A weird black fish that looks like a creature from another planet has surfaced in New Zealand.

Pictures of the deep-sea fish were posted by Te Papa Museum’s Facebook page on Friday after the fish was caught by Claudia and Glenys Howse in the Bay of Islands.

‘This weird creature is likely to be a species of Frogfish, but we won’t know until we have a chance to examine it closely!’

‘Frogfishes have the fastest bite of any vertebrate. Their mouths expands at the speed approaching a .22 rifle bullet – and that’s in a medium 800x denser than air,’ reads Te Papa Museum’s post.

According to the complete Australian fishing encyclopedia, frogfish are ambush predators and can eat almost anything that will fit into their large mouths. This includes other fish as well as crabs and shrimp.

    

The photo stirred hundreds of bewildered comments from people, ‘That looks like an alien!’, ‘Can you eat it?’ asked one man.

‘More like a frog-fish-bird!’ Wrote Robyn Wendt,

    

The frog fish follows a string of rare and freakish fish that have also surfaced from Australian seas of late. Including a goblin shark in New South Wales and the frill-shark in Victoria, another rare and peculiar fish in South Australia.

Garry Warrick, a professional fisherman from Barmera, told Daily Mail Australia he had never seen anything like it in 30 years of working in the area.

‘It was very unusual. I have been fishing here for 30 years, and I have come across a few deformed fish, but never anything quite like this.’

In January, a group of fishermen pulled a terrifying prehistoric shark from the water near Lakes Entrance in Victoria’s.

The eel looking creature, known as a frilled shark, was dubbed for its six pairs of frill-like gills along with its dorsal fins, similar to the predatory fish.

Earlier this month, an extremely rare species of shark considered a ‘living dinosaur’ was uncovered off the coast of New South Wales to the bewilderment of local fishermen.

The species, known as a goblin shark, are incredibly elusive as they typically reside in waters near the ocean floor at around 1,200 metres deep

The creature was captured in a net by two fishermen, just 609 metres below the water’s surface near Green Cape off the South Coast of New South Wales.