Mysterious deep sea creature with no facial features was discovered for first time since 1800s

Just when we thought the ocean couldn't be any more mysterious, a deep sea creature that had 'no face' was discovered for the first time since the 1800s.

Look, there's a good reason why so many people are too afraid to venture into the depths of the ocean.

Whether that's the high chance of having an eerie underwater creature brush past your legs, or seeing what a diver caught on his camera on the sea bed at midnight, it's a place shrouded in mystery and the unknown.

Oh, and it's estimated by a new study that only 0.0006 to 0.001 percent of the ocean floor has been explored by mankind. So, it's a firm no from me.

But that doesn't make the deep sea any less fascinating, and scientists who dedicate their lives to researching the ocean are constantly making waves with new discoveries.

However, a surprising marine discovery from 2017 wasn't as new as it seemed.

There's so much life in the ocean and even to this very day, discoveries are being made (Getty Stock Image)

Scientists who were exploring abyssal depths off the east coast of Australia came across a horrifying-looking sea creature that appeared to have no facial features.

The weird-looking fish - which was found 2.5 miles below the ocean surface, National Geographic reports - didn't appear to have any eyes and is mouth was underneath its body, giving it the appearance of having no face.

After bringing it aboard the CSIRO research vessel Investigator, they initially thought they had just discovered a brand new species. But they didn't realise that actually, this fish had been discovered before.

Di Bray, the Senior Collections Manager at Museums Victoria who was one of the researchers who came across the fish, recalled: "We were off Jervis Bay and a gorgeous large specimen of this really long, round-headed fish came up that seemingly didn’t have eyes.

The bizarre 'faceless fish' was caught off the coast of Australia back in 2017, but this wasn't the first time it was discovered (Museums Victoria)

"It had quite large nostrils, a big bulbous head with a body that tapered away to nothing, and a little mouth under the bottom of the head."

She went on: "I was on the shift with John Pogonoski from the Australian National Fish Collection, CSIRO, and we really thought we’d hit the jackpot; I started taking tissue samples for molecular analyses while and John prepared to photograph it."

But it was soon realised that this 'faceless fish' wasn't actually a new discovery.

A quick look through the archives soon had the team realise that the unusual looking fish had originally been collected off the coast of Papua New Guinea by another deep-sea exploration vessel, the HMS Challenger, all the way back in 1873.

The vessel left the UK a year prior in 1872 and journeyed the world’s oceans for four years collecting samples of deep sea species.

And it also turned out that the 'faceless fish' had a formal name: Its scientific name is Typhlonus nasus, but it's more commonly known as the Faceless Cusk.

It has been documented living at depths of up to five kilometres in the Arabian Sea, and off the coast of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Japan, the Marianas and Hawaii.

Bray added of the discovery: "We bring a lot of literature on board to identify specimens as best we can because we’re surveying waters that have not been adequately surveyed or have not been surveyed at all before, so we don’t really know what to expect - but this was really weird."