6 m. The squid was never found. Giant squids have eyes the size of dinner plates, the largest eyes of any living creature on Earth.

[00:00:42]Scientists believe the size exists for one reason only, to detect the movement of sperm whales hunting them in complete darkness. It is not hiding from you. It is hiding from something worse. The frilled shark. In January 2007, fishermen operating off the coast of Japan accidentally hauled a frilled shark to the surface in their nets. It was alive. Staff at Awashima Marine Park filmed it moving through a tank for several hours before it died. It was the first time one had ever been seen alive.

[00:01:09]The frilled shark has not changed in 80 million years. Its jaw opens at a 180° angle. It has 300 teeth arranged in 25 rows pointing backward, designed so that anything entering the mouth cannot exit.

[00:01:21]It moves by undulating its entire body like an eel, a method that leaves no visible movement in the water before a strike. In 2014, a research team off Portugal captured one at 700 m depth.

[00:01:32]Its stomach contents included a half-digested shark of a different species nearly half its own size.

[00:01:37]It has survived five mass extinction events. Whatever killed the dinosaurs did not kill this.

[00:01:43]The goblin shark. On April 25th, 2014, a commercial shrimp fisherman operating in the Gulf of Mexico pulled up something in his nets that he initially could not identify. It was pink, nearly 5 m long, and had a jaw that extended several inches forward from its face on its own.

[00:01:58]He photographed it before releasing it.

[00:01:59]Marine biologists later confirmed it as a goblin shark, only the second ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico.

[00:02:05]The goblin shark's jaw is not attached to its skull the way other sharks are.

[00:02:09]It launches forward independently, extending outward to capture prey before the body moves at all. The strike happens faster than the human eye can process. It lives between 270 and 1,300 m below the surface. It is almost never seen because it almost never comes up.

[00:02:24]When one does appear near the surface, researchers have no explanation for why.

[00:02:28]It has been here for 125 million years.

[00:02:31]Every time it surfaces, it is an accident, or it isn't. The colossal squid. In February 2007, a New Zealand fishing vessel operating in Antarctic waters hauled up something that took the entire crew to bring aboard. It weighed 495 kg. It measured 10 m. It was a colossal squid, the largest invertebrate ever recorded in human history. Its tentacles are lined not with suckers, but with rotating hooks that lock into prey and cannot be removed without tearing flesh. Its eyes measure 27 cm in diameter. Each one contains a built-in biological flashlight, a photophore, that scientists believe is used to see in water so deep that no sunlight has ever reached it. Sperm whales found dead have been discovered with circular scars across their skin, scars that match the hook pattern of a colossal squid. Whales that weigh 50,000 kg fighting something in the dark at depths humans have never reached. Nobody has ever seen that fight. Nobody knows who wins. The anglerfish. In 2018, marine biologists operating a deep-sea submersible off the coast of Portugal filmed something that had only been theorized before. A female anglerfish, fully intact, swimming in open water at 800 m depth with a male fused permanently to her underside.

[00:03:43]The male anglerfish has no digestive system, no functioning eyes, and no independent survival ability. When it locates a female, it bites into her skin and releases an enzyme that dissolves its own face into her body. Their circulatory systems merge. He becomes a permanent attachment existing only to provide one biological function. The light dangling from the female's head is bioluminescent bacteria living inside a modified spine. In complete darkness at pressure levels that would collapse a human body instantly, it moves through the water as the only visible light for miles in any direction.

[00:04:16]In 2020, footage captured off Monterey Bay showed one hovering completely motionless 1,000 m down. It did not move for 23 minutes after the submersible lights found it. It simply waited.

[00:04:27]Whatever it was waiting for was not the submersible.

[00:04:31]The oarfish. On October 13th, 2013, two oarfish washed ashore in California within days of each other. The first measured 5.5 m, the second measured 7 m.

[00:04:42]Both were dead. No cause was identified.

[00:04:45]In Japanese coastal tradition, oarfish washing ashore is a documented warning sign preceding seismic activity.

[00:04:50]Following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that killed nearly 16,000 people, researchers examined historical records and found that dozens of oarfish had beached themselves in the weeks prior along the Japanese coastline.

[00:05:03]The oarfish lives at depths between 200 and 1,000 m. It has no teeth. It has no stomach large enough to consume significant prey.

[00:05:11]Scientists still do not know what it primarily eats or how it reproduces. It can reach 17 m in length, making it the longest bony fish on Earth. Every sea monster reported by sailors for the last 2,000 years, every serpent, every leviathan, every creature rising from the deep, matches the description of an oarfish. It was never a myth. It was always this.