Below the swelling waves of the ocean, submerged into the deep blue layers of the sea…. An underwater exploration resulted in researchers discovering a fascinating creature with a haunting appearance. It almost looks like a fish you would see scaling around old shipwrecks and caverns, lurking for its next victim in an “under the sea” horror flick.

The Ghost Shark is a species, also known as the Chimaera. They are a nearby relative of rays and sharks. They have existed and have been swimming amongst the depths of the ocean for nearly 300 million years, which is long before dinosaurs walked on earth.

Ghost sharks have always had an eerie appearance. Their “ghost-like” features are contributed to their black to brownish-gray coloring.The majority of Chimaeras have a venomous spine found on their dorsal fin.They have retractable sexual appendages on their forehead and also the anterior area of their pelvic fins.With this bizarre looking creatures caliginous dead eyes, makes them look quite dark and bizarre. These are just a few features that give this fish a physiognomy of a dark, disturbing sea creature.

Although the Chimaera resembles closely to a shark, they still are a different species of animal. They differ from sharks in a few ways. Their upper jaws are found fused with their skulls. Their anal and urogenital openings are also separated from a shark. One of this shark's most well-known features is their razor-sharp teeth that continuously grow new ones. The Chimaera lacks this aspect. Instead, they have three pairs of enormous permanent grinding tooth plates. Their gill covers (opercula) appear to look more like bony fish.

Several in-depth dives have been performed since 2009 of 6,700 feet in the ocean waters of Hawaii and California to try and search and study this fascinating species. Recently a pointy nosed blue chimaera was sighted in the northern hemisphere and caught on video. This particular shark tends to be massive, vigorous and quite agile. As a result, it makes it extremely hard to catch. Researchers need to be able to extract DNA from this species to further determine if this truly was a pointy nosed blue chimaera. Researchers at this time have only been able to study Chimaeras through a series of snapshots.

Although researchers still know very little information about this species...One thing is for sure… This species is beautifully mysterious and eerie.