A bizarre jellyfish-like creature has been discovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in what is believed to be its first ever sighting.
The unnamed creature was captured on camera at the murky depths of the Java Trench, some 7,000 metres below sea level.
Footage shows the deep-sea alien slowly floating across the ocean floor while emitting a haunting blue glow.
The leader of the expedition, Victor Vescovo, said the jellyfish “does not resemble anything seen before”.
The Five Deeps Expedition team has, so far, made three separate trips to the Java Trench which is believed to be the deepest point in the Indian Ocean
US Navy forced to create 'new protocols for UFO encounters'
The dive, taken in the DSV Limiting Factor, is the first time a human has been taken to the bottom of the trench and is being filmed as part of a documentary for the Discovery Channel.
Chief scientist Alan Jamieson told CNN : "I normally have a pretty fair idea of what we're going to see — but every now and again you get thrown this curve ball.
“It really looks artificial — it rolls out the darkness and suddenly it turns and you’re like, ‘Jesus, that’s some kind of weird jellyfish.’
The Scot continued: "We came to a conclusion it's called a tunicate, which is a sea squirt. This particular one is called, we think, an ascidian.
"It is not often we see something that is so extraordinary that it leaves us speechless."
"At this point we are not entirely sure what species it was, but we will find out in due course."
Eating on a toilet, next to condoms or corpses - the world's weirdest restaurants
Jamieson said their encounter with the creature is one of the highlights of the trip to the bottom of the ocean.
"It seems to be is an absolute one in a million shot, where one of them has broken off from the others and is drifting in the current," he said.
"It just so happened to drift right up to our camera, make a 90 degree turn, give us a beautiful shot of it and of it went -- so it's just such an unbelievably lucky shot."
