Granted, it does sound a little bit like the uninspired and original plot of a B-grade horror movie: small-town residents find a giant water creature in the ocean and call the cops in absolute fear. However, it’s definitely not fiction, but it’s exactly what happened to a couple of people who reside in Wareham, Massachusetts.

A couple of fishermen who were on a boat in the Broad Cove suddenly spotted something strange and large in the water, and they immediately took out their smartphones to film the sudden encounter.

One of them clearly can’t believe what they’re seeing and is actually quite in shock.

“We are seeing some s–t we ain’t never seen before!” one of the fishermen says in the video.

Of course, it’s easy to dismiss claims of a large sea monster, especially if you haven’t seen it with your own eyes. Just think of all the supposed and fictitious encounters with the Loch Ness monster, for example, there’s definitely some resemblance to the story.

However, the Wareham Police Department took things quite seriously.

The video footage definitely proved that something strange was swimming in the water, and at that point, they also received a couple of other phone calls from concerned residents. Not every person who spotted it thought of a ‘sea monster’ at first, but there was no denying that it was something strange.

“There’s something out there swimming around. All I can get out of it is a fin or a flipper,” one of the residents told.

There was a lot of speculation that this uncanny looking animal was actually a seal who was severely injured, or perhaps a shark.

After a while, they finally figured out what was in the water, and it wasn’t something mysterious or strange at all.

Even though the mysterious creature kept the whole town in suspense for a few days, the reveal was a little bit anticlimactic and definitely not worth freaking out over.

The large creature was actually just a regular sunfish.

“They’re extremely docile fish. Sunfish eat jellyfish, smaller fish, things like that. They’re not a threat to humans at all,” expert Joe Yaiullo from the Long Island Aquarium said to Inside Edition.

Admittedly, these fish can actually look pretty strange, and even intimidating. Especially if you don’t know how the species looks like, spotting a sunfish can be a bit of a shocking and unpleasant encounter. Their size also isn’t an exaggeration, they can grow close to five thousand pounds and are the heaviest bony fish around.

“Mola [sunfish] are found in temperate and tropical oceans around the world. They are frequently seen basking in the sun near the surface and are often mistaken for sharks when their huge dorsal fins emerge above the water,” National Geographic writes about the fish on their website.

Even though they can be absolutely huge, the sunfish that was spotted in the small town was actually quite ‘tiny’.

Garry Buckminster, who is the Director of the Department of Natural Resources in the town, actually believes that this particular sunfish only weighed between 150 and 250 pounds – significantly smaller than the average sunfish, but people still freaked out about the whole incident.

“We are aware of a sunfish in Broad Cove. We have checked on it, and it is doing normal sunfish activities. It’s swimming. It is not stranded or suffering. The sunfish is FINE,” the department wrote on Facebook. “Don’t be jealous just because it’s not swimming weather anymore! Please stop calling the police department about this sunfish!”

“Sunfish tend to be a normal visitor to our area during this time of year and we’re happy to report he exited our harbor inlet on its own,” Buckminster added in an interview with TODAY.

Be sure to check out a video report from Inside Edition about the scary encounter below.

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Source: Inside Edition (YouTube), TODAY, National Geographic, Facebook/The Wareham Department of Natural Resources