UPDATE: Singapore angler Ramlan Saim clarifies that he was the one who caught the basket star.

SINGAPORE - Angler Ong Han Boon was settling down at his usual fishing spot in Sentosa late last month when he caught the shock of his life - literally.

The 54-year-old reeled in a strange octopus-like creature, writhing and wriggling what looked like more than hundred arms.

"I spotted the line going up and down, and feeling a bit peckish I got quite excited as I hauled it in," he told news website The Mirror.

"But when I pulled it out of the water I was completely flummoxed by what I was looking at."

Mr Ong, who posted a video of the creature to Facebook - which has since gotten almost eight million views and close to 130,000 likes - said in the post that he later released the creature.

Experts have since identified the creature as a basket star - a distant relative of the starfish - said the International Business Times.

The creature actually has only five arms, which are each split into more dexterous "branchlets", which are used to catch prey.they put in the water nowadays."