When 73-year-old Ove Eriksson first saw this Giant Oarfish lying on the beach, he thought it was simply a large piece of plastic. But as he knelt down beside it, he knew he had found something special.

The 12-foot "Giant Oarfish" is a deep-water fish that is so rarely seen, it was thought to be extinct. In fact, the last sighting was well over 100 years ago.

The Oarfish is a "serpent-like" creature that was last seen in Swedish waters in 1879 - more than 130 years ago. It has the honor of being the world's largest bony fish and was once thought to inspire "fish tales of sea serpents" amongst sailors.

"It was very long and shiny," Eriksson told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "It also had whiskers, even though it looked like they had been broken off. And a strange light-pink dorsal fin."

A retired engineer and avid fisherman, Eriksson made the unusual discovery Saturday on his way to his boathouse in Bovallstrand, on Sweden's west coast.

"I've been fishing around here since 1957 and I've never seen anything like it," he said. "But I've seen enough fish to know that it was a deep-water fish."