A marine biologist, who was snorkelling off the coast of California, has made a fantastic discovery.

Jasmine Santana found a dead oarfish so long that she needed 15 people to help her drag it out of the ocean.

Santana works for the Catalina Island Marine Institute. She was snorkling when she saw something shimmering.

It was the body of an oarfish. But it wasn’t just any oarfish–this one was more than five metres (18 feet) long.

Oarfish are plankton-eaters. They are rarely seen by humans, because they live deep in the ocean–up to 1,000 metres down.

They are long, like a “sea serpent.” In fact, oarfish may have been the mythical sea serpents of legend.