Fishing crew catches bizarre, nightmarish fish off the coast of Newfoundland

[Throw it back! Throw it back! / Scott Tanner Facebook]

How’s this for something that will invade your dreams?

Nova Scotian fisher Scott Tanner was working on a trawler off the coast of Newfoundland when this creepy underwater creature was found in one of the ship’s nets.

The bizarre catch looks like something from out of this world with its long pointed snout, bright green eyes and oddly wing-shaped leathery fins.

The animal was so unusual that even more experienced members of the fishing crew were left wondering what on earth they had found.

“All the production stopped and everything so everybody could check it out,” Tanner told CBC News. “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."

[Tanner pictured here with a larger, but much less terrifying, example of an impressive catch / Scott Tanner Facebook]

Tanner eventually posted a photo of the crew’s unusual find on his Facebook page, where the creature quickly went viral after being reposted across various websites.

After some careful investigating, Tanner eventually determined his crew had caught a rarely seen deepwater fish known as the longnose chimaera. Fittingly, it is named after the ancient mythical Greek monster the Chimaera.

Dalhousie University professor of biology Jeffrey Hutchings confirmed Tanner’s suspicions in an interview with CBC News. He said the fish are rarely seen by humans due to their tendency to lurk at depths of more than several hundred metres.

The fish, also known as a knifenose chimaera, are also completely harmless to humans. Lucky, that. They survive on a diet of crabs and shrimp when not too busy resembling the Creature from the Black Lagoon.