Sea monsters have
been seen by man since man has taken to sailing the seas or fishing it. Sea
monsters are believed to be mythical or legendary beasts, usually of immense
size. Marine monsters can take many
forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or multi-armed beasts. Definition
of a "monster" can mean many things, something that is frightening to
humans, especially they never seen the animals before. Some sea monsters may
have been based on scientifically accepted creatures such as whales and types
of giant and colossal squid and octopus. Sometimes they can be slimy or scaly, often
pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water.
Historically,
decorative drawings of heraldic dolphins and sea monsters were used to illustrate
maps, such as the Carta marina. This practice died away with the advent
of modern cartography.
There is a Tlingit
legend about a sea monster named Gunakadeit/ This monster was thought to bring
prosperity and good luck to a village in crisis, people starving in the home
they made for themselves on the southeastern coast of Alaska.
Some sea monsters
seen have been recorded from those in the past. Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed to
have encountered a lion-like monster with "glaring eyes" on his
return voyage after formally claiming St. John's,
Newfoundland (1583) for England. Another account of an encounter with a sea monster comes
from July 1734. Hans Egede, a Dano-Norwegian missionary, reported that on a
voyage to Gothaab/Nuuk on the western coast of Greenland
he observed. Here is partial of what Hans noted: “a most terrible creature,
resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it
seemed to be higher than the crow's nest on the mainmast. 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.” Some cryptologist was say this
sounds like a plesiosaurus. Interestingly,
since this was 1734 and dinosaurs and prehistoric reptiles hadn’t been discovered
and catalogued yet by experts. About plesiosaurus, it is often mistakenly
referred to as a dinosaur, when in fact it is a prehistoric marine reptile
which lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. It had a long neck, four paddle-like
flippers and a tail. The long
neck of Plesiosaurus is supported by approximately 40 individual
vertebrae. For comparison, a human has only seven neck vertebrae.
Can a plesiosaurus
have existed in 1734? Or had Hans mistaken some common whale or large fish or
even a seal, for a sea monster? After all, when we think of sea-going ships
back then, many were not as big as we see in the movies. And I doubted a missionary would use a
galleon.
Many marine animals
and fish have been mistaken for sea monsters. One that is rarest among whales
and that is the spade-toothed beaked whale. Scientists rarely seen it alive and
until recently, only had limited skeletal evidence that they even existed. So
rare is the species that when a pair of dead whales washed up on a New Zealand
beach in late 2010, scientists didn't even know what they had. Testing, such as
DNA, proved what it was. Scientists were ecstatic. That’s because only three
partial specimens of the species were known to exist -- two collected in New
Zealand in 1872 and in the 1950s and a third found on Robinson Crusoe Island
off the coast of Chile in 1986. The
spade-toothed beaked whale looks similar to a large black, white and gray
dolphin with its long pointed snout. Scientists believe they grow to be about
17 feet long. Adult males have large exposed teeth as the name suggests. There
is only guess work about other beaked whales, which are often boat-shy, spend
little time at the surface and dive to depths of 6,600 feet. They probably dine
on squid. So imagine one coming to the surface in the past and what a fisherman
in a small fishing boat thought it was.
Oarfish can grow big
and they mostly live in the deep ocean. One found in Catalina Island's Toyon Bay
October 15, 2013 was so big -- 18 feet long -- that it required 15 people to
hold it chest-high in a trophy photo taken by the Catalina Island Marine
Institute. Being so long, it can be mistaken for a sea serpent.
I wrote about
Chessie, a sea monster seen off the coast of Virginia
in the Chesapeake Bay and in the Appomattox River by Hopewell.
From a chapter in my
nonfiction ghost book, Haunted Richmond II:
Most times when someone goes fishing, you expect to catch fish. There may
even be frogs in the water, but a sea serpent? That’s what did swim the waters
of the Appomattox River in Hopewell
in the 80s.
Chessie was seen mostly in Chesapeake Bay.
For years, people reported sightings of a serpent-like creature with
flippers—not unlike Nessie of Loch Ness in that
respect. It even made the news in the late 60s.
Witnesses say that the creature might be about twenty-five to forty
feet in length, dark, with no limbs, fins, or distinguishable details on its
oval head. It was also no more than a foot across in width.
It appeared at one time that Chessie decided to leave the bay and swim
upriver to Hopewell.
A woman caught sight of the creature one day. The witness had gone out to
dinner with her husband at the Harbor Light Restaurant. When she got out of the
car, she noticed something strange with a long, undulating body that swam
closer and closer. It matched descriptions of the beast seen in Chesapeake Bay.
Of course, since then, it has not been seen, neither in the river nor
in Chesapeake Bay. At least that I know of. So
next time you go boating on the river or plan to go fishing, take care. Chessie
might still be living beneath the water
Sea Monsters in
Myths (I won’t talk abouteach one now—maybe one day on each one, but you can google
and look each one up):
The Aspidochelone, a giant turtle or whale
that appeared to be an island, and lured sailors to their doom
Capricorn, Babylonian Water-Goat, in the Zodiac
Cetus
Charybdis of Homer, a monstrous whirlpool
that sucked any ship nearby beneath the ocean
Cirein-cròin
Coinchenn, from whose bone the Gae Bulg is
made in Celtic mythology
The Devil Whale, Extremely large demonic
whale, the size of an island.
Hydra, Greece
Iku-Turso, reputedly a type of colossal
octopus or walrus
Jörmungandr, the Norse Midgard Serpent.
Kraken, a gigantic octopus, squid or crab-like
creature
Leviathan
Makara
Proteus
Scylla of Homer, a six-headed,
twelve-legged serpentine that devoured six men from each ship that passed by
Sirens of Homer
Taniwha
The Rainbow Fish
Tiamat
Umibōzu
Yacumama, South America
Sea Monsters in Fiction
in Writing and Onscreen:
The Beast From 20,000
Fathoms
Monster From the
Ocean Floor
Bacoon in Star Fox
64.
Creatures of H. P.
Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, including Cthulhu itself.
Creatures of The
X-Files episodes Agua Mala.
Creatures in such sci-fi/horror
films as Deepstar Six, The Rift, Deep Rising and Deep
Shock.
Carcharodon Megalodon in Steve
Alten's Meg series.
Cloverfield
Fictional portrayals
of the Giant Squid.
Giant octopus in It
Came from Beneath the Sea.
Giganto
Godzilla
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (giant octopus attacks the Nautilus)
Behemoth, the Sea
Monster
Gorgo
Manda
Orca
Kraken as depicted in
Clash of the Titans (both the 1981 and 2010 versions).
Kraken as depicted in
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.—this
was more Lovecraftian in nature.
Leviathan in the Gears
of War series.
Ebirah
Titanosaurus
Zigra
Moby Dick
Nabooian sea monsters
in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
Rhedosaurus
Sin
Ichthyosaur and plesiosaur
in A Journey to the Center of the Earth.
The Terrible Dogfish
Title creature of Peter
Benchley's White Shark.
The War God Goura
Mega Shark Versus
Giant Octopus
Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus
The Two-Headed Shark
Sharktopus
Pacific
Rim
Godzilla (2014)
Next time you decide
to take a boat ride on the ocean or head to the beach, keep a eye on the sea,
as you never know what you might see. Wait a minute…see that…do you think it
might be….
cool information!
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ReplyDeleteI try to do my best, Sharon! ;-)
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