© Sigurd Towrie, 1996-2008

Although stories of sea serpents and mythical sea-dwellers abound in Orkney, there have actually been a surprising number of documented historical "sightings" that have now entered the lore of the islands.Perhaps the most famous of these encounters took place in Stronsay. There, in 1808, the first, and perhaps best-known, of a series of episodes relating to the carcasses of what appeared to be long-necked sea creatures were washed ashore. The Stronsay beast was first sighted on September 25, 1808, lying on rocks at Rothiesholm Head, in the south-east of the island. There, John Peace, a local man fishing off the coast, was puzzled by the sight of seabirds flocking around what looked like an animal's corpse on the rocks.

Turning his little boat, and watched by another Stronsay man, George Sherar, Peace made his way to the carcass. But what he found was unlike anything he had encountered before. Lying on the rocks was the remains of a serpent-like creature, with a long, eel-like neck and three pairs of legs. At this time, the creature was inaccessible so a closer examination was impossible. However, ten days later, one of Orkney's notorious gales blew the decomposing remains ashore, where they were found just below the high water mark. Sherar now had his chance to examine the corpse, which he did - meticulously studying it and measuring the dimensions of the apparent sea monster. The beast was described as serpentine, measuring exactly 55 feet long, with a neck measuring ten feet three inches long. The head was like that of a sheep, with eyes bigger than a seal's. Its skin was grey and rough to the touch. However, if stroked from the head down the back, it was said to be as "smooth as velvet". Six "limbs" extended from the body and a bristly mane of long, wiry hair grew from the beast's shoulders down to its tail. These silver coloured bristles were said to glow eerily in the dark. "Its flesh was described as being like 'coarse, ill-coloured beef, entirely covered with fat and tallow and without the least resemblance or affinity to fish'. The skin, which was grey coloured and had an elastic texture was said to be about two inches thick in parts."...

© 2003 CNN.com

Scientists have revealed a mysterious recording that they say could be the sound of a giant beast lurking in the depths of the ocean. Researchers have nicknamed the strange unidentified sound picked up by undersea microphones "Bloop." While it bears the varying frequency hallmark of marine animals, it is far more powerful than the calls made by any creature known on Earth, Britain's New Scientist reported on Thursday. It is too big for a whale and one theory is that it is a deep sea monster, possibly a many-tentacled giant squid. In 1997, Bloop was detected by U.S. Navy "spy" sensors 3,000 miles apart that had been put there to detect the movement of Soviet submarines, the magazine reports. The frequency of the sound meant it had to be much louder than any recognised animal noise, including that produced by the largest whales. So is it a huge octopus? Although dead giant squid have been washed up on beaches, and tell-tale sucker marks have been seen on whales, there has never been a confirmed sighting of one of the elusive cephalopods in the wild.

The largest dead squid on record measured about 60ft including the length of its tentacles, but no one knows how big the creatures might grow. For years sailors have told tales of monsters of the deep including the huge, many-tentacled kraken that could reach as high as a ship's mainmast and sink the biggest ships. However Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at Boston University, Massachusetts, doubts that giant squid are the source of Bloop. "Cephalopods have no gas-filled sac, so they have no way to make that type of noise," he said. "Though you can never rule anything out completely, I doubt it." Nevertheless he agrees that the sound is most likely to be biological in origin. The system picking up Bloop and other strange noises from the deep is a military relic of the Cold War. In the 1960s the U.S. Navy set up an array of underwater microphones, or hydrophones, around the globe to track Soviet submarines. The network was known as SOSUS, short for Sound Surveillance System...

Copyright © Polenth Blake 1997-2007

Sea serpents and sea dragons have been reported by ships for a long time. They are obviously not that different to the dragons of mythology... it is simply that most of these do not have myths attached to them. The story comes from the retelling of the sighting. Some of the sightings remain mysterious and are possibly candidates for undiscovered species. Others seem more likely to be something more mundane. Faced with a topic like this, it is important not to be too quick to decide that all sightings must be true or that all sightings are explained by other things. Each case should be taken on its own merits.

Daedalus:  In August 1848, the HMS Daedalus was heading back to England from India. Whilst passing by the coast of Namibia, the ship encountered a sea serpent. Captain M'Quhae described the serpent as about 60 feet long. It was floating on the water, with its head held above the water. They could not see how it was moving as it was keeping its body still. Presumably there was some other part under the water propelling it. It was said to have a serpent's head, some sort of mane on its back and to be brown in colouration (with yellow-white around the throat).The sighting caused some controversy. Experts tried to come up with alternative theories for the sighting, rather than accepting it could be true. Examples of suggestions were it was a seal (the size was an error) or part of a ship being pulled by a harpooned whale or shark under the water. Neither seemed to be a mistake a seasoned (and sober) sea captain would be likely to make, though it is always possible.

Hydrarchos: In 1845 Albert C. Koch unveiled a complete sea serpent fossil skeleton, which he called Hydrarchos harlani. It was alleged that it had been recovered in Alabama. The bones were put on display for the public with a great deal of publicity. Koch certainly knew how to get the viewers in for his finds. It was soon discovered to be a fraud. Koch has constructed the creature from five fossil whale skeletons. Charles Lyell (1849) wrote about how the fraud had been worked out: ...

Copyright Lee Krystek 1996

On a December day in 1848 the sailing ship Pekin was becalmed off the Cape of Good Hope near Southern Africa when a crew member spotted a strange creature in the water. Careful examination of the animal by use of a telescope revealed it to be snake-like, with a large head and shaggy mane. Only two months before the HMS Daedulus had reported seeing a sea serpent in that very same region. Amid great excitement a small boat, it's crew prepared to capture the animal, was lowered into the water. The captain, Frederic Smith, watched from a distance, with concern for the safety of his men, as the small boat approached the creature. To the Captain's surprise the animal did not move at all as the boat drew near. He was even more surprised when the crew of the boat proceeded to tow the "creature" back to the Pekin.

The sea serpent turned out to be a twenty foot long piece of floating seaweed with a root shaped like a head and neck. Could the Daedulus sea serpent been of similar origin? Judging distance, size and motion of an object in the sea is extremely difficult. Objects on land can be compared to nearby trees and boulders. In the water only the waves offer a clue to scale and the size of waves vary enormously depending on weather conditions. The movement of the waves can also suggest motion where there is none. Arthur Adams, a ship's surgeon in the 1860's, spotted what appeared to be a mysterious creature moving through the water by using lateral undulations of it's body. His ship's course was altered to intercept the animal and capture it. When they approached the thing Adam's wrote: "By this time, however, a closer and more critical inspection had taken place, and the supposed sea monster had turned himself into a long, dark root, gnarled and twisted, of a tree, secured to the moorings of a fishing net, with a strong tide passing it rapidly, and thus giving it an apparent life-like movement and serpentine aspect." The Daedulus affair might also be explained by an abandoned native canoe painted like a snake. L. Sprague de Camp suggested the owners of the canoe may have harpooned a large sea animal, like a whale shark, and they were either spilled into the sea when the animal surfaced under the boat, or jumped in panic when they could not cut the line dragging the canoe...

By Jonathan A. Drake ©TrueAuthority.com

This is the story of one of the world's most elusive, mysterious and fantastic creatures. It is a creature we know so very little about, despite the fact that it was first scientifically described nearly 130 years ago. Clyde Roper, one of the world's foremost researchers on the subject, points out that we know more about the dinosaurs then we do about the giant squid. Is this true? If so, why?

A Clandestine Creature: Roper's statement is indeed true, and reminds us repeatedly that the world's oceans quite possibly shelter even more amazing animals yet to be discovered. Though BBC's Weird Nature boldly stated that "The Giant Squid is the last great mystery of the oceans," obvious truth states otherwise. Consider the Indo-Pacific beaked whale (Indopacetus pacificus), an air-breathing mammal that has never been seen in the flesh and is known only from two skulls found on the beach, one in Somalia and the other in Queensland.

In fact, we have more specimens of giant squid than we do of Baird's beaked whale (Berardius bairdii), the northern bottlenose whale (Hyperoodon ampullatus), and the goose-beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris). Again, all air-breathing mammals that must come to the surface. We are then left to do nothing less but ponder, "What lurks beneath the churning waters that cover so much of our globe? Have we the slightest notion what might be hidden by that endless sprawl of hydrosphere? Who knows what fantastic creatures science has yet to behold?" What we do know about the giant squid in relation to habitation is this: They primarily dwell in the great deeps of the ocean, rarely coming to the surface. Though BBC's Weird Nature again boldly claims, "In fact, they only ever come to the surface when dead or dying," truth, again, states otherwise...

Pressie (named for the Presque Isle River where one of the best sightings occurred) is one of the world's most seldom seen lake monsters. This is likely due to the sheer vastness of Lake Superior. Known as Mishipishu (and variations thereof) to the area's native people, the animal is depicted in pictographs at various shoreline sites, either as a spiky cat-like creature (its Ojibway name means "great lynx") or as a serpent (sometimes called by other names). Modern sightings indicate a serpentine species up to at least 75 feet in length with a horse-like head on a longish neck and a bilobate (whale-type) tail. They swim in a vertically undulating fashion and are said to be dark green to black in color.

Sightings:In September 1894, about halfway between Whitefish Point and Copper Harbor, Michigan, the crews of two steamers observed one of these creatures undulating along in the twilight, its back protruding 6 to 8 feet out of the water. In July 1895, three members of a steamer crew observed a "hideous creature" off Whitefish Point (MI) which seemed at times to be deliberately pacing their ship. They claimed it had a 15 foot neck and at least a foot wide jaw. In 1897 near Duluth (MN), a Detroit man fell overboard when his yacht struck a rock. He was then attacked by a huge serpent which alledgedly tried to constrict him in the manner of a large Boid snake. Apparently his 3 shipmates also saw the beast. In the middle 1930's, a serpent, cruising along at 8.5 to 9 miles per hour, was observed by two fisherman at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore by Munising, Michigan. The animal created a strong wake as it swam along the rocky shore. On a summer day in the early 1960's, an entire family watched a huge animal, alternately showing humps and stretching out straight, swim upriver past the North coast of Sugar Island (MI). No head or tail was observed and it resembled a log when stretched out straight. Sometime during Memorial Day weekend in 1977, North of Ironwood (MI), hiker Randy Braun was menaced by a huge serpent with a horse-like head and two catfish-type whiskers. As he hid behind a boulder, he managed to snap one photograph of the animal.