In Search Of... (2018) s01e03 Episode Script
Monsters of the Deep
[thunderclap.]
[Zachary Quinto.]
The great oceans of the Earth mysterious, thousands of feet deep, virtually unexplored.
Beneath these waters lurk unknown creatures.
Many of them ferocious.
No one knows this better than Australian teenager Sam Kanizay.
[Sam.]
It was about 6:00 at night, a full moon.
I was standing in the water to ice my legs, and 'cause of the cold, my legs went numb.
When I stepped out of the water, I realized that my feet were covered in blood.
Something had eaten my legs, and I had no clue what it was or where it came from, and why it attacked me.
[Quinto.]
With so little known about our oceans, who's to say what really lies beneath? Could the creatures of our nightmares actually exist? My search begins now.
My Name is Zachary Quinto.
As an actor, I've played many supernatural characters that blurred the line between science and fiction.
I'm drawn to the unknown, the otherworldly, and those experiences so beyond belief, they call everything into question.
I'm exploring some of the most enduring mysteries that continue to haunt mankind in search of the truth wherever it leads me.
Since the beginning of time, countless myths and legends have described strange, savage creatures in the world's oceans hunting humans and dragging them beneath the waves, from the serpent Leviathan found in the Book of Job to the Loch Ness Monster, reportedly photographed in the Scottish Highlands.
There's also been a recent surge in viral sightings, like the Montauk Monster spotted off the coast of Long Island, and the Texas City creature which washed ashore after Hurricane Harvey.
These monsters come in all shapes and sizes, and with so much ocean completely unexplored, who knows what hides in its depths? Today I'm meeting with 17-year-old Sam Kanizay, an Australian teenager who survived his own underwater nightmare an attack by a mysterious flesh-eating sea creature.
So, this is where it happened, eh? [Sam.]
Yeah, this is the bay, just down there.
Port Phillip Bay, Brighton Beach.
So walk me through the experience that you had that night.
It was nighttime, right? Yeah.
Yeah, it was about 6:00.
I was in a football game, and so I was sore, so I was just icing my legs.
I was standing in the water for half an hour, and my legs went numb 'cause of the cold.
'Cause it was that cold? Yeah.
Were you by yourself? Yeah.
By yourself.
So I was just walking out of the water, noticed some sand or what I thought was sand all over my ankles and lower calf.
So I just washed that off, and as I walked across the beach, I noticed that my feet were covered in blood.
It was just seeping out everywhere.
I saw some photos which looked grisly.
Were you freaked out? Were you really scared? Yeah, I was really shocked, 'cause I just hadn't seen anything like it.
But it was sort of like thousands of pinholes all in my legs.
You don't have any idea what caused it? I had no idea what was going on.
So what happened when you got to the hospital? How did the doctors react? Well, I was sitting in hospital a few days just to make sure the bleeding had actually fully stopped.
And did it take that long to stop? Yeah.
So they bled for three days? Yeah.
Wow.
No one could tell me what had happened straightaway.
And so everyone started Googling to see if they could figure out what it was.
Hmm.
[Quinto.]
Sam's story went viral in 2017, capturing international attention because of the unusual and intense nature of the incident.
[newsman.]
What attacked 17-year-old Sam Kanizay? [newswoman.]
His legs wouldn't stop bleeding.
A painful warning about what might lie beneath.
The doctors couldn't really figure out what caused it? What were some of the things that they came back with? Stingrays or jellyfish.
Mm-hmm.
But it was too much blood for that.
So then you started your healing process.
How long would you say that took? I was in a wheelchair for a bit.
Wow.
You couldn't walk.
No.
The pain was too much.
And no one could give me any reason as to why I was bleeding.
This sure is scary, and, for me, the kind of unknown of it would've been unsettling.
Sam's story reminds us how dangerous these ocean waters can be.
But what makes his experience scarier is the fact that he couldn't even see the flesh-eating sea creatures that attacked him.
What unknown dangers could lurk in these tranquil waters? Local experts at Museums Victoria know all about the violent world beneath the ocean surface.
[Quinto.]
How did the case come to you? [Dr.
Walker-Smith.]
The media notified us that someone had been bitten by some sort of sea creature.
[Quinto.]
I'm meeting with Dr.
Genefor Walker-Smith, who first analyzed the evidence in Sam's case, to understand more about these stealth attackers.
I'll have to admit that my very first reaction was, was this a hoax? I'd seen the images.
There was so much blood.
What were some of the things that you thought might have been the cause? There's a couple of different types of crustaceans that it could've been, but I hadn't ever heard of any crustaceans causing that level of injury.
So you'd never seen anything like this injury? No.
So my best guess is it was probably a type of amphipods.
Amphipods.
Yeah.
Sea fleas, known to feed on dead fish and dead crabs, and have been previously recorded as biting people.
Oh, they have? There's reports of divers looking at group swarms of amphipods, and in one instance, a diver had them come straight towards his face and bite him on the face and around his mask.
I'll show you a larger version.
So this is one from the deep sea.
No.
Get outta here, Gen.
Yeah.
So, they eat dead whales, dead fish, anything on the bottom of the ocean.
They're cleaning it up.
But, like, what if you had these on you? Well, but you would never be In the deep water like thatin the deep water.
There's related species that are smaller.
They're about the size of a Rice Krispie.
So that's just a few.
Sam probably had hundreds and hundreds of tiny little pinprick holes in his legs.
And their legs are like tiny little needles.
And they've got claws that are also designed for grasping.
And then, under the microscope here, I've dissected some of the mouth parts.
The really mean-looking mouth parts.
Okay.
It looks like an arm.
It does.
It kind of look like a whole set of steak knives all bunched together.
That would've created a lot of holes in his skin, is my guess.
Sam said that he was standing in the very cold water in one spot for about 30 minutes.
What if he was in there longer? Well, they could've started to really eat the flesh away.
There's video footage of an experiment that somebody did where they put a pig carcass in a cage, so it couldn't be eaten by any fish.
[gasps.]
Ew! I know.
It's really gross.
It's covered Oh, my God.
Day five, it's just a bag of bones, basically.
Sam is lucky he got out of that water, huh?[chuckles.]
That's crazy.
It's just a cloud of these sea fleas.
There are just tons of them.
They move fast.
They're just looking for a meal.
Their destructive power is pretty impressive.
I mean, it's one thing to see these crustaceans attack something that's dead, but it's another thing to consider that they attack a live human being.
Yes.
Is there anything about the seasons or the conditions of the weather? We don't know whether or not they're more prolific in summer or winter.
But there are some tales where fishermen have actually said on the night of a full moon, if they put their bait in the water, ten minutes later, they'll pull it up, and their bait's gone.
Wow.
Kind of goes in line with those, you know, old stories about the mysteries of the deep.
It's interesting.
It's actually not always the big things that you have to worry about.
Sam's attack by nearly invisible flesh-eaters makes me wonder how many other unknown monsters of any size could be hiding deep in our oceans.
These things have been seen regularly, and by people who are not prone to making up nonsense.
They exist.
People see them.
They're not having gigantic mass hallucinations on a global scale.
The reality here is, if a scientist was to say, "They can't exist," that simply means that you've explored every single ocean in the world.
Only then do you havethe.
If you haven't, then you don't know what you're talking about, plain and simple.
[Quinto.]
Could there really be unknown life-forms in our waters? To get a closer look, I'm diving with local marine biologist Sheree Marris.
And even though it's not a full moon, I'm a little nervous.
I definitely have a healthy respect for the ocean, And you shouldwhich sometimes translates into trepidation.
If I'm being honest.
No.
And that's good.
And I can understand that.
I mean, we do have some of the most dangerous animals in the world.
Venomous animals, dangerous Have you encountered any or all of that stuff? Yeah.
I've seen stonefish, which can kill you really quick.
The box jellyfish is the most venomous animal on the planet.
Can kill you in under two minutes flat.
If we're really lucky today, we may see the blue-ringed octopus.
It has a head the size of your thumb.
It will bite its prey and inject a neurotoxin so that it can devour it.
What if you were to get bitten by one? 'Cause it's so small, would it still have a It would have an impact.
You'd go into cardiac arrest.
What? And when it gets really cranky, it flashes these blue rings so you know it's cranky.
[Quinto.]
That's the thing about Australia that I don't love.
It's those, like, gnarly, totally camouflaged highly venomous things that'll just kill you if it bites you that could just be under the rock.
And that's what's so scary.
All right.
Let's go.
Let's do it.
Coming up It's a giant! [Zachary Quinto.]
For centuries, creatures of the deep have invaded our nightmares.
Giant squid, vicious serpents, and predatory sharks.
Sometimes you can see these beasts, but sometimes you can't.
Like in the case of Sam Kanizay, who was attacked by a swarm of flesh-eating amphipods.
My feet were covered in blood.
It was just seeping out everywhere.
[Quinto.]
Now I'm on a search to understand these mysterious creatures by jumping into Australia's shark-infested waters, where nearly two dozen humans are attacked each year.
There are some really dangerous things here.
The creatures I'm looking for are masters of blending in with their environment and will see you long before you will see them.
It's nearly impossible to know where the dangers are.
At any moment, something you don't see can lunge out and attack you.
I'm in shallow water here, at depths of almost 50 feet.
But even here, lethal creatures can hide.
Wow.
Whoo! That was amazing.
We saw an octopus.
And then we saw a lot of rays swimming around down there, right? Yeah, a lot of rays.
And the big black ones.
And they just fly underwater.
They're just so magical.
I love how they move.
Yeah, they really are.
I think knowledge is really the key to protecting yourself.
The little, tiny, no-bigger-than-your-thumb octopus that'll just kill you if it bites you that could just be under the rock? You have to be careful of the smaller, more potently venomous things.
I've only dived close to shore, but I'm amazed by how many mysterious predators I've seen.
What would I find in deeper waters, like Australia's southern ocean, where depths reach 20,000 feet? Is it possible the monsters of our imagination are hiding in the abyss? Scientists believe we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the deepest parts of our ocean.
Hidden from light and over six miles down, the depths of our oceans are a truly wild frontier with unknown beasts roaming free.
Could these be the monsters depicted in legends? To find out, I'm meeting with biologist Dianne Bray, who analyzes marine specimens recovered thousands of feet down off the coast of Australia.
I'm interested in some of the more unusual or scary-looking things that you have in your collection.
Yeah.
People call these things scary.
I call them awesome.
Yeah, sure.
Fascinating.
I just think that Deep sea fishes in particular, I just think are awesome.
One of the really cool things that we did find last year was a faceless fish.
[water dripping.]
It's just really weird.
They apparently do have eyes, but they're buried deep within the head.
I thought that those were his eyes.
Yeah, you'd think they were, but they're nostrils.
It is so fascinating to see an animal that doesn't have any kind of discernible eyes, actually.
Living down at 4,000 meters, this is one of the largest animals that would be down there.
It's a really harsh environment.
And, presumably, it relies on scent to find food.
One of the other groups of deep-sea fishes that I find are just amazing are the deep-sea anglerfishes.
So this is what we call a "football angler.
" She has this big lure on top of her head that looks like a squid to attract prey.
What would be the predator of a squid, which then she would And look at those teeth.
If you can see, she's actually eaten a squid.
Ooh.
What's in this one? Am I gonna be freaked out? It's 70% ethanol.
You might be freaked out by the smell.
Ooh! One of the sharks that I really, really, really like are these goblin sharks.
Oh, my God.
They've got these really fine grabbing teeth to swallow things.
They can't cut them up, so they have to sort of keep grabbing to get them to go down their gullet.
Right.
Right.
[Quinto.]
There's so much that we may never know.
What's down there, you know, how the environments change the deeper you go, and how animals and species interact with one another.
It feels like a true abyss.
People laugh at me or look at me when I say this, but the greatest migration on the planet happens every day in the ocean.
There's a whole suite of animals that move from depth to feeding upper layers at night.
Right.
Right.
And they gotta get down depth when the sun comes up, because they've got to hide their silhouette somehow.
There's nowhere to hide in the open ocean.
Right.
[Quinto.]
Is it possible this great migration of deep-sea monsters played a role in the attack suffered by 17-year-old Sam Kanizay? And could it be the key factor to explain why flesh-eating amphipods swarmed him at night in the shallow waters? How are you, man? So nice to meet you.
Good, mate.
In the aftermath of his attack, Sam's father, Jarrod, tried capturing some of the amphipods to analyze their behavior.
The nurses and doctors weren't gonna jump in the ocean and try to find out what these things were.
So I figured, why not try to reenact the case 24 hours later? That night, he went back to the same spot where Sam stood in the surf.
He used raw meat as bait.
And after only 15 minutes, he captured hundreds of flesh-eating amphipods.
Oh, man! No, dude! No![muttering.]
[laughing.]
No! When I first put them in the dish, they just tried to search for the meat, right.
And some were already clinged on.
And this was within seconds.
So it was pretty exciting to watch them go for it.
You can see that some of them are right into it, chowing down.
But there was not one swimming around in the morning.
They were all clung on to the meat.
That's gnarly.
So we figured that we were onto something.
Yeah, I'd say so.
And where is this right now? This is on your kitchen counter? Just a Yeah.
Yeah.
[chuckling.]
We didn't know whether they were going to burrow into Sam's legs Right.
or whether they had, or whether they were going to leave infection.
Thank God you got out when you got out, right? Yeah.
Like when you watch this, I feel very queasy.
It's taking They're moving so fast.
Sort of a bit like piranhas, I guess.
They way they Yeah.
They are like piranhas.
The way they devour the meat.
[Quinto.]
Jared was able to obtain a large sample of amphipods after only a short period of time in the water.
But I want to know if we recreated Sam's incident on a larger scale, could we solve the mystery surrounding what provoked them? I've set up an experiment to find out.
So you left the meat in for about 15 minutes you said, right? Yes.
Well obviously, Sam, we don't want to put you in the water.
So we have a bit of a representation of Sam.
So we have your legs, Sam.
And we have a cage.
And we're gonna put this in the water overnight.
We're gonna come back after 24 hours and see what we come up with.
These creatures rarely attack humans.
But I'm curious to find out if several pounds of raw meat will trigger another feeding frenzy.
What might come up from the depths? Coming up [Zachary Quinto.]
I'm investigating the monsters lurking in the depths off the coast of Australia.
Like the unseen predators who attacked 17-year-old, Sam Kanizay.
Hey, Sam.
Hey, Zac.
Good to see you again.
Yeah.
Good to be back.
So we did our experiment in the water last night with the meat legs.
We know that these crustaceans primary job is to feed on dead sea life.
And we didn't see a lot of evidence of sea fleas when we pulled it out today.
Yeah.
I was speaking to the scientist at Museums Victoria and she threw out this tale that has some credence among fisherman.
Which is that maybe these amphipods have some relationship to the full moon.
She said that a lot of fisherman cast their lures on a full moon and the bait is covered in amphipods.
Do you remember what the moon was like that night? Oh, I don't recall exactly.
But I Right.
do, uh, remember a lot of people saying, "Oh, could've been because of the full moon.
" Oh, really? It does increase the mystery of how your dad was able to go back the next day and get so many of them.
And here we gave them a feast for an amphipod king and it doesn't seem like we brought anything up.
We may never know for sure what caused the flesh-eating amphipods to attack Sam that night.
However, his story is hardly an isolated incident.
Strange sightings involving even larger, more frightening aquatic monsters are on the rise.
And they've spread well beyond the waters of Australia.
When you talk about aquatic cryptids, they're distribution is global.
They're all over the place.
You know, they've been seen in lakes in Africa.
They've been seen up the Mekong River in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
There is no limit to where they can be found.
[Quinto.]
In 2017, a 50-foot-long unknown sea creature was discovered in the waters off Indonesia.
Experts struggled to determine what the organism was.
Witnesses reported a mysterious oozing red fluid.
And that's just the beginning.
IN the United States you have a host of them and they stretch from California all the way out to Maine.
[Quinto.]
In 2008, the remains of an unidentified organism were discovered on the shores of Long Island.
The sighting went viral.
Social media christened it, the Montauk Monster.
With prehistoric features that seemed to combine creatures from land and sea.
[man.]
What is it? Monster or mammal? Animal or aberration? [Quinto.]
In the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, a strange carcass washed up on the shores of the Gulf Coasts.
It became known as the Texas City Creature.
Where did these beasts come from? Why are so many surfacing now? There's one place that might be able to help unravel the mystery.
Nova Southeastern University has been pulling strange fish from America's coast and beyond for decades.
[Quinto.]
How are you? Nice to meet you.
How are you? Nice to meet you.
Good.
Nice to meet you.
[Quinto.]
Dr.
Tracey Sutton leads the team.
Two thirds of the planet is covered in water.
But that's only the surface, right? Right.
The ocean's much deeper than people think.
So the average depth of the ocean is 4,000 meters.
So that's several miles deep.
And human beings haven't actually explored less than one percent.
Far less than one percent.
Wow.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
We're still peering through the looking glass.
Every time we come up with a new technology to go down there and look at things, we see a brand-new world that was there all the time.
We just couldn't see it.
So this is our lab where we bring in the samples that we've collected from the Gulf of Mexico, North Atlantic.
These things seem sort of otherworldly, I feel like A lot of the things that are down there kind of look nightmarish.
This is a cookie cutter shark.
They're called a cookie cutter 'cause it bites whales and large fishes.
It takes a scoop of flesh out.
Really? That's how it eats.
Put on a lab coat.
If you would.
Okay.
This one's called a viperfish.
The teeth are so large.
It literally has to look through its teeth when its mouth are closed.
Wow.
And those are so sharp.
Wow.
So this is called a lancet fish.
The teeth are blade-like.
We think that the purpose of this type of tooth is to come up and whack the spinal column to immobilized the prey.
Wow.
And then this can take its time swallowing.
So fascinating how, you know, fish have such specialized hunting skills.
There's no solid surfaces.
So there's no where for anything to hide.
Right.
So it's kind of an arms race out there.
[Quinto.]
In order to survive, every one of these monsters appears to be a killing machine.
No matter how big or how small.
And with so little of the deep ocean actually explored, there could be millions of terrifying fish we've never even seen before.
Lurking just offshore.
Today, Dr.
Sutton is doing an advanced DNA test on an unknown sea creature.
One of the things we're working on now is a brand-new fish that we're pretty sure is a new species.
It's a relative of the dragon fishes.
You can see that it has these large grasping teeth up in the front.
Maybe to hold prey.
[Quinto.]
Like many other fish in Dr.
Sutton's lab, this unknown specimen from the ocean's depths is a fierce predator.
It has a set of grasping teeth that continue all the way down its throat.
Which allows it to swallow its prey whole.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
If you look on the skin, this fish actually has thousands of photophoresWow.
all over its body to match dim welling light.
Yeah.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
So if you were to look up at a blue sky, if your belly is also blue light, you'll kind of disappear.
Oh, it's a kind of camouflage.
In theory that's what Exactly right.
But you've never discovered this before? Right.
We're pretty sure this is a new species.
So we want to validate this genetically.
What we're gonna do now is take a tissue sample.
We'll hand it to our illustrious gene team.
Then that gets analyzed.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
They will do a genetic analysis to make absolutely sure that there's not a single fish anywhere in the world that is this particular species.
I know nothing about marine biology, so this kind of exploration and this kind of depth is something that is endlessly fascinating.
And I can't wait to see what our DNA test results reveal.
But terrifying fish don't just exist in Dr.
Sutton's lab.
I've uncovered surprising reports of vicious predators from around the world flooding lakes and rivers enjoyed by humans only a few miles away, right here in Florida.
Zak Bagby has been fishing in Florida's freshwater lake since he was a kid.
Oh, whoa, whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's a mouth.
That's a monster.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
It's a giant.
[Quinto.]
In recent years, he's noticed large and mysterious fish invading the waters of Florida.
It's a giant.
It's an absolute giant.
Oh, my God.
[Quinto.]
Could these monsters of the deep be lurking in our own backyard? He is pissed.
Oh, my God.
We got him.
[thunderclap.]
[Zachary Quinto.]
I've been trying to determine whether or not monsters of the deep are real.
And what I've turned up could be more terrifying than I ever imagined.
No.
Dude.
No.
[chuckling.]
I've seen sea creatures from the deep that specialized in savage art of survival.
This tooth is to come up and whack the spinal column to immobilize the prey.
Wow.
But deadly beasts aren't just confined to laboratories and occasional viral videos.
There are countless monsters living in the serene swamps and rivers of Florida.
Prime swimming areas for the 20 million inhabitants of this state.
[fishing line retracting.]
[Zak Bagby.]
You can feel when the bait gets nervous on the end of the line if you really know what you're doing.
A little bit of nervous, then, bam.
Ooh.
Something just jumped right over there.
Oh! Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Big fish.
That's a monster.
It's a giant.
That's an absolute giant.
Oh, my God.
Oh! Oh.
Oh, my God.
We got him.
We got him.
Oh, my God! That's such a beast.
Oh, my God! Look at the size of this thing.
This is a monster.
[Quinto.]
Angler Zak Bagby is seeing an invasion in Florida lakes and canals by the clown knife fish.
Originally from East Asia.
These exotic predators are devouring the local fish populations.
And they have even been known to attack humans.
He's alarmed by the explosion of these foreign species and the dangers they oppose to local swimming areas.
Oh, man.
His teeth are super sharp.
[Quinto.]
And his catches keep getting bigger.
This is almost a three-foot-long exotic clown knife fish.
One of the biggest I've ever personally seen ever.
[Quinto.]
Zak has become so obsessed by these invaders [Zak.]
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God he's taken to YouTube to document his monster catches.
Look at this.
And look at this.
Look at his head.
[Quinto.]
And his videos have gone viral.
[woman.]
Oh, wow.
Look at the size of this fish.
This might be ten pounds.
[Quinto.]
Why are so many of these dangerous monsters showing up in our lakes and rivers? I'm meeting with Zak to get to the bottom of this phenomenon.
So have you noticed an increase of exotic fish over the last few years? There is a crazy increase of exotic fish.
Yes.
Really? There's monsters in here.
And I really didn't even understand that they were here like that.
But I fish in here, year after year.
and I may catch one a week.
Next year, oh, maybe two a week.
Now it's every single day, Wow.
I catch several clown knife fish.
Yes.
Really? So you can really see year to yearYes.
the increase of their population.
Absolutely.
When they fish stick together like most of these exotics do.
It just They just take over.
They just overpopulate.
Yup.
To see a fully grown clown knife fish, it's like heart stopping.
They look like aliens.
They have a tongue that has teeth on it.
Wow.
They swim backwards, forwards.
They roll, they breathe air.
They're really hard, hard to kill.
Wow.
But strange predator fish are not just a problem in the freshwaters of Florida, they're wreaking havoc around the globe.
Killing off millions of local fish.
First native to China, Asian carp have invaded rivers around the world like a deadly plague.
[newsman.]
In the Mississippi River system, the fish has left a trail of destruction.
[Quinto.]
Originally from Africa, snakeheads are now a menace in lakes and rivers everywhere.
Locals call them "Frankenfish" because they can live out of water for up to four days.
Making them nearly impossible to eradicate.
And walking catfish first came from East Asia, but now they haunt farmers around the world because they can walk across dry land to devour crops.
With many new invaders taking over new aquatic areas all over the world, Zak Bagby is concerned about an even more serious problem.
Any fish that you've come across that are a danger to humans? We do have things like pacu fish that come into the canal system.
They have a jaw structure that is just for pure power.
Shaped exactly like a piranha, except they get to be 50 and 60 pounds.
Wow.
When they school up, I've seen them act really aggressive.
Wow.
Let's take a look at these pacu fish.
[laughs.]
[Quinto.]
To monitor the surge of these invaders, Zak keeps samples of the strange fish he catches.
And that is a big That is a big fish.
As you can see.
So what if you find yourself in a hostile pacu environment? What would happen? If you were inside a small pond and these fish haven't eaten, they're gonna take a chunk out of you and swim away.
They're known as the "nut-biters," not only for the trees and berries, like if you know what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Like honestly.
All right.
So what, they have a reputation for going after the junk? They have a reputation for going after the junk.
Really? And going after the toes.
Yes.
Wow.
They're insane.
If they are super hungry, they will take a bite out of you.
That's not the bite you want taken.
No.
No.
Uh, here's some raw meat.
Are you sure you don't want to try to feed them a little bit? I mean, I'm really, really intrigued by this experience.
[laughs.]
You go.
Here we go.
Come on.
Aw, yeah.
Here you go.
Yeah.
Stand back so they don't splash you.
[laughs.]
She got the whole thing.
She got that whole thing, huh? So we're gonna go ahead and get this pacu into this massive net.
Oh, God.
Relax.
Relax, Flipper.
Flipper.
Relax.
Relax, Flipper.
[groans.]
Oh, we wrapped him around.
One left.
[groans.]
Wow.
So, let's check out his teeth.
Can you see in that jaw? [Quinto.]
That is so crazy.
[Zachary Quinto.]
Exploring the has been an intense experience.
From the shallows of Australia [gasps.]
to the darkest depths.
I've seen that no matter their size, these beasts can inflict real damage.
Now, there's a renegade species.
The pacu, taking over lakes and streams in Florida at an incredible rate.
[Zak.]
They have a jaw structure shaped exactly like a piranha.
So, we're gonna go ahead and get this pacu into this massive net.
Oh, God.
Relax.
Relax, Flipper.
Flipper.
Relax.
Relax, Flipper.
[groans.]
Now how long can they stay out of water? They can stay out of the water five minutes.
Oh, really? Yeah.
They're really hardy fish.
So let's check out his teeth.
Can you see in that jaw? Look at the teeth.
Oh, my.
Looks like a human mouth.
Look at that.
Look at that.
That is so crazy.
These things are scary.
I mean it looks like a human's set of teeth inside of a fish's mouth.
We talked about how smart they are when fisherman are trying to lure them in.
Look at the nostrils on that thing.
They can smell you from a mile away.
This guy was in a space that has hundreds of pacu fish.
[Quinto.]
Wow.
Insane.
If they get pissed, goodbye.
Nice knowing you.
So you would not want to go swimming in that lake? No.
[scoffs.]
I would never even think about it.
Right.
Jeez.
Yeah.
I've seen the environment change living and growing up as a fisherman.
What I've seen is just unimaginable.
They're thriving and I'm starting to see them reproduce.
It doesn't make sense almost.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
I love Zak's enthusiasm.
It's interesting to get the perspective of someone who's on the ground.
To kind of get to some of the stuff that is unknown and undiscovered.
It's alarming.
Even though I've seen bizarre and dangerous sea creatures, I'm still searching for proof that legendary monsters of the deep really exist.
Back at Nova Southeastern University's advanced DNA lab, Dr.
Tracey Sutton has a monstrous new specimen that may offer some clues.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
One of the things that occasionally comes to the surface is a oarfish.
[Quinto.]
Whoa.
They've been known to approach 40-feet long.
Wow.
It has the appearance of a sea serpent and we think this might be the inspiration for sea serpent legend.
At night these occasionally come up into the shallow water.
You're out on a boat, there's a bright blue ocean, and then you see a 36-foot-long red thing.
It certainly could look like a sea serpent.
[Quinto.]
Do you feel that people that tell stories about monsters and these unidentified creatures of the deep are just really seeing things that aren't often seen by human beings? [Dr.
Sutton.]
I do believe that a lot of these legends are based on somebody seeing something that was not yet described.
I would say that there is a high probability that there is some large things we have not seen yet.
Uh-huh.
[Quinto.]
Someone like Tracey who spends his life seeing things that are unknown all the time has a pretty reliable perspective of it all.
So maybe it's when these different species interact with humans that they become monstrous and that allows us to explain them in a way that we can't otherwise.
Despite growing evidence of undiscovered new species, skeptics argue the term "monster" is relative.
Back when these legends and myths first started, we didn't know what these animals were.
They may have been encountered in some capacity, but not in the way that they've been portrayed over the years.
Things get fantastical over time.
You know.
As one person tells another, these creatures become more and more and more, kind of, outlandish and weird.
The general public doesn't come into contact with these animals.
So one man's sea creature or sea serpent is another man or woman's, you know, known species.
[Quinto.]
But 99% of the deep seas are unexplored.
And experts remain convinced that undiscovered creatures are still out there.
We're still at the point where every single sample could have something new.
[Quinto.]
So I'm anxious to see what the results of our advanced DNA experiment will reveal about the existence of previously undiscovered fish.
Will we uncover a new species of deep sea predator? Results are in.
[Quinto.]
And if so, what else could be out there that we don't know about? [Zachary Quinto.]
Myters of the deep has taken me from the shark-infested waters off Southern Australia My feet were covered in blood.
A lot of blood? to the freshwaters of Florida right in our own backyards.
Look at that.
Look at the teeth on that thing.
Wow.
I've seen evidence that nightmarish species of marine life do exist.
And although they may not be mystical creatures depicted in ancient legends, the ones I've discovered are real.
And they're more frightening than I ever imagined.
It's just really weird.
They're thriving and I'm starting to see them reproduce.
It doesn't make sense almost.
That's crazy.
Now I'm working with Dr.
Tracey Sutton and his team We're still at the point where every single sample could have something new.
[Quinto.]
to determine whether or not they've identified a brand-new species of fish.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
So we want to validate this genetically.
Results are in.
What are we looking at? We're looking at your new fish right down here.
And we're looking at two individuals of a different species.
Okay.
And you can see that there's clear genetic differences between your fish and these other fish up here.
When the difference gets to be about two, three, four percent, that's when it means you might actually have a different species.
And we do? Yes.
Absolutely.
It's about four, five percent.
All right.
So you're just learning this right now? Well we had an inkling, but now, this is, you know, irrefutable evidence that this is a unique fish.
So we'll take this fish, probably send to Harvard to a curated collection that anybody in the world could look it up.
It kind of makes it a slam dunk, if you will.
Uh-huh.
[Quinto.]
Today we learned more about what dwells in the deep, but this single breakthrough is just a tiny drop of water in the vast unknown oceans.
It's incredible that you're part of discovering a new species which is a significant event.
But if we're just discovering one today, I mean, Right.
this must happen all the time, right? There's so much unexplored, and so much unidentified, uh, out there, that you're really a part of uncovering.
Yes, and we think that there's still a lot of these large predators that we haven't seen yet.
And they might be much bigger than what we've been able to catch with the gear that we've been using.
Pretty shocking how much there is to be discovered yet.
That's the scary part of it I think and that less than one percent of the deep ocean has been explored.
The great oceans of the world contain Earth's most enduring mysteries.
What kinds of undiscovered species could still be out there? Both in the deepest parts of the sea and in the murky shallows closer to home.
I remain in this field because, my gosh, the pursuit of this is extremely enthralling.
And the end result if we do get a living, breathing creature will be breathtaking.
[Quinto.]
As new technology allows us to learn more about what lurks beyond the ocean's surface, perhaps we'll find the origins of real sea monster myths and legends If we dare.
[Zachary Quinto.]
The great oceans of the Earth mysterious, thousands of feet deep, virtually unexplored.
Beneath these waters lurk unknown creatures.
Many of them ferocious.
No one knows this better than Australian teenager Sam Kanizay.
[Sam.]
It was about 6:00 at night, a full moon.
I was standing in the water to ice my legs, and 'cause of the cold, my legs went numb.
When I stepped out of the water, I realized that my feet were covered in blood.
Something had eaten my legs, and I had no clue what it was or where it came from, and why it attacked me.
[Quinto.]
With so little known about our oceans, who's to say what really lies beneath? Could the creatures of our nightmares actually exist? My search begins now.
My Name is Zachary Quinto.
As an actor, I've played many supernatural characters that blurred the line between science and fiction.
I'm drawn to the unknown, the otherworldly, and those experiences so beyond belief, they call everything into question.
I'm exploring some of the most enduring mysteries that continue to haunt mankind in search of the truth wherever it leads me.
Since the beginning of time, countless myths and legends have described strange, savage creatures in the world's oceans hunting humans and dragging them beneath the waves, from the serpent Leviathan found in the Book of Job to the Loch Ness Monster, reportedly photographed in the Scottish Highlands.
There's also been a recent surge in viral sightings, like the Montauk Monster spotted off the coast of Long Island, and the Texas City creature which washed ashore after Hurricane Harvey.
These monsters come in all shapes and sizes, and with so much ocean completely unexplored, who knows what hides in its depths? Today I'm meeting with 17-year-old Sam Kanizay, an Australian teenager who survived his own underwater nightmare an attack by a mysterious flesh-eating sea creature.
So, this is where it happened, eh? [Sam.]
Yeah, this is the bay, just down there.
Port Phillip Bay, Brighton Beach.
So walk me through the experience that you had that night.
It was nighttime, right? Yeah.
Yeah, it was about 6:00.
I was in a football game, and so I was sore, so I was just icing my legs.
I was standing in the water for half an hour, and my legs went numb 'cause of the cold.
'Cause it was that cold? Yeah.
Were you by yourself? Yeah.
By yourself.
So I was just walking out of the water, noticed some sand or what I thought was sand all over my ankles and lower calf.
So I just washed that off, and as I walked across the beach, I noticed that my feet were covered in blood.
It was just seeping out everywhere.
I saw some photos which looked grisly.
Were you freaked out? Were you really scared? Yeah, I was really shocked, 'cause I just hadn't seen anything like it.
But it was sort of like thousands of pinholes all in my legs.
You don't have any idea what caused it? I had no idea what was going on.
So what happened when you got to the hospital? How did the doctors react? Well, I was sitting in hospital a few days just to make sure the bleeding had actually fully stopped.
And did it take that long to stop? Yeah.
So they bled for three days? Yeah.
Wow.
No one could tell me what had happened straightaway.
And so everyone started Googling to see if they could figure out what it was.
Hmm.
[Quinto.]
Sam's story went viral in 2017, capturing international attention because of the unusual and intense nature of the incident.
[newsman.]
What attacked 17-year-old Sam Kanizay? [newswoman.]
His legs wouldn't stop bleeding.
A painful warning about what might lie beneath.
The doctors couldn't really figure out what caused it? What were some of the things that they came back with? Stingrays or jellyfish.
Mm-hmm.
But it was too much blood for that.
So then you started your healing process.
How long would you say that took? I was in a wheelchair for a bit.
Wow.
You couldn't walk.
No.
The pain was too much.
And no one could give me any reason as to why I was bleeding.
This sure is scary, and, for me, the kind of unknown of it would've been unsettling.
Sam's story reminds us how dangerous these ocean waters can be.
But what makes his experience scarier is the fact that he couldn't even see the flesh-eating sea creatures that attacked him.
What unknown dangers could lurk in these tranquil waters? Local experts at Museums Victoria know all about the violent world beneath the ocean surface.
[Quinto.]
How did the case come to you? [Dr.
Walker-Smith.]
The media notified us that someone had been bitten by some sort of sea creature.
[Quinto.]
I'm meeting with Dr.
Genefor Walker-Smith, who first analyzed the evidence in Sam's case, to understand more about these stealth attackers.
I'll have to admit that my very first reaction was, was this a hoax? I'd seen the images.
There was so much blood.
What were some of the things that you thought might have been the cause? There's a couple of different types of crustaceans that it could've been, but I hadn't ever heard of any crustaceans causing that level of injury.
So you'd never seen anything like this injury? No.
So my best guess is it was probably a type of amphipods.
Amphipods.
Yeah.
Sea fleas, known to feed on dead fish and dead crabs, and have been previously recorded as biting people.
Oh, they have? There's reports of divers looking at group swarms of amphipods, and in one instance, a diver had them come straight towards his face and bite him on the face and around his mask.
I'll show you a larger version.
So this is one from the deep sea.
No.
Get outta here, Gen.
Yeah.
So, they eat dead whales, dead fish, anything on the bottom of the ocean.
They're cleaning it up.
But, like, what if you had these on you? Well, but you would never be In the deep water like thatin the deep water.
There's related species that are smaller.
They're about the size of a Rice Krispie.
So that's just a few.
Sam probably had hundreds and hundreds of tiny little pinprick holes in his legs.
And their legs are like tiny little needles.
And they've got claws that are also designed for grasping.
And then, under the microscope here, I've dissected some of the mouth parts.
The really mean-looking mouth parts.
Okay.
It looks like an arm.
It does.
It kind of look like a whole set of steak knives all bunched together.
That would've created a lot of holes in his skin, is my guess.
Sam said that he was standing in the very cold water in one spot for about 30 minutes.
What if he was in there longer? Well, they could've started to really eat the flesh away.
There's video footage of an experiment that somebody did where they put a pig carcass in a cage, so it couldn't be eaten by any fish.
[gasps.]
Ew! I know.
It's really gross.
It's covered Oh, my God.
Day five, it's just a bag of bones, basically.
Sam is lucky he got out of that water, huh?[chuckles.]
That's crazy.
It's just a cloud of these sea fleas.
There are just tons of them.
They move fast.
They're just looking for a meal.
Their destructive power is pretty impressive.
I mean, it's one thing to see these crustaceans attack something that's dead, but it's another thing to consider that they attack a live human being.
Yes.
Is there anything about the seasons or the conditions of the weather? We don't know whether or not they're more prolific in summer or winter.
But there are some tales where fishermen have actually said on the night of a full moon, if they put their bait in the water, ten minutes later, they'll pull it up, and their bait's gone.
Wow.
Kind of goes in line with those, you know, old stories about the mysteries of the deep.
It's interesting.
It's actually not always the big things that you have to worry about.
Sam's attack by nearly invisible flesh-eaters makes me wonder how many other unknown monsters of any size could be hiding deep in our oceans.
These things have been seen regularly, and by people who are not prone to making up nonsense.
They exist.
People see them.
They're not having gigantic mass hallucinations on a global scale.
The reality here is, if a scientist was to say, "They can't exist," that simply means that you've explored every single ocean in the world.
Only then do you havethe.
If you haven't, then you don't know what you're talking about, plain and simple.
[Quinto.]
Could there really be unknown life-forms in our waters? To get a closer look, I'm diving with local marine biologist Sheree Marris.
And even though it's not a full moon, I'm a little nervous.
I definitely have a healthy respect for the ocean, And you shouldwhich sometimes translates into trepidation.
If I'm being honest.
No.
And that's good.
And I can understand that.
I mean, we do have some of the most dangerous animals in the world.
Venomous animals, dangerous Have you encountered any or all of that stuff? Yeah.
I've seen stonefish, which can kill you really quick.
The box jellyfish is the most venomous animal on the planet.
Can kill you in under two minutes flat.
If we're really lucky today, we may see the blue-ringed octopus.
It has a head the size of your thumb.
It will bite its prey and inject a neurotoxin so that it can devour it.
What if you were to get bitten by one? 'Cause it's so small, would it still have a It would have an impact.
You'd go into cardiac arrest.
What? And when it gets really cranky, it flashes these blue rings so you know it's cranky.
[Quinto.]
That's the thing about Australia that I don't love.
It's those, like, gnarly, totally camouflaged highly venomous things that'll just kill you if it bites you that could just be under the rock.
And that's what's so scary.
All right.
Let's go.
Let's do it.
Coming up It's a giant! [Zachary Quinto.]
For centuries, creatures of the deep have invaded our nightmares.
Giant squid, vicious serpents, and predatory sharks.
Sometimes you can see these beasts, but sometimes you can't.
Like in the case of Sam Kanizay, who was attacked by a swarm of flesh-eating amphipods.
My feet were covered in blood.
It was just seeping out everywhere.
[Quinto.]
Now I'm on a search to understand these mysterious creatures by jumping into Australia's shark-infested waters, where nearly two dozen humans are attacked each year.
There are some really dangerous things here.
The creatures I'm looking for are masters of blending in with their environment and will see you long before you will see them.
It's nearly impossible to know where the dangers are.
At any moment, something you don't see can lunge out and attack you.
I'm in shallow water here, at depths of almost 50 feet.
But even here, lethal creatures can hide.
Wow.
Whoo! That was amazing.
We saw an octopus.
And then we saw a lot of rays swimming around down there, right? Yeah, a lot of rays.
And the big black ones.
And they just fly underwater.
They're just so magical.
I love how they move.
Yeah, they really are.
I think knowledge is really the key to protecting yourself.
The little, tiny, no-bigger-than-your-thumb octopus that'll just kill you if it bites you that could just be under the rock? You have to be careful of the smaller, more potently venomous things.
I've only dived close to shore, but I'm amazed by how many mysterious predators I've seen.
What would I find in deeper waters, like Australia's southern ocean, where depths reach 20,000 feet? Is it possible the monsters of our imagination are hiding in the abyss? Scientists believe we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the deepest parts of our ocean.
Hidden from light and over six miles down, the depths of our oceans are a truly wild frontier with unknown beasts roaming free.
Could these be the monsters depicted in legends? To find out, I'm meeting with biologist Dianne Bray, who analyzes marine specimens recovered thousands of feet down off the coast of Australia.
I'm interested in some of the more unusual or scary-looking things that you have in your collection.
Yeah.
People call these things scary.
I call them awesome.
Yeah, sure.
Fascinating.
I just think that Deep sea fishes in particular, I just think are awesome.
One of the really cool things that we did find last year was a faceless fish.
[water dripping.]
It's just really weird.
They apparently do have eyes, but they're buried deep within the head.
I thought that those were his eyes.
Yeah, you'd think they were, but they're nostrils.
It is so fascinating to see an animal that doesn't have any kind of discernible eyes, actually.
Living down at 4,000 meters, this is one of the largest animals that would be down there.
It's a really harsh environment.
And, presumably, it relies on scent to find food.
One of the other groups of deep-sea fishes that I find are just amazing are the deep-sea anglerfishes.
So this is what we call a "football angler.
" She has this big lure on top of her head that looks like a squid to attract prey.
What would be the predator of a squid, which then she would And look at those teeth.
If you can see, she's actually eaten a squid.
Ooh.
What's in this one? Am I gonna be freaked out? It's 70% ethanol.
You might be freaked out by the smell.
Ooh! One of the sharks that I really, really, really like are these goblin sharks.
Oh, my God.
They've got these really fine grabbing teeth to swallow things.
They can't cut them up, so they have to sort of keep grabbing to get them to go down their gullet.
Right.
Right.
[Quinto.]
There's so much that we may never know.
What's down there, you know, how the environments change the deeper you go, and how animals and species interact with one another.
It feels like a true abyss.
People laugh at me or look at me when I say this, but the greatest migration on the planet happens every day in the ocean.
There's a whole suite of animals that move from depth to feeding upper layers at night.
Right.
Right.
And they gotta get down depth when the sun comes up, because they've got to hide their silhouette somehow.
There's nowhere to hide in the open ocean.
Right.
[Quinto.]
Is it possible this great migration of deep-sea monsters played a role in the attack suffered by 17-year-old Sam Kanizay? And could it be the key factor to explain why flesh-eating amphipods swarmed him at night in the shallow waters? How are you, man? So nice to meet you.
Good, mate.
In the aftermath of his attack, Sam's father, Jarrod, tried capturing some of the amphipods to analyze their behavior.
The nurses and doctors weren't gonna jump in the ocean and try to find out what these things were.
So I figured, why not try to reenact the case 24 hours later? That night, he went back to the same spot where Sam stood in the surf.
He used raw meat as bait.
And after only 15 minutes, he captured hundreds of flesh-eating amphipods.
Oh, man! No, dude! No![muttering.]
[laughing.]
No! When I first put them in the dish, they just tried to search for the meat, right.
And some were already clinged on.
And this was within seconds.
So it was pretty exciting to watch them go for it.
You can see that some of them are right into it, chowing down.
But there was not one swimming around in the morning.
They were all clung on to the meat.
That's gnarly.
So we figured that we were onto something.
Yeah, I'd say so.
And where is this right now? This is on your kitchen counter? Just a Yeah.
Yeah.
[chuckling.]
We didn't know whether they were going to burrow into Sam's legs Right.
or whether they had, or whether they were going to leave infection.
Thank God you got out when you got out, right? Yeah.
Like when you watch this, I feel very queasy.
It's taking They're moving so fast.
Sort of a bit like piranhas, I guess.
They way they Yeah.
They are like piranhas.
The way they devour the meat.
[Quinto.]
Jared was able to obtain a large sample of amphipods after only a short period of time in the water.
But I want to know if we recreated Sam's incident on a larger scale, could we solve the mystery surrounding what provoked them? I've set up an experiment to find out.
So you left the meat in for about 15 minutes you said, right? Yes.
Well obviously, Sam, we don't want to put you in the water.
So we have a bit of a representation of Sam.
So we have your legs, Sam.
And we have a cage.
And we're gonna put this in the water overnight.
We're gonna come back after 24 hours and see what we come up with.
These creatures rarely attack humans.
But I'm curious to find out if several pounds of raw meat will trigger another feeding frenzy.
What might come up from the depths? Coming up [Zachary Quinto.]
I'm investigating the monsters lurking in the depths off the coast of Australia.
Like the unseen predators who attacked 17-year-old, Sam Kanizay.
Hey, Sam.
Hey, Zac.
Good to see you again.
Yeah.
Good to be back.
So we did our experiment in the water last night with the meat legs.
We know that these crustaceans primary job is to feed on dead sea life.
And we didn't see a lot of evidence of sea fleas when we pulled it out today.
Yeah.
I was speaking to the scientist at Museums Victoria and she threw out this tale that has some credence among fisherman.
Which is that maybe these amphipods have some relationship to the full moon.
She said that a lot of fisherman cast their lures on a full moon and the bait is covered in amphipods.
Do you remember what the moon was like that night? Oh, I don't recall exactly.
But I Right.
do, uh, remember a lot of people saying, "Oh, could've been because of the full moon.
" Oh, really? It does increase the mystery of how your dad was able to go back the next day and get so many of them.
And here we gave them a feast for an amphipod king and it doesn't seem like we brought anything up.
We may never know for sure what caused the flesh-eating amphipods to attack Sam that night.
However, his story is hardly an isolated incident.
Strange sightings involving even larger, more frightening aquatic monsters are on the rise.
And they've spread well beyond the waters of Australia.
When you talk about aquatic cryptids, they're distribution is global.
They're all over the place.
You know, they've been seen in lakes in Africa.
They've been seen up the Mekong River in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
There is no limit to where they can be found.
[Quinto.]
In 2017, a 50-foot-long unknown sea creature was discovered in the waters off Indonesia.
Experts struggled to determine what the organism was.
Witnesses reported a mysterious oozing red fluid.
And that's just the beginning.
IN the United States you have a host of them and they stretch from California all the way out to Maine.
[Quinto.]
In 2008, the remains of an unidentified organism were discovered on the shores of Long Island.
The sighting went viral.
Social media christened it, the Montauk Monster.
With prehistoric features that seemed to combine creatures from land and sea.
[man.]
What is it? Monster or mammal? Animal or aberration? [Quinto.]
In the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, a strange carcass washed up on the shores of the Gulf Coasts.
It became known as the Texas City Creature.
Where did these beasts come from? Why are so many surfacing now? There's one place that might be able to help unravel the mystery.
Nova Southeastern University has been pulling strange fish from America's coast and beyond for decades.
[Quinto.]
How are you? Nice to meet you.
How are you? Nice to meet you.
Good.
Nice to meet you.
[Quinto.]
Dr.
Tracey Sutton leads the team.
Two thirds of the planet is covered in water.
But that's only the surface, right? Right.
The ocean's much deeper than people think.
So the average depth of the ocean is 4,000 meters.
So that's several miles deep.
And human beings haven't actually explored less than one percent.
Far less than one percent.
Wow.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
We're still peering through the looking glass.
Every time we come up with a new technology to go down there and look at things, we see a brand-new world that was there all the time.
We just couldn't see it.
So this is our lab where we bring in the samples that we've collected from the Gulf of Mexico, North Atlantic.
These things seem sort of otherworldly, I feel like A lot of the things that are down there kind of look nightmarish.
This is a cookie cutter shark.
They're called a cookie cutter 'cause it bites whales and large fishes.
It takes a scoop of flesh out.
Really? That's how it eats.
Put on a lab coat.
If you would.
Okay.
This one's called a viperfish.
The teeth are so large.
It literally has to look through its teeth when its mouth are closed.
Wow.
And those are so sharp.
Wow.
So this is called a lancet fish.
The teeth are blade-like.
We think that the purpose of this type of tooth is to come up and whack the spinal column to immobilized the prey.
Wow.
And then this can take its time swallowing.
So fascinating how, you know, fish have such specialized hunting skills.
There's no solid surfaces.
So there's no where for anything to hide.
Right.
So it's kind of an arms race out there.
[Quinto.]
In order to survive, every one of these monsters appears to be a killing machine.
No matter how big or how small.
And with so little of the deep ocean actually explored, there could be millions of terrifying fish we've never even seen before.
Lurking just offshore.
Today, Dr.
Sutton is doing an advanced DNA test on an unknown sea creature.
One of the things we're working on now is a brand-new fish that we're pretty sure is a new species.
It's a relative of the dragon fishes.
You can see that it has these large grasping teeth up in the front.
Maybe to hold prey.
[Quinto.]
Like many other fish in Dr.
Sutton's lab, this unknown specimen from the ocean's depths is a fierce predator.
It has a set of grasping teeth that continue all the way down its throat.
Which allows it to swallow its prey whole.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
If you look on the skin, this fish actually has thousands of photophoresWow.
all over its body to match dim welling light.
Yeah.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
So if you were to look up at a blue sky, if your belly is also blue light, you'll kind of disappear.
Oh, it's a kind of camouflage.
In theory that's what Exactly right.
But you've never discovered this before? Right.
We're pretty sure this is a new species.
So we want to validate this genetically.
What we're gonna do now is take a tissue sample.
We'll hand it to our illustrious gene team.
Then that gets analyzed.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
They will do a genetic analysis to make absolutely sure that there's not a single fish anywhere in the world that is this particular species.
I know nothing about marine biology, so this kind of exploration and this kind of depth is something that is endlessly fascinating.
And I can't wait to see what our DNA test results reveal.
But terrifying fish don't just exist in Dr.
Sutton's lab.
I've uncovered surprising reports of vicious predators from around the world flooding lakes and rivers enjoyed by humans only a few miles away, right here in Florida.
Zak Bagby has been fishing in Florida's freshwater lake since he was a kid.
Oh, whoa, whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's a mouth.
That's a monster.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
It's a giant.
[Quinto.]
In recent years, he's noticed large and mysterious fish invading the waters of Florida.
It's a giant.
It's an absolute giant.
Oh, my God.
[Quinto.]
Could these monsters of the deep be lurking in our own backyard? He is pissed.
Oh, my God.
We got him.
[thunderclap.]
[Zachary Quinto.]
I've been trying to determine whether or not monsters of the deep are real.
And what I've turned up could be more terrifying than I ever imagined.
No.
Dude.
No.
[chuckling.]
I've seen sea creatures from the deep that specialized in savage art of survival.
This tooth is to come up and whack the spinal column to immobilize the prey.
Wow.
But deadly beasts aren't just confined to laboratories and occasional viral videos.
There are countless monsters living in the serene swamps and rivers of Florida.
Prime swimming areas for the 20 million inhabitants of this state.
[fishing line retracting.]
[Zak Bagby.]
You can feel when the bait gets nervous on the end of the line if you really know what you're doing.
A little bit of nervous, then, bam.
Ooh.
Something just jumped right over there.
Oh! Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Big fish.
That's a monster.
It's a giant.
That's an absolute giant.
Oh, my God.
Oh! Oh.
Oh, my God.
We got him.
We got him.
Oh, my God! That's such a beast.
Oh, my God! Look at the size of this thing.
This is a monster.
[Quinto.]
Angler Zak Bagby is seeing an invasion in Florida lakes and canals by the clown knife fish.
Originally from East Asia.
These exotic predators are devouring the local fish populations.
And they have even been known to attack humans.
He's alarmed by the explosion of these foreign species and the dangers they oppose to local swimming areas.
Oh, man.
His teeth are super sharp.
[Quinto.]
And his catches keep getting bigger.
This is almost a three-foot-long exotic clown knife fish.
One of the biggest I've ever personally seen ever.
[Quinto.]
Zak has become so obsessed by these invaders [Zak.]
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God he's taken to YouTube to document his monster catches.
Look at this.
And look at this.
Look at his head.
[Quinto.]
And his videos have gone viral.
[woman.]
Oh, wow.
Look at the size of this fish.
This might be ten pounds.
[Quinto.]
Why are so many of these dangerous monsters showing up in our lakes and rivers? I'm meeting with Zak to get to the bottom of this phenomenon.
So have you noticed an increase of exotic fish over the last few years? There is a crazy increase of exotic fish.
Yes.
Really? There's monsters in here.
And I really didn't even understand that they were here like that.
But I fish in here, year after year.
and I may catch one a week.
Next year, oh, maybe two a week.
Now it's every single day, Wow.
I catch several clown knife fish.
Yes.
Really? So you can really see year to yearYes.
the increase of their population.
Absolutely.
When they fish stick together like most of these exotics do.
It just They just take over.
They just overpopulate.
Yup.
To see a fully grown clown knife fish, it's like heart stopping.
They look like aliens.
They have a tongue that has teeth on it.
Wow.
They swim backwards, forwards.
They roll, they breathe air.
They're really hard, hard to kill.
Wow.
But strange predator fish are not just a problem in the freshwaters of Florida, they're wreaking havoc around the globe.
Killing off millions of local fish.
First native to China, Asian carp have invaded rivers around the world like a deadly plague.
[newsman.]
In the Mississippi River system, the fish has left a trail of destruction.
[Quinto.]
Originally from Africa, snakeheads are now a menace in lakes and rivers everywhere.
Locals call them "Frankenfish" because they can live out of water for up to four days.
Making them nearly impossible to eradicate.
And walking catfish first came from East Asia, but now they haunt farmers around the world because they can walk across dry land to devour crops.
With many new invaders taking over new aquatic areas all over the world, Zak Bagby is concerned about an even more serious problem.
Any fish that you've come across that are a danger to humans? We do have things like pacu fish that come into the canal system.
They have a jaw structure that is just for pure power.
Shaped exactly like a piranha, except they get to be 50 and 60 pounds.
Wow.
When they school up, I've seen them act really aggressive.
Wow.
Let's take a look at these pacu fish.
[laughs.]
[Quinto.]
To monitor the surge of these invaders, Zak keeps samples of the strange fish he catches.
And that is a big That is a big fish.
As you can see.
So what if you find yourself in a hostile pacu environment? What would happen? If you were inside a small pond and these fish haven't eaten, they're gonna take a chunk out of you and swim away.
They're known as the "nut-biters," not only for the trees and berries, like if you know what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Like honestly.
All right.
So what, they have a reputation for going after the junk? They have a reputation for going after the junk.
Really? And going after the toes.
Yes.
Wow.
They're insane.
If they are super hungry, they will take a bite out of you.
That's not the bite you want taken.
No.
No.
Uh, here's some raw meat.
Are you sure you don't want to try to feed them a little bit? I mean, I'm really, really intrigued by this experience.
[laughs.]
You go.
Here we go.
Come on.
Aw, yeah.
Here you go.
Yeah.
Stand back so they don't splash you.
[laughs.]
She got the whole thing.
She got that whole thing, huh? So we're gonna go ahead and get this pacu into this massive net.
Oh, God.
Relax.
Relax, Flipper.
Flipper.
Relax.
Relax, Flipper.
[groans.]
Oh, we wrapped him around.
One left.
[groans.]
Wow.
So, let's check out his teeth.
Can you see in that jaw? [Quinto.]
That is so crazy.
[Zachary Quinto.]
Exploring the has been an intense experience.
From the shallows of Australia [gasps.]
to the darkest depths.
I've seen that no matter their size, these beasts can inflict real damage.
Now, there's a renegade species.
The pacu, taking over lakes and streams in Florida at an incredible rate.
[Zak.]
They have a jaw structure shaped exactly like a piranha.
So, we're gonna go ahead and get this pacu into this massive net.
Oh, God.
Relax.
Relax, Flipper.
Flipper.
Relax.
Relax, Flipper.
[groans.]
Now how long can they stay out of water? They can stay out of the water five minutes.
Oh, really? Yeah.
They're really hardy fish.
So let's check out his teeth.
Can you see in that jaw? Look at the teeth.
Oh, my.
Looks like a human mouth.
Look at that.
Look at that.
That is so crazy.
These things are scary.
I mean it looks like a human's set of teeth inside of a fish's mouth.
We talked about how smart they are when fisherman are trying to lure them in.
Look at the nostrils on that thing.
They can smell you from a mile away.
This guy was in a space that has hundreds of pacu fish.
[Quinto.]
Wow.
Insane.
If they get pissed, goodbye.
Nice knowing you.
So you would not want to go swimming in that lake? No.
[scoffs.]
I would never even think about it.
Right.
Jeez.
Yeah.
I've seen the environment change living and growing up as a fisherman.
What I've seen is just unimaginable.
They're thriving and I'm starting to see them reproduce.
It doesn't make sense almost.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
I love Zak's enthusiasm.
It's interesting to get the perspective of someone who's on the ground.
To kind of get to some of the stuff that is unknown and undiscovered.
It's alarming.
Even though I've seen bizarre and dangerous sea creatures, I'm still searching for proof that legendary monsters of the deep really exist.
Back at Nova Southeastern University's advanced DNA lab, Dr.
Tracey Sutton has a monstrous new specimen that may offer some clues.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
One of the things that occasionally comes to the surface is a oarfish.
[Quinto.]
Whoa.
They've been known to approach 40-feet long.
Wow.
It has the appearance of a sea serpent and we think this might be the inspiration for sea serpent legend.
At night these occasionally come up into the shallow water.
You're out on a boat, there's a bright blue ocean, and then you see a 36-foot-long red thing.
It certainly could look like a sea serpent.
[Quinto.]
Do you feel that people that tell stories about monsters and these unidentified creatures of the deep are just really seeing things that aren't often seen by human beings? [Dr.
Sutton.]
I do believe that a lot of these legends are based on somebody seeing something that was not yet described.
I would say that there is a high probability that there is some large things we have not seen yet.
Uh-huh.
[Quinto.]
Someone like Tracey who spends his life seeing things that are unknown all the time has a pretty reliable perspective of it all.
So maybe it's when these different species interact with humans that they become monstrous and that allows us to explain them in a way that we can't otherwise.
Despite growing evidence of undiscovered new species, skeptics argue the term "monster" is relative.
Back when these legends and myths first started, we didn't know what these animals were.
They may have been encountered in some capacity, but not in the way that they've been portrayed over the years.
Things get fantastical over time.
You know.
As one person tells another, these creatures become more and more and more, kind of, outlandish and weird.
The general public doesn't come into contact with these animals.
So one man's sea creature or sea serpent is another man or woman's, you know, known species.
[Quinto.]
But 99% of the deep seas are unexplored.
And experts remain convinced that undiscovered creatures are still out there.
We're still at the point where every single sample could have something new.
[Quinto.]
So I'm anxious to see what the results of our advanced DNA experiment will reveal about the existence of previously undiscovered fish.
Will we uncover a new species of deep sea predator? Results are in.
[Quinto.]
And if so, what else could be out there that we don't know about? [Zachary Quinto.]
Myters of the deep has taken me from the shark-infested waters off Southern Australia My feet were covered in blood.
A lot of blood? to the freshwaters of Florida right in our own backyards.
Look at that.
Look at the teeth on that thing.
Wow.
I've seen evidence that nightmarish species of marine life do exist.
And although they may not be mystical creatures depicted in ancient legends, the ones I've discovered are real.
And they're more frightening than I ever imagined.
It's just really weird.
They're thriving and I'm starting to see them reproduce.
It doesn't make sense almost.
That's crazy.
Now I'm working with Dr.
Tracey Sutton and his team We're still at the point where every single sample could have something new.
[Quinto.]
to determine whether or not they've identified a brand-new species of fish.
[Dr.
Sutton.]
So we want to validate this genetically.
Results are in.
What are we looking at? We're looking at your new fish right down here.
And we're looking at two individuals of a different species.
Okay.
And you can see that there's clear genetic differences between your fish and these other fish up here.
When the difference gets to be about two, three, four percent, that's when it means you might actually have a different species.
And we do? Yes.
Absolutely.
It's about four, five percent.
All right.
So you're just learning this right now? Well we had an inkling, but now, this is, you know, irrefutable evidence that this is a unique fish.
So we'll take this fish, probably send to Harvard to a curated collection that anybody in the world could look it up.
It kind of makes it a slam dunk, if you will.
Uh-huh.
[Quinto.]
Today we learned more about what dwells in the deep, but this single breakthrough is just a tiny drop of water in the vast unknown oceans.
It's incredible that you're part of discovering a new species which is a significant event.
But if we're just discovering one today, I mean, Right.
this must happen all the time, right? There's so much unexplored, and so much unidentified, uh, out there, that you're really a part of uncovering.
Yes, and we think that there's still a lot of these large predators that we haven't seen yet.
And they might be much bigger than what we've been able to catch with the gear that we've been using.
Pretty shocking how much there is to be discovered yet.
That's the scary part of it I think and that less than one percent of the deep ocean has been explored.
The great oceans of the world contain Earth's most enduring mysteries.
What kinds of undiscovered species could still be out there? Both in the deepest parts of the sea and in the murky shallows closer to home.
I remain in this field because, my gosh, the pursuit of this is extremely enthralling.
And the end result if we do get a living, breathing creature will be breathtaking.
[Quinto.]
As new technology allows us to learn more about what lurks beyond the ocean's surface, perhaps we'll find the origins of real sea monster myths and legends If we dare.