The marine biologists soon realised that they were "not in Kansas anymore" when they made a remarkable discovery of a 'yellow brick road' placed at the top of an undersea mountain near Hawaii.
A scientist joked in a Youtube video of the discovery that it bared similarities to the iconic yellow pathway, while others claimed that the rocks were reminiscent of the fictional world Atlantis.
The yellow rocks that seem to resemble the 'yellow brick road' are divided and placed at 90-degree angles to form a narrow strip.
They also looked like they were carved and arranged by humans due to the precision.
Despite its resemblance to the road Dorothy and Toto skipped down on their journey to the Emerald City, the pathway is simply the natural result of ancient volcanic activity thousands of feet below the water's surface.
In the description of the YouTube video, the researchers wrote: "At the summit of Nootka Seamount, the team spotted a 'dried lake bed' formation, now IDed as a fractured flow of hyaloclastite rock [a volcanic rock formed in high-energy eruptions where many rock fragments settle to the seabed]."
They added that brick-like divisions between the rocks were likely to be the result of heating and cooling stresses from multiple volcanic eruptions over the years.
According to LiveScience, the scientists took a detour down the undersea road while piloting a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) around the Papahānaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
The monument is a protected conservation area encompassing about 582,578 square miles (1,508,870 square kilometers) of the Pacific Ocean northwest of Hawaii.
The expedition is part of the Ocean Exploration Trust's Nautilus Exploration Program, which aims to investigate the ancient seamounts near Liliʻuokalani Ridge.
The researchers said: "Our exploration of this never-before-surveyed area is helping researchers take a deeper look at life on and within the rocky slopes of these deep, ancient seamounts."
Previous expeditions aboard the research vessel have discovered a handful of underwater oddities.
During a 2018 excursion to the conservation area, a group of researchers were shocked after they found a googly-eyed sea creature that appeared to morph into different shapes in front of the camera.
They later identified the creature as a gulper eel, which is a fish with a large mouth that can unhinge its jaw to swallow prey even larger than itself.
The researchers controlling the ROV during the expedition also responded to the strange sight before them with a cultural reference.
They stated that the odd-looking fish resembled 'a Muppet', based on Jim Henson's 1955 puppet TV show starring Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.
