Scientists have released video of an 8-foot-long, shimmering oarfish taken about 200 feet below the ocean surface -- and it is breathtaking. 
 
 Elusive and alien-looking, the oarfish has a thin, eel-like body with squiggly iridescent markings that glow blue in the video. It also has a long dorsal fin that stretches the length of nearly half its body, and large round eyes rimmed in silver. 
 
 That bright white blob you see in the fish's spiny dorsal fins is a parasitic isopod -- sort of like an ocean version of the roly poly bug -- that has attached itself to the fish. It is a common parasite of marine fish, but it is the first time one has been seen on an oarfish, said Mark Benfield, a marine biologist at Louisiana State University. 
 
 Benfield is the lead author of a paper describing the oarfish video, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Fish Biology. 
 
 PHOTOS: Weird sea creatures 
 
 Despite its great size, the fish orients itself vertically, with its head toward the ocean surface, and its blunt tail hanging down. This allows the fish to scan the water above for the krill and other small crustaceans that it eats, and may help it appear smaller to predators who are lurking below, said Benfield. 
 
 "The striking thing is they swim by undulating their dorsal fin like a propeller, and they can change direction instantly," Benfield said. "Most of the time they move slowly and stealthily, but when they want to, they can move fast." 
 
 Benfield's research usually leans toward small sea animals such as zooplankton and shrimp. But since 2006 he has been working with several oil companies stationed in the Gulf of Mexico who have agreed to give him time on their remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to scan the waters for marine life through a project called GulfSERPENT. 
 
 The ROVs, which are usually used to find new sources of oil, are not ideal for finding wildlife. They are noisy and large, about the size of small cars, and they shine bright lights and lasers at whatever they see. But Benfield said it is easier to get time on the hundreds of ROVs owned by oil companies stationed in the Gulf Coast than it is on the handful of ROVs around the world that are devoted to scientific research. Since he started working with the oil companies, he has collected about 40 hours of undersea footage from the Gulf Coast a week. 
 
 Since 2008, Benfield has captured video of the oarfish on four different occasions through the SERPENT project. The most recent video of the oarfish, shot in 2011, was collected when Benfield was working with the Natural Resource Damage Assessment group to determine the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. 
 
 "We were just finishing up scanning the water column about 200 feet below the surface when my technician yelled," said Benfield. "I walked into the lab and saw this giant oarfish. I was like, 'Oh my God,' and we followed that thing for 10 minutes." 
 
 When you watch the video below, keep in mind that the oarfish is looking at a large, bright, noisy object in the water that is unlike anything that occurs in its natural environment. 
 
 "It starts by backing away from us tail-first, and then finally it got fed up and took off," said Benfield. 
 
 The fish shimmers in and out of view for the first few minutes of the video below. If you don't have time to watch the whole thing, I suggest starting at the five-minute mark to get a good look at it, and then fast-forwarding to the nine-minute mark where you can see it zip away like an underwater lightning streak. 

 This oarfish was caught on camera by an ROV in the Gulf of Mexico in August, 2011. They can grow up to at least 26 feet long. 
 
 Behold the oarfish, a bizarre beast the lives in the deep ocean, far offshore. Due to its remote home, little is known about the fish, whose dorsal fins delicately undulate as it glides about the deep. 
 
 Much of what we know about the creature comes from specimens that have washed ashore or floated to the surface, but in the past few years, a number of videos of the fish have been captured and are shedding more light on the animal's shadowy existence. 
 
 One video, taken by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in August 2011, is the longest, best-quality video captured to date, said Mark Benfield, a researcher at Louisiana State University and part of a team that made the video of the oarfish. The footage, as well as four other videos of the animal and details about what they've taught scientists, was published online June 5 in the Journal of Fish Biology. 
 
 The oarfish is thought to be the world's longest bony fish, a group that includes almost all fish except sharks and rays (whale sharks are the largest fish in the ocean). Oarfish have been reliably measured reaching up to 26 feet (8 meters) in length, but may grow to be nearly 50 feet (15 meters) long, Benfield said. The video of the oarfish shows it swimming to a depth of 364 feet (111 m) beneath the surface, undulating its long dorsal fin to precisely control its movements, Benfield told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. The fish swim with their head upright and their tail hanging beneath them, and can easily move backward and forward and up and down quickly, Benfield said. [In Photos: Spooky Deep-Sea Creatures] 
 
 At the end of the encounter between the ROV and the oarfish, the creature seemed to tire of being followed and began undulating its entire body, accelerating much faster than the ROV, Benfield said. This behavior is evident in the video just before the fish disappears in the darkness of the ocean. 
 
 The video was taken while Benfield and his colleagues were working on assessing damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, when the ROV the team was using happened to spot what appeared to be an oarfish.In the video, the oarfish appears to have a parasitic isopod (a type of crustacean) clinging to its dorsal spine, which is the first recorded instance of this happening, according to the study. 
 
 Oarfish are so-called because of the paddle-like appendages at the end of their pelvic spines, which are used to help them balance and swim upright, Benfield said. 
 
 Shortly before the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, about 20 oarfish stranded themselves on Japanese beaches, suggesting the fish could possibly have known that the temblor was coming, Benfield said. Scientists don't understand how that might be possible, however, and it could just be a coincidence, he added. 
 
 Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebookor Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com.
– Now the world can finally get a good look at one of the ocean's more mysterious creatures, the oarfish, believed to be the longest bony fish in existence—basically, the longest fish that's not a ray or shark, LiveScience reports. While researchers were investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2011, their camera came upon the fish. The result is the longest and highest-quality video of the species yet, says one of the scientists behind the video, which was posted online in tandem with a new paper last week. Described as "shimmering" and "alien-looking" by the Los Angeles Times, the oarfish in the video measures 8 feet, though the creatures may grow six times that long. Part of their mystery is due to their habitat: far offshore, in deep waters. To wit, this one was swimming well below the surface (the LAT says 200 feet; LiveScience says it reached depths of 364 feet). The eel-like fish positions itself vertically: Its head is closer to the surface while its body droops below, the LAT notes. The video is particularly special because it seems to show a crustacean called a parasitic isopod attached to the fish's dorsal fins, something that's never been recorded before.