No one can hear you scream in the dark depths of the abyss.

Last month, an international team of scientists sponsored by Museums Victoria, as well as a government research organisation, launched an expedition called Sampling the Abyss into the deep sea off Australia's east coast.

What they found may keep you up at night.

During their 31-day journey, the team of scientists visited an unexplored area. Two-and-a-half miles below the Pacific Ocean, they photographed previously unknown sea creatures that live in some of the darkest, most crushing pressure, and most treacherous waters on Earth.

The team used "high-tech multi-beam sonar" for mapping purposes and lowered nets so deep it took seven hours to reach the ocean floor. For scientists, the finds are beginning to shed light on the dramatic evolution of creatures in extreme environments. They've identified previously unknown fishes and found animals living at greater depths than ever recorded.

The expedition's chief scientist Dr.Tim O'Hara noted, "Australia's deep-sea environment is larger in size than the mainland, and until now, almost nothing was known about life on the abyssal plain."

One-third of the creatures they found have never been seen by humans and run the gambit from extremely odd to just plain creepy.

Just some of the examples they discovered, according to the team's media release, are a "coffin fish with a fishing rod on its head, giant anemone-sucking sea spiders, a Blob fish (the cousin of Mr. Blobby, voted the world's ugliest animal), a Shortarse Feelerfish, flesh-eating crustaceans, zombie worms, a Cookie-cutter shark with teeth arranged like the serrated edge of a steak knife, a herd of sea pigs (the ocean's vacuum cleaners), a spectacular Ferrari-red crab with large spines, bioluminescent sea stars, carnivorous sponges, tripods that perch on stilt-like legs and a multitude of microscopic critters."

"Concurrently, we have found highly concerning levels of rubbish on the sea floor," O'Hara added "We're 100 kilometres off Australia's coast, and have found PVC pipes, cans of paint, bottles, beer cans, wood chips and other debris from the days when steamships plied our waters. The seafloor has 200 years of rubbish on it."

If you want to see some of their findings up close, a selection of the creatures will be on display at Melbourne Museum in Australia. Or, if you're like us, the photos of the findings offer something different: seawater-scented nightmare fuel.

Source: https://www.nespmarine.edu.au/abyss-landing-page