An angler was startled to find he had caught a weird vampire-like creature when he went night fishing – Stefan Scheer caught a rare and protected sea lamprey near his home city
A fisherman was left stunned after they reeled in a weird ‘Men In Black’ creature known as the “vampire of the sea”. Stefan Scheer went out on a night fishing trip hoping to catch pike, perch or zander – but what ended up on the end of his line was unlike anything he’d seen before.
What he did pull out was a sea lamprey, a creature considered a living fossil that has remained mostly unchanged for the last 500 million years. The body of the animal resembles a snake and it has razor-sharp teeth inside its circular mouth, earning it the ‘vampire fish’ nickname.
The sea lamprey feeds by using its teeth to scrape off flesh from other fish. It is not often the creature, which can grow up to 1.2 metres in length, is found far inland. This particular lamprey was found while Stefan was fishing on the River Rhine, a body of water that passes through his home city of Cologne, Germany.
Stefan told local press he “immediately thought of a creepy creature from the movie Men in Black” when he caught it. After it was caught and identified, it was promptly released back into the river.
In February, a deep sea fisherman unveiled his latest creepy capture – a nightmarish creature likened online to an alien. Sporting a large, bulbous body, shrunken eyes and gaping mouth, you’d be forgiven for mistaking the fish for something from another planet.
But fisherman Roman Fedortsov plucked it from a northern part of the Pacific Ocean, sharing footage of the find with his 600,000 followers.
He identified the beast as an Aptocyclus ventricosus – also known as the smooth lumpfish or smooth lumpsucker. The species of marine ray-finned fish is found in the deep sea and measures up to 44cm.
While their appearance is certainly unique, it appears to have undergone some swelling – likely due to the pressure change in being brought to the surface – resulting in the distended body.
Roman, who largely works on a trawler in Murmansk in the northwest part of Russia, shared a clip of the beast aboard the boat, which garnered more than 200,000 views.
One user said: “Yeah, aliens are real.” “That is 100% an alien,” agreed another viewer. “Looks like an alien head,” one person commented.