Wikipedia

Sea monster

For other uses of "Sea Monsters", seeSea Monsters (disambiguation).

Sea monstersare beings fromfolklorebelieved to dwell in the sea and are often imagined to be of immense size. Marinemonsterscan take many forms, including seadragons,sea serpents,or tentacled beasts. They can be slimy and scaly and are often pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water. The definition of a "monster" is subjective; further, some sea monsters may have been based on scientifically accepted creatures, such aswhalesand types ofgiantandcolossal squid.

Picture taken from aHetzelcopy ofTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

Sightings and legends

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Platec. 1544depicting various sea monsters; compiled from theCarta marina.
Sea serpent reported byHans Egede,Bishop of Greenland, in 1734
A sea monster depicted in mid-Atlantic inPetrus Plancius' 1592 map ofNew France.

Sea monster accounts are found in virtually all cultures that have contact with the sea. For example,Avieniusrelates ofCarthaginian explorer Himilco's voyage "...there monsters of the deep, and beasts swim amid the slow and sluggishly crawling ships." (lines 117–29 ofOra Maritima).Sir Humphrey Gilbertclaimed to have encountered a lion-like monster with "glaring eyes" on his return voyage after formally claimingSt. John's, Newfoundland(1583) for England.[1]Another account of an encounter with a sea monster comes from July 1734.Hans Egede,aDano-Norwegianmissionary, reported that on a voyage toGodthåbon the western coast ofGreenlandhe observed:[2]

a most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than thecrow's neston themainmast.The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship.

Ellis (1999) suggested the Egede monster might have been agiant squid.

There is aTlingitlegend about a sea monster named Gunakadeit (Goo-na'-ka-date) who brought prosperity and good luck to a village in crisis, people starving in the home they made for themselves on the southeastern coast of Alaska.

Other reports are known from thePacific,IndianandSouthernOceans (e.g. see Heuvelmans 1968).Cryptozoologistssuggest that modern-day sea monsters are surviving specimens of giant marine reptiles, such as anichthyosaurorplesiosaur,from theJurassicandCretaceousPeriods, or extinct whales likeBasilosaurus.Ship damage fromTropical cyclonessuch as hurricanes or typhoons may also be another possible origin of sea monsters.

In 1892,Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans,then director of the Royal Zoological Gardens atThe Hague,saw the publication of hisThe Great Sea Serpent,which suggested that many sea serpent reports were best accounted for as a previously unknown giant, long-neckedpinniped.

It is likely that many other reports of sea monsters are misinterpreted sightings of shark and whale carcasses (see below), floatingkelp,logs or other flotsam such as abandoned rafts, canoes and fishing nets.

Alleged carcasses

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TheSt. Augustine Monsterwas a carcass that washed ashore near St. Augustine, Florida in 1896. It was initially postulated to be agigantic octopus.

Sea monster corpses have been reported since recent antiquity (Heuvelmans 1968). Unidentified carcasses are often calledglobsters.The alleged plesiosaur netted by the Japanese trawlerZuiyō Maruoff New Zealand caused a sensation in 1977 and was immortalized on a Brazilian postage stamp before it was suggested by theFBIto be the decomposing carcass of abasking shark.Likewise,DNA testingconfirmed that an alleged sea monster washed up on Newfoundland in August 2001, was asperm whale.[3]

Another modern example of a "sea monster" wasthe strange creaturewashed up inLos Muermoson the Chilean sea shore in July 2003. It was first described as a "mammothjellyfishas long as abus"but was later determined to be another corpse of asperm whale.Cases of boneless, amorphic globsters are sometimes believed to be giganticoctopuses,but it has now been determined that sperm whales dying at sea decompose in such a way that the blubber detaches from the body, forming featureless whitish masses that sometimes exhibit a hairy texture due to exposed strands ofcollagenfibers. The analysis oftheZuiyō Marucarcassrevealed a comparable phenomenon in decomposing basking shark carcasses, which lose most of the lower head area and the dorsal and caudal fins first, making them resemble a plesiosaur.

In May 2017,The Guardianpublished an article claiming a giant sea monster's corpse was found in Indonesia, and also published an alleged photograph of "it."[4]

Example

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Firstfontana dei mostri marini,Florence,Italy
Second fontana dei mostri marini, Florence, Italy

Older reports

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Sea monsters reported first or second hand include:

Newer reports

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See also:Lake monster

In fiction

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See also

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References

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  1. ^Edward Haies: Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage To Newfoundland, 1583In the fifth section after the notice "Footnote 11: Stephen Parmenius"
  2. ^J. Mareš,Svět tajemných zvířat,Prague,1997
  3. ^Carr, S.M., H.D. Marshall, K.A. Johnstone, L.M. Pynn & G.B. Stenson 2002.How To Tell a Sea Monster: Molecular Discrimination of Large Marine Animals of the North Atlantic.Biological Bulletin202:1-5.
  4. ^"Do sea monsters exist? Yes, but they go by another name… | Jules Howard".the Guardian.2017-05-18.Retrieved2022-01-28.
  5. ^Adomnan of Iona.Life of St Columba.Penguin books, 1995
  6. ^"ช่วง เด็กพิลึก ตอน นินเจน สัตว์ประหลาดลึกลับใต้ท้องทะเล".BEC-TERO(in Thai). 2015-11-25. Archived fromthe originalon 2019-02-02.Retrieved2017-06-25.
  7. ^abcd"Monsters".Skrímslasetrið Bíldudal.2013-04-09.Retrieved2018-02-04.
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