Video: Underwater alien filmed off the coast of Angola

This unusual marine animal was recently caught on camera near the seabed off the coast of Angola.

A team from BP was carrying out routine operations near an oil well, using a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) at a depth of 1325 metres, when they spotted the creature, which they nicknamed the flying spaghetti monster. Intrigued, they sent footage of it to Daniel Jones from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK.

A deep-sea animal researcher, Jones is involved with the Serpent project, a collaboration with ROV teams from oil and gas companies to catalogue ocean life. Jones identified it as a siphonophore.


Philip Pugh, one of Jones’s colleagues, pinned it down precisely. After noticing that the tentacles do not have side branches, he deduced that it was a specimen of Bathyphysa conifera.

Siphonophores belong to a group of aquatic animals that include corals and jellyfish. Specimens up to 40 metres long have been found, making them among the world’s longest animals.

Other bizarre-looking animals have recently been filmed underwater. A giant glowing sea worm was caught lighting up the ocean in a rare sighting. The hollow, tube-like invertebrates can sometimes be as big as a whale.

At the end of last year, a never-seen-before fish nicknamed “sea ghost” due to its ethereal appearance, broke the depth record for fish. It was captured on video in the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean, a whopping 8143 metres below the surface.