Sea Monsters
Long before man was capable of traversing the globe simply by hopping onto an airplane, fearless sailors would embark on long journeys across the great, vast oceans. Upon returning to their home ports, such men often regaled others with stories of fabulous encounters with foreboding sea monsters capable of devouring entire vessels in one gulp. These creatures took a number of fantastic forms, including mermaids, sea bishops, and island-sized fish, as well as the insidious, multiarmed Kraken, thought to be inspired by the giant squid (Architeuthis dux), a cryptid in its own right for much of history. Yet ultimately no other mythical maritime beast has attained as lofty a status as the great Sea Serpent.
Olaus Magnus, a Swedish historian and writer, first mentioned a Norwegian serpent in the year 1555. He described the colossal creature as stretching some 200 feet in length and referred to it as the “Sea Orm” (Sea Worm). The thing had apparently been sighted off the coast of Norway for as long as anyone could remember. Around 200 years later, Erik Pontoppidan, a bishop of Bergen, also wrote about various sea monsters sighted off Norway’s coast, including the Kraken and a titanic, black serpent that appeared during foreboding weather.
Hans Egede, the Apostle of Greenland, sighted a “terrible sea monster” while sailing the southwest coast of that island on July 6, 1734. He described the animal as being about one hundred feet in length and possessing a serpentine form, long pointed snout, and two enormous flippers. Egede noted that the subject’s skin looked rough and mottled.
The creature spouted water like a whale when it broke the surface, and at one point its head appeared to be as high up in the air as the ship’s masthead. One could hardly hope for a more credible witness than the pious Egede, who wrote about his other travels in a rather unsensational manner.
Stronsa Island, off the northern coast of Scotland, was the location of a strange find on September 25, 1808. Following a violent storm, the remains of a massive rotting beast washed up on the shore. Its body was described as being fifty-five feet long with three pairs of flippers attached. At the time, the Stronsa Beast created quite a stir in the scientific community, although later analysis of some of its preserved vertebrae indicated that the creature was most likely a decomposing basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus), albeit a monster-sized one. Still, the incident added fuel to the Sea Serpent debate.
During August of 1817, hundreds of Massachusetts residents reported watching a monstrous, serpent-like critter regularly frolicking in Gloucester Harbor. A special scientific committee was formed to investigate the sightings by interviewing the key eyewitnesses and then encouraging them to sign sworn affidavits describing their observations. At one point, a malformed snake that was found on an adjacent beach was declared to be the Sea Serpent’s offspring. Despite that inopportune gaffe, there is little doubt that many reputable citizens saw something remarkable that summer.
While sailing off the southwest coast of Africa on August 6, 1848, Captain Peter McQuhae, Lieutenant Edgar Drummond, and at least five other officers and crewmembers aboard the HMS Daedalus spotted an unknown, sixty-foot-long animal swimming by their ship with a purpose. All got a good look at the creature and decided that its head, which was always held four feet above the water, most resembled that of an enormous snake. The beast seemed to display some type of mane or frill, or else something resembling a clump of seaweed washed about its back. This controversial incident received quite a bit of notoriety at the time and remains one of the most celebrated cases on record due to the veracity of many experienced observers who studied the thing at close proximity for twenty minutes. Various suggestions of misidentification were put forward; for example, perhaps what Captain McQuhae and his crew had seen was merely a long strand of seaweed. The eminent naturalist Sir Richard Owen became convinced that the incident involved a wayward seal that was seen out of context. Yet McQuhae and Drummond remained unwavering in their belief that the thing had been a genuine unknown.
On December 7, 1905, two trained zoologists, Edmund Meade-Waldo and Michael Nicoll, aboard the HMS Valhalla beheld an immense, unclassified serpentine animal while conducting a scientific expedition just off the coast of Brazil. Initially, its huge sail or frill breaking the surface of the water startled the men. They characterized the specimen as being brownish in color and light-colored underneath with an undersized, turtle-like head attached to a long neck that protruded about six feet out of the water. This may be the most compelling Sea Serpent report on record, due to the scientific credentials of the eyewitnesses involved. Considering all of these and thousands more accounts on record (potentially only scratching the surface), there seems to be little doubt that people have been observing some huge, unclassified sea animal for centuries. But what?
It goes without saying that there are considerable difficulties when dealing with a mystery that lives under the water, since the only sighted features are those that briefly breach the surface when the thing resolves to make a rare appearance. Yet when analyzing and comparing thousands of documented descriptions of Sea Serpents (and also seemingly related lake monsters) around the world, a remarkably consistent model emerges. The general archetype is of an elongate animal averaging at least thirty feet in length (though much greater lengths have been reported), possessing a dark-colored, smooth (not scaly) hide; a lengthy neck that protrudes about five or six feet out of the water; and a small head that resembles that of a sheep, cow, or horse. Descriptions of the head that draw comparisons to turtles or snakes may have more to do with perception of the observers, particularly if they don’t see protruding ears. Other frequently mentioned features include large eyes, sets of flippers, and in some cases facial whiskers, bristly hair around the neck, or even horns. Many eyewitnesses remark on the creature’s vertically undulating humps or coils that break the surface of the water, making its back appear extremely flexible. This feature may account for the Norwegian legends that refer to them as orms (worms).
Presently there is nothing known, either extant or even in the fossil record, which perfectly corresponds to all of these characteristics, particularly when one notes the Sea Serpent’s alleged habit of extending its small head and swan-like neck straight out of the water like a periscope. It is true that millions of years ago the planet’s waterways were teaming with massive, aquatic reptiles, some of which (the plesiosaurs) had exceptionally long necks supporting their relatively small heads. However, these species also possessed rigid, thickset bodies unlikely to create the humps and vertical undulations described with regard to our Sea Serpents. Besides, the notion of either a true serpent or any cold-blooded reptile for that matter (archaic or otherwise) thriving in the icy waters where sea monsters have been encountered is problematic in terms of survival, though there has been recent speculation that plesiosaurs may in fact have been warm-blooded like mammals and birds.
As far back as 1896, the Dutch biologist Anthonie Cornelis (A. C.) Oudemans suggested a mammalian identity for the long-necked mystery animals mistakenly called “Sea Serpents,” specifically a heretofore undocumented species of long-necked pinniped (the suborder that includes seals, sea lions, and walruses). The father of cryptozoology, Bernard Heuvelmans, endorsed this possibility as well. During 2012, I received a report that may add some weight to this theory.
Nova Scotia resident and author Jenny Tyson related the following experience to me. An extended telephone interview with her reinforced my opinion that she was extremely credible, given her familiarity with marine mammals and the ocean, and in position to judge that the exceptional specimen she observed was doubtless something out of the ordinary.
I saw the creature a couple of years ago, shortly after we moved to Cape Breton. I’ve lived on the coast here for several years. In Maine (Vinalhaven Island), we had seals in both coves near the house, so I’m used to being around them. I’ve also seen pilot whales and harbor porpoises in the wild. I went to the beach below the lighthouse on Point Aconi. The area can only be safely accessed when hiking along the shore at a dropping or low tide. This was after one of the early fall storms. Seas outside were rough, temperature about 0º Celsius, and winds about seventy kilometers per hour with higher gusts. These weather conditions almost always prevail after a big storm. I enjoy watching the storms leave, and the sight is usually spectacular, especially in the fall and early winter before the snow sets in.
I settled before the base of the cliffs where the lighthouse stands in order to watch the waves. I saw what I thought was initially a pilot whale beaching on the rocks very close about fifteen to twenty feet away. The animal turned over and raised its head, and I saw it was a seal. It spotted me, barked, and then scooted off towards deeper water. It wasn’t scared of me and wasn’t in a hurry. The size of the animal was nearly triple that of any seal I’ve ever seen before. Probably around twenty feet, and that is a conservative estimate. The body color was identical to a pilot whale—kind of a dark grey with a fair bit of brown in it. The head was identical to a harbor seal, only much larger. It was smooth; no bulges like an elephant seal has. Nor did it have the slimmer neck of a sea lion. Front flippers were also the same as a harbor seal, only much longer.
Although Tyson’s monster seal did not display the elongate neck of Oudemans’s theoretical “serpent” seal, its dimensions if accurate are staggering. Harbor seals only grow to an accepted length of about six feet or so, and while the largest known species of elephant seal can obtain lengths up to twenty-two feet, they are not native to the North Atlantic. Besides, bull elephant seals display a prominent proboscis that is unmistakable, hence their name. If Tyson’s estimate of size is correct, the prospect of finding immense, undocumented pinnipeds in the Earth’s oceans is worth considering.
A Whale of a Theory
Even the most conservative scientists will acknowledge that there are sizable species living deep in the Earth’s oceans that remain undocumented. Still, these same academics have not yet been provided the tangible proof they require in order to proclaim the Sea Serpent a reality. All of the evidence for these aquatic monsters is anecdotal—scores of eyewitness accounts and legends spanning centuries, inconclusive photos, and sonar anomalies. As of yet, no one has been able to produce a physical specimen or even a tooth or bone. However, it’s worth noting that a considerable number of vivid encounters have been logged by mariners and fishermen, people who are intimately familiar with a vast assortment of sea life. Could they all be mistaken?
The prevalent theories about Sea Serpents suggest surviving marine reptiles left over from the Cretaceous Period, monster-sized eels, or a species of heretofore undiscovered long-necked pinniped. I tend to agree with the late cryptozoologist Roy Mackal that the most likely candidates to explain the Sea Serpent or lake monster enigma might be surviving representatives of the archaeocetes, a suborder of ancient whales that first appeared during the Eocene epoch some fifty-five million years ago and presumably died out twenty-five million years ago during the Miocene. In particular, one exceptionally snake-like genus known as Basilosaurus is intriguing and a strong contender for a number of reasons.
• Sea Serpents are always described as displaying a vertical undulating motion when moving through the water, typically a mammalian trait.
• They have frequently been characterized as having smooth, whalelike skin and heads that resemble mammals such as horses or sheep and as sometimes displaying manes or whiskers, and some witnesses have even described bilobate, horizontal tails. These physical attributes, along with a serpentine body shape, could conceivably correspond with how Basilosaurus actually looked.
• The reported lengths of sixty to one hundred feet fall perfectly in line with the largest marine animals, the cetaceans (whales and dolphins).
• As warm-blooded animals, they would be well acclimated, even comfortable, in the very frigid water temperatures of the North Atlantic as well as the glacial “monster” lakes such as Loch Ness (the habitat of Nessie), New York’s Lake Champlain (Champ) and Canada’s Okanagan Lake (Ogopogo). Cetaceans have been known to occasionally stray into freshwater rivers and lakes, and there are even species of dolphins that have adapted exclusively to those conditions.
• There have been observations, including that of Egede, of these animals spouting water, as whales are known to do.
• Some of the most rarely encountered marine animals are the beaked whales, which live at great depths. Multiple new species of cetaceans have been catalogued in recent decades, and there is little doubt that other species await discovery.
The suggestion that our so-called Sea “Serpents” may actually be snakelike whales is not a new one. As early as 1860, naturalist Philip Henry Gosse advocated this possibility. Really the only feature that becomes problematic when relating the accounts to cetacean physiology is the strikingly elongate neck that is described. I can only speculate that this could be a specialized adaptation that represents an example of convergent evolution. After all, the plesiosaurs flourished in the Earth’s oceans for many millions of years with just such a design. By nature of their slender form, the basilosaurs had a head start in this direction already. Who’s to say their descendants’ neck vertebrae could not have gradually lengthened over the past 30 million years or so as they carved out a new niche? The fossil evidence is lacking, but the possibility is worth considering. Admittedly, we need proof rather than speculation.
Raystown Ray
During December of 2012, I was invited to participate in an investigation of a monster that has been periodically reported in Pennsylvania’s Raystown Lake. The mysterious beast, which has been depicted as a serpentine animal extending some fifteen feet in length, has been assigned the very obvious nickname “Ray” and is purportedly quite distinct from the multitude of endemic fish found in the lake, including striped bass, trout, catfish, and Atlantic salmon. The lake itself is a manmade reservoir that only achieved its current depth and dimensions as recently as 1973, when construction of a dam was completed. It is as deep as two hundred feet in some places. The meandering Juniata and Susquehanna Rivers connect Raystown Lake to the Atlantic Ocean, and it is the largest lake wholly contained within the state of Pennsylvania.
My partners on this particular expedition included Bill Hoolahan, a seasoned skipper and scuba expert whose passion is hunting for sunken ships and lost treasure; Phil Abernathy, a cryptozoology enthusiast, fossil collector, and experienced fisherman; and Dr. Cheska Burleson, a marine biologist. We had been brought together by an anonymous benefactor who had an interest in seeing how such pursuits might be undertaken on a regular basis.
Our initial meeting with a local historian revealed that the fleeting descriptions of Ray were fairly consistent—essentially, it was a large, snakelike creature, and its first appearance corresponded with the alleged crash of a circus train decades earlier. If this explanation sounds uncomfortably familiar, it should. One of the most prevalent urban legends around the United States speaks of circus train accidents, the results of which have been all manner of unusual and exotic beasts roaming the countryside. Nonetheless, our contact was adamant that the locals had been observing and also photographing something genuinely mysterious in Raystown Lake for decades.
Our suspicions were aroused when we visited the local resort’s gift shop, where we found ourselves surrounded by a healthy supply of Raystown Ray T-shirts, bumper stickers, post cards, and coffee mugs. It was evident that the community was eager to embrace their very own monster if it could help stimulate the local economy. The iconic image of Ray plastered everywhere was based on a photograph that had been allegedly taken by a fisherman during 2006, as the monster supposedly surfaced across from a local marina. The image seemed to possess a surreal quality that I couldn’t quite ignore. When we were shown what was described to us as a cast of one of Ray’s three-toed footprints (apparently made after the animal had wandered onto the shore), I questioned why the plaster mold was a negative impression, as opposed to a three dimensional cast that one might expect to produce when pouring plaster into negative space. The woman behind the counter merely shrugged her shoulders. The description of a serpentine animal had taken a weird turn: it now possessed dinosaur feet.
Despite our misgivings about the void of compelling evidence for old Ray, our team spent the next couple of days out on the lake, primarily utilizing a fish-finding sonar unit that we had brought along in order to scan the depths for unusually large objects. We also decided to stack the deck in our favor by chumming the water around our boat, in hopes of drawing in more fish as well as anything else that might potentially live in the lake. An underwater camera I had brought along was not functioning as I had hoped, but Captain Hoolahan used the opportunity to attempt some scuba diving in the lake’s frigid, murky water.
In spite of our team’s combined efforts, our investigation came up empty, which is hardly a surprising result considering the great difficulties involved in lake-monster research. Consider that Raystown Lake is twenty-eight miles long (essentially 8,300 acres). That is a lot of ground to cover when the object of your pursuit is obscured below you in the great, cloudy depths and is probably on the move to boot.
If there are sizeable unknown animals living in the lakes of the world, they are seemingly quite rare and elusive, perhaps spending the majority of their time in the boundless oceans and only visiting freshwater lakes via connecting river systems on fleeting occasions. The similarities in descriptions between lake monsters and Sea Serpents are so analogous that there can be little doubt we are talking about the very same animal. If they are not tragically teetering on the edge of extinction like so many species in the world’s waterways, perhaps we will be fortunate enough to find them one day.
Fantastic Fish of the Far North
Lake Iliamna is the largest lake in the great state of Alaska as well as the second biggest freshwater body contained wholly in the United States and one of the largest worldwide. It is often referred to as an inland sea. Its dimensions are seventy-seven miles long by twenty-two miles wide with an area of roughly 1,000 square miles and an average depth of 144 feet, though there are trenches that may go down 1,000 feet or more. Sparsely populated along the shore and accessible to humans by boat or floatplane only, it claims some sizeable inhabitants, including an unusual population of freshwater seals and, on occasion, scant numbers of beluga whales and orcas that travel from the ocean up the Kvichak River. According to native legends and numerous modern sightings, there may also be another resident, monstrous and highly aggressive, that has defied discovery up to this point. Known to the indigenous people of the area as Jig-ik-nak and to other Alaskans as Illie, (short for Iliamna, of course) the piscine animal is said to be a titanic fish possessing a length of anywhere from ten to thirty feet.
Now, if we were talking about salt water, some prolific, pelagic fish would immediately spring to mind. But when it comes to freshwater lakes and rivers, the issue becomes vastly more complicated, since nonsaline species typically do not get too huge. As you might expect, Iliamna boasts a fairly healthy and diverse population of fish. Trophy salmon, trout, and northern pike abound. Still, the record sizes of all those species top out at about six feet in length and around fifty pounds in weight, nowhere near the sizes that are described for Illie.
Tales of the creature date back to before the colonization of the Americas. One dramatic story tells of a group of Aleut who were scouring one of the lake’s southernmost rock islands for seagull eggs when, suddenly, an unseen “something” capsized one of their bidarka (kayaks), causing a man to sink below the depths and disappear, presumably eaten. It is said that the victim violated one of the cardinal rules by staring down into the water, thus invoking the wrath of the monster. Regardless, the incident frightened his tribe so badly that they refused to go out on the lake for weeks afterwards. On the eastern end, the Kenaitze Indians have always viewed the monster as a bad omen. Small children are warned not to go too close to the water or else the beast will drown them, and it is believed that to see the creature inevitably leads to shriveling up and dying. A prevalent superstition states that Jig-ik-nak despises the color red, so early travelers on the lake were careful not to paint their vessels that color. Caribou swimming across the lake are at risk of being devoured, or so the legend states.
Today, the number of alleged sightings leaves little doubt that remarkable animals inhabit the lake. Beginning in the fall of 1941, a local game warden by the name of Carlos Carson was flying over the mouth of Talarik Creek in a floatplane and spotted a number of “logs,” which quickly sank from sight. His passenger later stated, “We spotted the huge mystery fish, about ten or twelve of them near a small island off the shore of what is known as Big Mountain. At the time we spotted the fish, we were cruising at an altitude of around 1,000 feet, and as we turned and slowed our aircraft down to get a better look, the big fish seemed to sink slowly into the deep water, but not before we had several looks at them.”
The most celebrated encounter occurred the following year and involved well-known bush pilot and guide Babe Aylesworth as well as his passenger, a colorful local fisherman named Bill Hammersley. Traveling from Naknek to Anchorage in a Stinson ferry plane, they were gliding at an altitude of 1,000 feet over a twenty-five mile stretch of Iliamna on a bright, clear day. The lake was flat and calm, and visibility into the deep blue water was exceptional. As they approached a horseshoe-shaped island associated with the monsters, Aylesworth excitedly shouted, “My God! What big fish!” Looking down, Hammersley saw what his companion was referring to—dozens of them just below the surface in the shallows, dull aluminum in color, with broad and blunt heads, long tapering bodies, and vertical tail fins that were swaying back and forth.
Aylesworth’s initial size estimate of a few feet proved to be way off once he circled around and reduced his altitude to around 300 feet. The fish were at least ten feet long in Hammersley’s opinion but perhaps twice that length, since they seemed comparable to the pontoons of the plane. They looked to weigh at least 300 pounds. After about twenty minutes of being observed by the men, the fish turned and swam away from the island, submerging into deeper water and out of sight. The experienced outdoorsmen quickly discounted beluga whales, salmon, trout, and sturgeon as possible explanations. They were both in agreement that whatever they had seen could not be explained easily.
In 1947, Hammersley published an account of the incident in hopes of encouraging other witnesses to come forward. One who did was Larry Rost, a pilot for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. Rost told Hammersley that he had flown over the exact same spot during the fall of 1945 and had seen a twenty-foot fish from an altitude of one hundred feet. The creature had displayed the same aluminum color that Aylesworth and Hammersly had noted.
Over the next decade and a half, several attempts were made to capture the monsters. In August of 1959, Texas oil millionaire and adventurer Tom Slick spent five days on the lake, accompanied by guide and lodge owner Bob Walker. The two men deployed heavy-duty shark tackle with no result. Slick offered a reward of $1,000 to anyone who could provide proof that the animals existed, inspiring three veteran sportsmen—Gil Paust, Slim Beck, and John Walatka—who devised a creative approach. The anglers attached a hundred feet of steel airplane cable to a one-foot iron hook, which was baited with the hindquarter of a moose. Their bobber was a five-gallon oil drum. The entire rig was attached to the pontoon of a large floatplane that they set down where Hammersley, Aylesworth, and Rost had all seen the mystery fish. That night something snapped the cable, taking a strut from the airplane down with it. The men had apparently obtained a permit to use dynamite too, but never had a chance to use it. Yet another fisherman baited a heavy line and tied it to a tree, but by the next morning the bait was gone and the tree had been uprooted.
Numerous sightings followed. In August of 1959, two helicopter pilots hovering over the same spot got a good look at four sharklike fish that were five to eight feet long. The very next year, a geologist and two companions in a plane observed four fish with an estimated length of about ten feet. During 1963, a biologist reported seeing a twenty-five- to thirty-foot animal from the air, and he was sure it wasn’t a whale, since it never surfaced. This was followed by an organized search in 1966 that included Captain Lee from Kodiak Island as well as nature photographer Leonard Rue. Missionary Chuck Crapuchettes was the next person to witness the monster and on two different occasions, actually; once was from a floatplane in 1967. After a full decade had passed, air taxi pilot Tim LaPorte was flying over San Pedro Bay when he saw a twelve- to fourteen-foot fish just below the surface. In 1987, resident Verna Kolyaha and others observed a large, black fish that surfaced in front of them, revealing a stripe on its back. Two years later, boater Louise Wassille watched a twenty-foot fish that appeared to have a prominent snout. Finally, Tim LaPorte claimed yet another sighting at the turn of the century.
So then, what might the Lake Iliamna monsters truly represent? It seems safe to eliminate beluga whales as candidates, since they are not an uncommon sight in the lake and are in fact quite conspicuous with their pasty white coloration, not to mention that whales (being mammals) must frequently come up for air. For the popular television program River Monsters, host Jeremy Wade conducted an investigation and concluded that the creatures were most likely sturgeons, migratory fish that grow to substantial sizes in the ocean and then swim up rivers in order to spawn. North American white sturgeons (Acipenser transmontanus) are prehistoric-looking, armor-plated fish that have been known to reach lengths of eleven feet and live for over a century. The largest sturgeon on record was a European specimen (Huso huso) from Russia’s Volga River (circa 1827) that was reportedly twenty-four feet in length and weighed 3,463 pounds. Because they are bottom-feeders, hypothetical monster sturgeons would rarely be seen, and the frigid water temperatures of Iliamna would ensure that they sink to the bottom when they died. The issue is that no sturgeon has ever been documented in Lake Iliamna, though small ones have apparently been caught in nearby Bristol Bay and Cook Inlet.
Another intriguing theory is that the Lake Iliamna monsters could be large sharks that traveled up the Kvichak River from the ocean. During 2012, a Pacific sleeper shark (Somniosus pacificus) was filmed splashing around in the brackish water of King Cove, Alaska, which lies in the Aleutian Islands. These cold-water sharks may be capable of exceeding lengths of twenty-three feet, according to scientist Bruce Wright, who speculates that the ocean dwellers may be capable of tolerating freshwater on occasion (by a process known as osmoregulation). Bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) have been known to swim up rivers for extended periods and are commonly reported in Lake Nicaragua in Central America. The Pacific sleeper shark does fit some of the descriptions of Illie nicely, possessing a dull brownish-gray coloration in addition to a blunt head. However, we can’t discount the possibility that Lake Iliamna harbors a gigantic, new species of fish that has never been documented. Due to the lake’s relative inaccessibility, immense size, and treacherous waves and currents, it may be a long time before the mystery is put to rest.
Boasting over 6,000 miles of coastline and three million lakes, Alaska can lay claim to many aquatic enigmas. In Inuit folklore, the Tizheruk or Pal-Rai-Yuk is a monstrous serpentine animal that lives in the ocean and regularly snatches unsuspecting victims from docks and vessels. To the Tlingit people, the Gonakadet is a sea monster that combines the characteristics of a wolf and killer whale. Chandler Lake in northern central Alaska is rumored to be home to trout that are four feet in length and to an unknown fish that is at least ten feet long, is dark on top with a reddish underside, and has very black eyes. Monster fish have also been reported in Crosswind Lake and Lake Minchumina, as well as Nonvianuk Lake and Walker Lake.
Back in November of 1930, two fox farmers discovered a massive carcass floating in Eagle Bay off Glacier Island. The two men towed the thing ashore but couldn’t identify it. Word of the strange find quickly spread, and weeks later the oddity was featured in the New York Sun, which prompted a team of naturalists to launch an on-site investigation. The creature was said to be twenty-four feet long and to resemble a huge lizard with a long, flat skull, though parts of it seemed to be covered in hair or fur. Speculation at the time was that the animal most likely was some type of prehistoric beast that had been frozen in the nearby Columbia Glacier for thousands of years, until the ice in which it was entombed had broken off into the ocean. Ultimately, the specimen ended up at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, where it was determined to be the remains of a northern minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata).
A similar incident occurred in July of 1956 when newspapers around the world announced that a colossal carcass had washed up on the shore of Dry Harbor, which lies sixty miles southeast of Yakutat. The object was said to be one hundred feet long, fifteen feet wide, and covered in reddish-brown hair that was two inches long. The skull was estimated to be five-and-a-half feet across, with large eye sockets and a protruding, tusk-like upper jaw lined with six-inch teeth. Scientists were understandably enthusiastic, since the description matched no known animal. However, a short time later a photo was published which showed a floatplane pilot named Loren Horn who had landed his craft next to the thing and posed with it. Anyone viewing the image instantly surmised that the initial accounts were grossly inaccurate, as the carcass appeared to be only a fraction of the size reported. Based on this revelation, a scientist named W. A. Clemons declared that the remains were that of a rare Baird’s beaked whale (Berardius bairdii).
In recent years, a video purporting to show a pod of Sea Serpents off the coast of Alaska stirred up controversy in the field of cryptozoology. During 2009, local fisherman Kelly Nash, along with his two sons, sighted several large, marine animals swimming in Nushagak Bay in the far southwest part of the state. They began to videotape the creatures, which appeared to be swimming in a straight-line formation and fleeing a pod of beluga whales. Highly experienced at viewing all manner of sea critters, Kelly and the Nash boys were convinced that they were not observing whales, sea lions, or anything known. The things looked to be snakelike, about twenty feet long, and they had serrated backs. At times, the subjects appeared to lift their heads out of the water.
Consequently, the footage was reviewed by cryptid researchers Paul LeBlond and John Kirk of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club. LeBlond is a former director of the Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of British Columbia, and Kirk (a good friend and colleague of mine) has experience in law enforcement in addition to having worked at an oceanographic theme park in Hong Kong. Both men are regarded as two of the world’s top investigators of mysterious sea creatures. Blogging on the website Cryptomundo, Kirk said that he was stunned when one of the animals seemed to raise its head out of the water and look directly at the camera, displaying a “cameloid” head and face identical to descriptions of Canada’s famous Sea Serpent, Cadborosaurus. For him, this was definitive evidence that the video showed massive marine animals of a previously unclassified type.
Shortly thereafter, Nash sold the rights to the footage to a television production company for tens of thousands of dollars. Following a gap of two years, the film was finally made public as part of a television program titled Alaskan Monster Hunt: Hillstranded, which featured two stars from Deadliest Catch, a popular series about the Alaska fishing industry. Unfortunately, the show only presented a brief, inconclusive segment of the video and did not reveal the evidence that inspired LeBlond and Kirk’s eureka moment. When John inquired about matter, he ran up against a wall: neither the Nash family nor the television network could provide answers to why the program did not include the definitive portion of the film or if it had even ever existed. Further digging by Kirk led him to a disheartening conclusion. Quite possibly someone had inadvertently lost or taped over the most compelling section of the footage, ensuring that an important piece of evidence would be lost forever. The field of cryptozoology seems to be cursed by comparable gaffes and near misses.
If strange, new animals remain to be found anywhere on our planet, our unexplored oceans and waterways seem to be the most likely place. Even the most conservative scientists agree that there are potentially sizeable aquatic organisms that we haven’t seen yet. Three quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered by this foreboding marine environment, which harbors an average depth of twelve thousand feet and includes some trenches that lie five miles down. The giant squid, megamouth shark, and beaked whale are a few of the recent discoveries that serve as important reminders. Yet the most remarkable example may be the coelacanth, an archaic fish that was dredged up off the coast of South Africa in 1938. Scientists already knew of the coelacanth from fossils that were millions of years old, but they assumed that it had gone extinct along with the dinosaurs. Perhaps other prehistoric survivors may dwell beneath the watery abyss.
