More data, and more data....
Shrike and Parcher,
You can believe what you would like. You can express any opinion that you like. The JREF forums tolerate all kinds and all points of view. Including Refuse-nik woo (yes, there is not only believer woo on the one end of the spectrum of belief, but on the opposite side of the spectrum the mirror image of such logic as well, that includes the same erroneous assumption architecture, and I think I am seeing some of that here (solely) in this thread). But your opinions are of not much utility if you can't or are unwilling to provide the data that I have asked for. Neither of you have done that up to this point. Don't give me arm waving or thought experiments, or point me to a large database that you yourself haven't provided condensed data extractions from. (When I post things, I attempt to get people to the exact piece of bolstering information/data. And if something shows up in a PDF, I attempt to get them to the pages of interest.) Get the exact sections/pages and provide a URL link if that's possible (if it exists in the database), or cut-and-paste the relevant parts here to this thread so we all can see what bolsters your contra-indicating claims. If you have direct bibliographic citations to the stuff, post that.
I haven't seen either of you do that.
And Shrike, when you resort to name calling, you have lost your argument. So good luck with that.
Since apparently neither Shrike or Parcher truly wish to pin this down, I will point out where you can (hopefully) go to get some of this data. I am gong to do this procedure so that others who are interested can pursue these avenues. And then actually post what they find.
First of all, you have to do a literature search. Any good scientist would do this (including fellow biologists of Shrike's acquaintance). You go to journals. What journals? Good question.
Here is a link that interested parties can go to. It is to Urlich's international periodical index/directory: ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com Many of the periodicals are in English, but many are in foreign languages as well.
And this is where a literature search becomes international in scope. If interested parties in say, Japan or Indonesia or China or Chile or Peru find periodicals in the language familiar to them, it would go some way in reducing the tasking.
Secondly, what type of journals would provide the data that I have asked for earlier on? For example, these kind: Ocean engineering periodicals, and commercial fishing periodicals. And yes, even Congressional reports (USA) about pelagic and bottom-dragging trawling, if they exist. If one visits a unversity library, one can ask the librarians there for some aid in locating these periodicals, and to see if there are any existing Congressional reports about the topics.
Thirdly, I mentioned this previously, is that I would encourage people to write to scientists and those who have expertise in ocean stuides (oceanographers, cetacean specialists, those with an interest ocean eco-systems, etc.) and ask them the question: "Do you think that there remain in the oceans large creatures that are unknown, and uncatalogued by science? If so, why do you conclude that? If not, why not?" That will take the whole discussion here out of the Refuse-nik woo, and place it squarely where I think it should be--people who don't have a vested belief that nothing of significance remains to be discovered in the world's oceans relating to large animals unknown to science. They would be neutral parties.
Another thing that I brought up previously was the URL link to the 2012 article about a paper that was published in a peer-reviewed journal (also in 2012) that estimated that there are upwards of one million species in the oceans, with about two-thirds of those (600,000) unknown to, and uncatalogued by science. That's pretty damning, considering that Shrike and Parcher can't deny/refute that. Additionally, we have NOAA statements stating that 95% of the world's oceans remain unexplored. That also cannot be refuted by either Shrike or Parcher. And considering how much scientific data we do have on hand from ocean studies (and it's considerable), this is a very good indicator about how large these oceans/ocean systems are--there are substantive areas of these realms we don't know anything about.
But that's a good thing. Science is a wide-open field, and the ocean sciences are also wide-open for further research and investigations.
Now I am moving on to linked subjects.
One of the previous issues I said I was going to attempt to explore was the notion of whether there have been a single eyewitness sighting of a creature that resulted in the creature being catalogued by science.
With the help of some others who are interested in this topic as well, I have been able to get an answer to this. And the answer is yes. The proviso is that there was a collection specimen gathered at the time of the sighting, in most of the cases that were presented to me. Although I would add that, interestingly, one of the collection specimens was let go, and another was lost. These collected specimens are identified as holotypes in the literature.
This URL link (to Darren Naish’s blog) is to a bird seen in central Somalia (and is the one that was let go again):
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/01/08/goodbye-bulo-burti-boubou/
Interestingly, in the comments there is a reference to ocean topics by a person with a handle of “Jerzy” (January 2009): “Interesting case was Mr. Craig Venter of human genome fame. He collected pelagic sea water when yachting around Bermuda. He found that open tropical sea, which is considered nutrient-poor biological desert, has a lot of DNA of microorganisms too small and uncultivable to find by traditional means. In at least 3 cases, he could make complete microbial genomes from it. So you have complete genetic information of a thing, which nobody ever seen and doesn’t know how it looks like!” Again, this is only an anecdote, but it shows that not everything is known about what is in the oceans and seas.
This URL link is to a recording of a shark, only one caught off the coast of northern Chile, and it seems that this was in 2003:
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/44515/0
This URL link is to a single holotype of a fish caught off of Papua New Guinea in 1941, and then later, the specimen became lost:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_whiting
This URL link is to an amphibian that was collected in 1969 (Costa Rica) when it was in the midst of laying eggs:
http://amphibiaweb.org/cgi/amphib_query?where-genus=Bolitoglossa&where-species=obscura
This URL link is to an amphibian (frog) from Tanzania, in approx. 2007 time frame:
http://africanamphibians.lifedesks.org/pages/25937
This URL link is to an octopus collected in 1910, off the (eastern?) coast of South Africa:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/umrsmas/bullmar/1991/00000049/F0020001/art00005
What this tells me is that (from time to time, on occasion) animals can be seen only once, but to be catalogued you have to have a specimen. In regards to once-seen (or rarely seen) creatures that live in the ocean, this “see and grab” activity apparently hasn’t happened as of yet due to the fact that some daunting logistics are involved—how does one capture a large creature (40 feet, 50 feet, or more) upon a chance encounter. I don’t have the answers to that.
Shrike has provided the opinion that no large creatures unknown to science live in the ocean, because of all the human activity in many places around the world. He seems to be making the assumption that large, creatures unknown to, and uncatalogued by science don’t exist where there is human civilization (a lot of human activity) nearby, due to a lack of evidence of such sightings.
I don’t know if we can say that. In my view, the actuality may be the lack of evidence of sighting the creatures may be (in part) a lack of literature searching to find out whether the assumption is so, or not. One may ask whether if there are any such cases currently extant.
I think that we have potentially (notice the conditional word) such a scenario. I think that the sightings by the Clark brothers in the San Francisco bay area (inside the area where the Golden Gate Bridge is) are an indicator that the bay may be a good place to focus activities upon. In a series of recent e-mails with the brothers, I learned that, when they spent the time, the brothers were able to have sightings now and again, and even videotape from the shoreline (in some of their sightings, for minutes at a time) activities out in the bay. They informed me that the last two sightings that they had were on February 8 and 19, 2009 when they went out looking. They are attempting to start up their viewing of the bay again soon, as a number of their sightings have been in the early months of the year, although currently they told me that the main area where they had been parking to look for the animals is being used for the America’s Cup races, and parking has already been restricting cars from parking in the area that they usually use. Since the brothers are doing this on their own free time, without any sponsorship, using equipment that they can afford (which means consumer-type electronics and cameras, and this in turn provides inconclusive, long-distance views of something out in the bay), may indicate that if a more “all in” approach could possibly provide better data.
