Ships’ Logs and Sea Monsters

The Ministry of Defence does not keep any secret files on sea monsters reported by Royal Navy personnel, but crews of ships and submarines who make unusual sightings can record their experiences in official logbooks that are public records.

This emerged as a result of a Freedom of Inform­ation request made to the MoD by marine bio­logist Sebastian Darby in February 2010. Darby’s request asked the MoD if there were “any abnorm­ally large, or dangerous sea monsters hundreds of metres under the sea that haven’t been revealed to the public”. If such creatures did exist, he argued, it would be in the public interest to publish the facts as marine bio­logists’ lives could be at risk.

Navy FOI officer Heather Godfrey’s response admitted neither the Navy nor the MoD maintained “any form of central repository of information purely devoted to sea monsters”. Although there was no formal requirement, the Navy did encourage personnel to record sightings of marine mammals “and it’s possible this could include unusual sightings”. All such reports were sent to the UK Hydrographic Office in Somer­set, while individual ship’s logs are retained until they are deposited at The National Archives after 30 years. But a search of thousands of ship’s logs for entries on sea monster sightings would exceed the cost limits allowed for a FOI request.


Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Nautical folklore is replete with such stories and first-hand accounts of sightings have been recorded in Atlantic waters since the Middle Ages. In more recent centuries, one of the most cele­brated sea serpent reports was made by the captain and officers of the frigate HMS Daedalus off the Cape of Good Hope in the South Atlantic on 6 August 1848 (see ‘The Golden Age of Sea Serpents’). On arrival in England, the captain, Peter M’Quhae, sent details to the Admiralty and to The Times. He supervised a detailed drawing of the 60ft-long creature that was visible for 20 minutes. But his story was rejected by palæonto­logist Professor Richard Owen, who insisted the crew had seen a giant seal.

A number of other 19th-century accounts have emerged in British Admiralty files deposited at The National Archives in Kew. One contains an account of a sea serpent written by Captain James Stockdale in May 1830. Stockdale and the crew of the barque Rob Roy were near the island of St Helena when they heard a scuffling noise in the water. As they turned to the port bow, they were amazed to see the head of “a great thundering sea snake” whose head rose six feet out of the water “as square with our topsail [and] his tail was square with the foremast”. Stockdale said his ship was 171ft long with the foremast 42ft from the stern, which would make the monster 129ft long. He reported to his masters in London: “If I had not seen it I could not have believed it but there was no mistake or doubt of its length – for the brute was so close I could even smell his nasty fishy smell.”

A Board of Trade file from 1857 contains an account from Comm­ander George Henry Harring­ton of the 1,063-ton merchant ship Cast­ilan, again near the same South Atlantic island. On 13 December of that year, he and two officers saw “a huge marine animal” which suddenly reared out of the water just 20ft from the ship. For a few moments, its long neck and dark head, shaped “like a long buoy” and covered with white spots, were clearly visible “with a kind of scroll or ruff encircling it”. The creature was submerged for a moment and then reappeared, leaving the crew in no doubt they were watching a sea monster “of extraordinary length [which] appeared to be moving slowly towards the land”. The boatswain, who watched it for some time, said that it was more than double the length of the ship, which made it 500ft long.

Both reports appear to have been filed away without comment by the Admiralty, in much the same way that the Air Ministry dealt with reports of flying sauc­ers and UFOs from RAF crews during the 20th century. Unless a clear threat was identified, either from sea monsters or aliens, unusual sightings like these were classified as interesting but of “no defence significance”.

[PA] D.Telegraph, 16 May 2010; Rickard & Michell: “The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena”, 2007; National Archives files: BJ 7/49 and MT 9/207.

Source Credit(s): David Clarke forteantimes.com/strangedays/cryptozoology/3715/ships_logs_and_sea_monsters.html

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A Cryptid Chronicles Book Review: Monsters of the Sea

Author: Richard Ellis, 448 pages

Sydney C. Squidney’s rating: 5/5

Bookshelves: folklore, cryptozoology, marine-biology, reference, research, sea-monsters, ancient-mysteries, ocean-science-and-history, mythology

Originally posted at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/310064976

The review:

A great voyage of discovery

“Monsters of the Sea” is for those with a great curiosity about the mysterious creatures that lurk beneath the surface of the sea that humans have sometimes been granted glimpses of.

For as long as we’ve been curious, our access to the oceans’ mysteries have and still remain so limited that sea monster legends have endured to this day.

Sea monsters are often considered some of the earliest cryptids to inspire countless popular myths and recent discoveries of giant squids (such as the massive 25 foot-long cephalopod photographed nearly 3,000 feet beneath the North Pacific Ocean off Japan’s Ogasawara Islands in September 2004) have lent a basis of fact to some of those legends.


Holy Squid! First Glimpse of Live Deep-Sea Giant (National Geographic News September 27, 2005)

In a revealing, well-composed and enthralling assemblage, marine biologist Richard Ellis charts the origins of an assortment of legendary “sea monsters” including sea “serpents”, giant squids (kraken), sharks and the “leviathan” or whale that frightened mariners of centuries past and brings the natural history and science of the real animals behind the myths.

All the Kraken stories and rumors about sea monsters going back centuries are outlined and then using scientific exploration and (sometimes speculative) scientific evidence, the world’s deep sea monsters are explained leading the reader into the vast world of marine biology.

I particularly enjoyed the alternating between the mythological accounts about sea monsters and the reviewing of the ocean animals for what they actually are based on available facts, including 150 fascinating illustrations showing how actually a certain known marine animal was reasonably mistaken for a “monstrous” sea creature.

Another favourite I had was the chapter about globsters (organic masses that wash up on the shoreline distinguished from normal beached carcasses by being hard to identify) and how he theorises that Octopus giganteus could account for some of these phenomena.

If you don’t want to have your sense of wonder debunked, you may want to stay away from having the sea monster myths and realities separated by Ellis, since that is the primary structure of this book, however he does leave some room for speculation and because he is also a Great white shark expert, it is mind-boggling that he has concluded that the monster shark Megalodon has only become extinct as close as 10,000 years ago in another of his books, Great White Shark.

This is a great voyage of discovery for those interested in fantastic accounts of myths, legends, and unexplained sea monster sightings and learning more of the story behind them.

Monsters of the Sea provides a comprehensive overview of sea monsters, so there is a lot to cover and can be a little heavy at times, but well worth the read.

If you’re interested in obscure accounts of historical legends, early naturalists, cryptozoology or marine biology you will probably have a lot of fun with this very well researched resource.

One thing is for certain, if one of America’s leading marine biologists thinks that the St. Augustine monster that washed ashore a century ago was actually a 200 foot octopus, then we still have much to learn about the legendary and mysterious Monsters of the Sea!

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Surviving Plesiosaurs as Vs. Longnecked Seals as Longnecked Sea-Serpent candidates (PART ONE)

(Sydney’s note: This is an article posted by Dale Drinnon over at Frontiers of Zoology earlier this year that I have been meaning to share with you guys, please let me know what you think of his thoughtful assessment.)

In assessing the likelihood of any candidates for the Plesiosaur shaped sea-Serpent category, some basic anatomical considerations have got to be considered before any one of them becomes an acceptable alternative to the basic and obvious suggestion that the best candidate for sightings of Plesiosaur-shaped creatures would automaticaly BE Plesiosaurs. In making the suggestion that such sightings might be adequately accounted for by hypothesizing a type of abnormally long-necked seal, the rather glaring problem comes up that pinnepeds are fairly advanced, fairly intelligent creatures with good-sized brains in relation to their body size. This is understandable because most mammals have been developing along a trend towards larger body size and greater intelligence throughout the Cenozoic. Plesiosaurs, on the other hand, have tiny heads and tiny brains, of “Dinosaurian” proportions.

[Addendum:]

Pinnipeds or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semiaquatic marine mammals comprising the families Odobenidae (the walrus), Otariidae (eared seals, including sea lions and fur seals), and Phocidae (earless seals).



The proportionate sizes of the brains are indicated as red dots in the illustrations above and below.


[End of Addendum]

The immediate problem is that the actual sightings do specify proportions of a Plesiosaur and not a Pinneped (see reconstruction of Bernard Heuvelmans’ “Longnecked” creature at the top) There does not seem any rational reason why a large-brained Pinneped should atrophy down to having a Plesiosaur-sized brain outside of the fact that some theorist or another wants to force the sightings into such an artificial mold. This is a very real problem: many sightings specify that a creature under observation may have a head as large as a the head of a dog or a horse.

The reconstruction below in shading is Dinsdale’s reconstruction for The Loch Ness Monster, leaving the variable humps off of the back (Heuvelmans, Sanderson and Dinsdale each specify that the size and the shape of the humps can vary and that they are not permanently fixed in shape or position: this is either because they are filled with fat or oil, or they are airsacs. For the sake of brevity we can allow that they are made of oily fat and their shape can be altered by water pressure as Heuvelmans states).



Dinsdale’s reconstruction is a good one and not so much shaped by preconceived notions; and other reconstructions such as those made up by Sanderson and Mackal tend to these proportions. Oudemans’ model differed only in that he thought the tail was longer, an opinion not borne out in later observations. My own independent reconstruction for animals in this category are below Dinsdale’s. (These are compiled from statistical analyses of both worldwide sightings in the category as a whole anompaubcategories defined by geographic region  and each one analysed separately; the two sets of data both tend to fall within good agreement with each other).

For a comparison of proportions, Oudemans’ page 505 of The Great Sea-Serpent gives the proportions of- a length of head at 3/4 of a foot goes with a neck 4 feet long and a trunk just over 4 1/2 feet long (Thus about the size of a large sealion or a small walrus); a head a foot long goes with a neck six feet long and a trunk about 7 1/2 feet long, this being the size of Grant’s creature seen on land at Loch Ness; a head 2 feet long goes with a neck 12 feet long and a foot thick behind the head, and a trunk 15 feet long, which can be looked upon as just about the “Standard model” when seen under good conditions in freshwater or near to shore, worldwide, and is probably the average size for an adult female or subadult male; and a creature with a head about a yard long has a neck about 18 feet long and a trunk  just over 22 feet long, would be a big male and the size of the Daedalus SS, commonly stated as “60 feet long” although in reality it is probably several feet less. Oudemans was taking figures from sightings at sea, which always tend to be somewhat larger and less precise than their inland counterparts, going by what the statistics indicate. The larger sightings are more strikingly coloured and with more distinctive markings, and are reasonably construed as males.

The mane is reported on some larger individuals but in the majority of “maned” reports, the animal is not verifiably of the type we are discussing. In some cases, such as the Corinthian SS illustrated by Heuvelmans, it is unmistakeably the same sort of creature. Oudemans states that it is most often noticed as an irregular (jagged) outline on the larger individuals, and it is most often the same colour as the rest of the animal. The maned males also have the more distinctive colouration: brown, reddish brown and in a minority of cases, greenish brown. The texture of this “Mane or fin” is classically compared to the leaves of kelp, and ordinarily it is a “Mane” of the upstanding type rather than the flowing type. All reports of scales or spikes as well as hair or bristles refer ONLY to the mane: some witnesses have inapprpriately assumed the whole body must be covered with the same material, be it hair or scales. The body is generally smooth and bare in most other parts, and it is sometimes roughter but only along the spine where the mane is.Oudemans also notes that it runs the whole length of the neck and midline of the back: it seems this also continues down the top of the tail in some observations. In Northern latitudes, maned individuals are seen most often in the spring continuing on into early summer and least often in the autumn; a few reports seen in winter seem to indicate maneless individuals out of the larger reports which otherwise agree with the maned type!.


Kelp. Rather than actually being hair or even vascularized fibers such as Heuvelmans and Sanderson hypothesize, the material of the mane is most often compared to leaves of kelp. That describes  long flat strips of skin rather than actual hair or scales that seems to grow to different lengths at different times of  the year and is evidently shed or absorbed otherwise.

Roy Mackal compared this continuous crenelated fleshy mid-dorsal fin which enhances the male’s vertical profile and makes it seem larger  to the breeding array of some newts; and upon some consideration, it might actually be analogous to the newt’s backfin in breeding array in that it seasonally grows longer/higher and more jaggedly obvious: it is also probably important that it also goes with the individuals with the richest colouration. Since this organ seems to be somewhat keratinized (and the fleshy members of it are sometimes compared to rolls of cotton batting, coconut fibers and even wood shavings), seasonal, but also that it often seems patchy and missing along parts of the length in some individuals but-this is important-missing from different sections of the neck or back in different individuals and on different occasions, I believe the material serves as a harmless means for males to engage in ritual mating contests without doing each other serious injury. Essentially, agression would be displaced into hair-pulling contests.  Tending to confirm this observation is the fact that reports of “Whiskers” such as in the Corinthian case are obviously showing  the same mane material but lying crosswise in the creature’s mouth, exactly as if a male had just pulled a mouthful of material off of another male’s mane but not at all in the position the “whiskers” naturally would be if they WERE whiskers, and some reports feature a male “Merhorse” behaving agressively toward humans in a small boat and spitting such pieces of a rival’s mane out of its mouth while doing so!


Here are some speculative reconstructions I did of what a long-necked seal would actually look like: in this case the ONLY change being made is that the vertebrae in the neck are being lengthened and neither the head nor the body changed in their relative sizes. The end product in no way resembles any of the reports and has far too many mechanical difficulties to get around. Incidentally while Plesiosaurs had no problem with doing such a thing as multiplying the number of vetebrae, placental mammals as a rule cannot manage that part either. A seal, a giraffe, a shrew and an elephant each have only the basic seven cervical vertebrae. Making a seal as long-necked as a giraffe does literally mean putting a giraffe’s neck on the seal.

This would not seem to give the poor seal any practical advantage whatsoever, and it makes both swimming in the water and walking on the land both more difficult.



Reconstruction of a Sea-serpent theory by Rev JG Wood made by Oudemans in his book The Great Sea Serpent. Oudemans DIDN’T go for this idea at all and thought it was laughably unbalanced and awkward. He opted for his long-tailed long-necked seal version instead.

From Lord Geekington’s discussion on the flexibility of Plesiosaurian necks:

Maybe having an unusually flexible neck in the vertical plane is useful for living in shallow near shore marine, brackish and freshwater environments - the juvenile in question was from marine deposits. Also problematic is that freshwater plesiosaurs in Australia were apparently subjected to cold to near-freezing conditions according to Kear (2006) - I couldn’t imagine a 28 inch juvenile managing that.[like many living animals, they probably had young in spring and summer to give the young a window of advanyage during the warmer months-DD] Freshwater plesiosaurs are potentially very interesting, they’ve been found worldwide from the early mid-Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous by the way, and I’d be curious about any morphological adaptations.
…
Back to plesiosaur necks, how flexible are they anyways? The genesis of this post was a paper by Zammit et al. (2008) which rigorously examined just that in the elasmosaur Aphrosaurus. The authors created life-sized 2D models of the vertebrae in dorsal and lateral view and used the minimum and maximum amount of intervertebral cartilage to create a possible range (Zammit et al. 2008). Models were also made of a boid, snake-necked turtle and sea lion for comparison - these tended to produce slight underestimates (Zammit et al. 2008). It turns out that Aphrosaurus could bend its neck 87–155° in the dorsal plane - far from the 360°+ needed for a swan-like posture - and motion in the ventral plane (75–177°) and lateral plane (94–176°) appears to have been greater (Zammit et al. 2008). The authors mention an unpublished master’s thesis which showed a similar pattern from Cryptoclidus and Muraenosaurus (both cryptoclidids) and noted that the vertebral centra in those genera had concave articular faces and rounded lateral margins, imply more vertebral movement (Zammit et al. 2008). Exact figures were not given, but the vertebral count (~40) was lower so the cryptoclidid necks are not necessarily more flexible overall.

Zammit et al. mention that cervical zygapophyses are inclined more posteriorly so the back of the neck has increased vertical flexibility at the expense of lateral flexibility; the amount of flexibility also decreases going towards the posterior end of the neck. Previous papers (which I can’t access) mention a “tongue in groove” structure also in the posterior part of the neck may be analagous to zygantrum–zygosphene articulations in snakes, which reduce torsion (Zammit et al. 2008, Moon 1999). Elasmosaurs seem to lack a mid-neck increase in flexibility that appears to have been present in cryptoclidids (Zammit et al. 2008). As far as function, Zammit et al. conclude that a strait held neck combined with lateral and/or ventral movement to capture prey is plausible but arching and slight s-curves appear possible as well; these are consistent with models of elasmosaurs as benthic grazers, ambush predators, and active predators using snake/turtle-like strikes.

Fossil showing flexibility inherent in the Plesiosaur’s neck


Illustration of a Plesiosaurus skeleton. This position IS what a “stretched-S” is supposed to be, in other words, allowable for Plesiosaurs (see text). At the site where this illustration was taken, the statement was made that the position of the neck should not be like this because the neck should be held in the reverse manner than it is in most amniotes, basically because the experts wanted it to be that way.

Which is much the same as  the matter of how Plesiosaurs even swam in the first place)

As Tyler Stone points out, not all surviving Plesiosaurs need be Longnecks
And there are a number of reports which sound like smaller shorter-necked forms

Below is the “Cryprtopinnepeda Panopoly” from an article by Darren Naish et al: these reconstructions fail to reflect any subcategories of reports in any real sense and they include some anatomical absurdities, such as in the elongation of the neck and the large disparity between brain and body sizes. I believe that each of these models is based on a false reconstruction going on some highly speculative readings of certain reports. In specific, the smallest one seems to be an illustration of Steller’s Sea Ape as interpreted by Roy Mackal, with no forelimbs, and the largest one could be a redrawing of the invalid reconstruction for “Cadborosaurus willsi.” In any event, the models are anatomically impractical and contradict expectations for pinnepeds due to the reasons outlined above.



Credit: Dale Drinnon
Source: frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-plesiosaur-review.html

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What is the Scariest Cryptid You’d Never Want to Meet?

THIS SUBJECT IS CONTINUED HERE

1. LONG-NECK: Identical to Heuvelmans’ Long-Neck and Merhorse types. By far the most common. Maximum size about 60 feet, males larger than females. Has a small head on a long neck, barrel-shaped body with a tail of equal length, and four rhomboid flippers. Males have a short, stiff mane, often compared to seaweed, going down the neck and forming a ridge on the back. This type is cosmopolitan and appears to have a high tolerance for cold temperatures, like some sea turtles. Most likely a general long-necked plesiosaur with relations to Cryptoclidus.
   
   
   
2. SHORT-NECK: This type comes from a subsection of Heuvelmans’ Sea Serpents and was first acknowledged by Dale Drinnon, but has only been recently studied by myself. As the name suggests, this type is closely related to the Long-Neck. Extremely rare. Maximum size 20-25 feet. Has a dolphin-like head on a short neck, barrel-shaped body with a tail of equal lenth, and four triangular flippers. This type is limited to the tropical waters of the Caribbean Sea, Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Indian Ocean. Most likely an evolved form of polycotylid plesiosaur. Type specimen would be Gambo, which was lost after being buried in The Gambia.
   
   
   
3. SHUKER’S LEVIATHAN: Identical to Heuvelmans’ Marine Saurian and the Biblical Leviathan, although most of the information for this type comes from Dr. Karl Shuker. Fairly common, though not nearly as much as the Long-Neck. Maximum size up to 100 feet, making it the largest carnivore on Earth. Has a long, eel-like or crocodilian head on a short neck, a snakelike body, four flippers, and a tail with small flukes like a shark (as shown in many native depictions of the creature). Cosmopolitan, migrates to tropical waters to breed, and this is where smaller specimens are seen. Full-grown adults are seen further north and hunt small whales. Most likely a gigantic species of mosasaur. Type specimen would be the animal caught by the Monongahela, which was lost along with the ship in the Bering Sea.
   
   

Source cryptoanimals.blogspot.com/2012/04/modern-marine-reptiles.html


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A SEA SNAIL WITH ANTLERS…AND PAWS!

The Sarmatian Sea’s antlered, paw-footed mega-snail, as depicted in Paré’s book.

Just when you think that the world, particularly the cryptozoological world, couldn’t possibly get any stranger…

Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen – I am proud to present before you, all the way from the Sarmatian Sea, the one and only giant monster sea snail with antlers, and paws!

It’s amazing what you find when looking for something completely different. Browsing through some early books recently in search of some relevant illustrations appertaining to mystery cats for my forthcoming second book on magical, mythological, and mysterious felids of many forms, I chanced upon the following astonishing beast from a medieval bestiary cum medical encyclopaedia entitled On Monsters and Marvels, written by Ambroise Paré, a 16th-Century French surgeon.

Citing as his source of information the twentieth volume of Cosmography - which had been authored by one of his contemporaries, André de Thévet (1516-1590), a French Franciscan priest who was also a celebrated writer, explorer, and cosmographer - Paré reported that the Sarmatian or Eastern Germanic Sea (both are early names for the Baltic Sea) is home to a truly monstrous species of sea snail.



As thick as a wine cask, this singular and very sizeable creature is instantly distinguished from all other such molluscs by virtue of its pair of deer-like antlers. These decidedly unsnail-like accoutrements are borne upon the upper region of its head, and at the tip of each branch on each antler is a small, round, lustrous bulb resembling a fine pearl. By contrast, this snail’s eyes, which in less exotic gastropods can be found at the tips of a pair of optic tentacles, are laterally sited on its head, just like those of many vertebrates, and glow brightly like candles.

Equally unexpected was Paré’s claim that this very odd creature sports a roundish nose reminiscent of a cat’s, complete with whisker-like hair all around it, plus a wide slit-like mouth beneath which hangs a fleshy projection of hideous appearance.

And as if antlers and a feline nose are not sufficiently bizarre characteristics for a sea snail (or, indeed, any other type of snail) to boast, eschewing the usual monopodial mode of locomotion common to normal gastropods this extraordinary marine mollusc possesses four fully-differentiated limbs, each with its own wide, hooked paw. It also sports a fairly lengthy tail, bearing a varicoloured tigerine pattern. Moreover, the image accompanying this morphological description in Paré’s book shows the Sarmatian Sea’s antlered mega-snail to bear a very large and sturdy, heavily annulated, whorled shell upon its back.

This remarkable creature apparently spends much of its time out at high sea on account of its timid nature, but is sufficiently amphibious to be able to venture forth onto the seashore during fine weather in order to graze upon any marine plant life present there. An edible species itself, its flesh is said to be very delicate and tasty to eat, and its blood reputedly has medical properties, ameliorating sufferers afflicted with leprosy.

Needless to say, no snail corresponding with the description communicated in turn by Paré from Thévet’s work is known to modern-day science. So could the giant antlered snail of the Sarmatian Sea be as mythical as the web-footed camphurch unicorn, the mer-folk, the winged unipodal humanoids, and certain other unquestionably fabulous entities also documented by these authors, or is it merely a somewhat distorted description of some bona fide animal?



A beautiful colour plate from a 1904 tome by Ernst Haeckel depicting a varied selection of spectacular nudibranchs

Reading it through, I was reminded somewhat of the nudibranchs or sea slugs, many of which are extremely flamboyant in appearance, with all manner of ornate, plume-like embellishments known as cerata arising dorsally and laterally from their body, which may conceivably explain the ‘limbs’ and ‘paws’ reported for this creature. Nudibranchs also have a pair of long cephalic (head-borne) tentacles, and if a species existed whose tentacles bore projections they may resemble antlers. Moreover, the two eyes of nudibranchs are sited directly on their body, just behind the head, not on optic tentacles like those of snails, so a pair of laterally sited eyes would not be impossible. And nudibranchs are well documented from the Baltic Sea.

However, such an identity is instantly wrecked by the Sarmatian antlered snail’s hefty shell, because nudibranchs are shell-less. In addition, all known nudibranchs are carnivorous, not herbivorous. And even the largest known nudibranchs do not exceed 2 ft long – a far cry from any gastropod as thick as a wine cask.

So what is the likeliest identity of this mystery mollusc? Might it possibly have been an unknown species that became extinct before modern-day science was ever able to confirm its reality and add it to the zoological catalogue of formally-recognised life-forms? Or could such an incredible creature as this never have been anything more than a wholly imaginary beast confined to the pages of early travelogues and compendia of monsters? To be, or not to be? That, indeed, is the question.

Posted by Dr. Karl Shuker on April 16th, 2012 for ShukerNature
Source karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/sea-snail-with-antlersand-paws.html

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