A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, this strange alien-like creature with long arms and a skeletal face - the strangest of all - was captured on photo and video. The video is being kept confidential. Only two frames have been released and the material is believed to have been recently obtained by National Geographic News. Other rumors are that an anonymous international investor would have bought the video material.

The story behind this terrifying apparition in the deep begins with a brief video of a deep-sea dive in the Gulf of Mexico on November 11, 2007.

The clip - of a Shell oil company's ROV (remotely operated vehicle) - arrived after a long and tortuous discussion in meetings. Nicknamed "scrawny Ariel" she was recorded swimming in the vicinity of a drilling site owned by Shell. Located about 320 kilometers from Houston, Texas (Gulf of Mexico map), Perdido is one of the deepest oil and gas developments in the world.

The material shows the ROV guidance monitor screen framed with pulsing inputs of time and positioning data.

In a few seconds of jerky camera, scrawny Ariel appears with her massive tail and dorsal fin, fins waving like elephant ears, and her slender arms seem to protrude from some sort of filament, possibly algae or food appendages, maybe some type of defense system such as jellyfish or a system for locating currents, which would be useful to the animal in an darkness environment.

The interlocutor who provided us with the material seen here reports that this creature swam in circles, possibly as curious about the ROV as anyone would be amazed at a flying saucer.

After investigating the rov, without touching it, with a pattern of swim like a dolphin, Scrawny Ariel seems to have lost interest and swam quickly back into the darkness.

This is the first time this type of creature has been recorded by an ROV, although our contact at Shell reported that similar beings were rumored to have been seen but not recorded in time, about a dozen times in the Gulf and Indian oceans.

The recent video marks the first sighting of a Scrawny Ariel in an oil development, although experts do not believe the creature's presence has any special scientific significance or even risk to undersea extraction activities.

But the video is evidence of how, as oil and gas industry ROVs dive deeper and stay longer, they are producing valuable images of deep-sea animals that are unknown and seem to confirm ancient legends of creatures. That gave rise to the myths of the mermaids? May be.

Further dives at different abyssal points have, so far, been unsuccessful, trying to locate the creature, or with luck, a colony of them. It is unknown if this creature is predominantly abyssal or if it manages to reach the surface like cetaceans. Judging by the apparent characteristic of Leucism, Jimmy Patino of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, in California, believes that it is an animal of great depths, where its color does not make sense. According to Jimmy "this is why animals that live in caves are completely white". A creepy encounter, for sure.