• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

What cryptids might be real?

A little bit more about the context

Shrike,

I think that you may have missed the whole point of the discussion as I have posted it, from what I can see.

Let me explain a little bit more.

My argumentation, in a nutshell, is this.

a)--In 1905, an animate object (a "sea-serpent" type creature as interpreted by the two scientists who viewed it--from approx. fifty yards to over 150 yards over a timeframe that apparently was pretty near a 10 minute observational event) was eyewitnessed--both by eyeball and via binoculars--and reported in a presentation to a science society; its configuration was unlike any known creature catalogued by science;

b)--New living things are being discovered (or in some cases, re-discovered) every year--most unanticipated, some anticipated to exist (via local villagers having seen them prior to, and talking about them); this includes insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, plants, and birds; a number of these are being found not only on land, but in the seas/oceans;

c)--According to NOAA, 95% of the world's oceans remain unexplored. See this URL link: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html

Here is a direct quote:

"...

Yet for all of our reliance on the ocean, 95 percent of this realm remains unexplored, unseen by human eyes.

..."

d)--The reason I was posting the other creatures in my immediately previous posting were these--humans have seen these creatures on rare occasion, but know hardly anything at all about them, and that includes what their feeding habits are, how large an area as to where they exist, and so on. This is because all these quite rare cetaceans (these are the examples that I was posting the URL links to) live in the ocean, a place that covers over 70% of the planet we live on, and which we do not live in.

e)--Having seen a creature doesn't make the creature known; indeed, even if one has one or two beach strandings doesn't make a creature known, like the sceintific data that is currently in hand for the bottlenose porpoise. Based on my reading of your posting, you have applied the same logic-based trends (as to the rare cetaceans I have posted URL links to--you claim that makes them known if they were seen, even though most weren't explicitly verifiable until a carcass from a beach stranding appeared, and even then not much is known about them, other than morphological aspects in great part) as to the 1905 Brazil sighting; but it seems you have the added tenet that because you aren't aware of such a creature being recorded by science subsequently, and that it was only seen once--as far as any meager literature search has gone--it completely can't exist.

f)--In regards as to whether this creature has been reported by others either before 1905, or afterwards, I can only say this. I personally only looked for data on this 1905 sighting alone in the time alloted, so I could put something down of detail for this subject thread. (Doing literature searches takes a great deal of time and effort--and before the Science Citation Index and its descendents appeared, there weren't too many decently exhaustive compilations of scientific journals on subjects that one could visit in one publication, in one place--whether you could put a volume on your lap, or slip a CD into a computer to look at things.) Others with more time than myself can be encouraged to look for more such sighting of this type of (alleged) creature.

g)--The oceans are not inconsequential things. I would suggest Shrike, if you are ever able to get the opporunity, to travel by ship across the Pacific. If you ever get the chance, you will learn it takes a good while, even under power from diesel engines, etc. It won't be hours, or even a few short days. The distances are great.


So is it possible that there are creatures unknown to science living in the world's oceans? You bet. As a matter of fact, it is nearly 100% probable that creatures unknown, undescribed, and uncatalogued by science presently live in these oceans. (I would say it is 100% probable.) Anyone who wishes to take the opposing side of the argument that this is not possible, won't be on the winning side of that argument.

I will leave you with these closing thoughts:

a)--a recent paper (November 2012) estimates that up to a million species live in the seas, and with over 2/3rds of them may be currently undiscovered (the periodical is Current Biiology). Here is the URL link to a news story: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57550604/most-ocean-species-remain-undiscovered/

and

b)--The Zoological Society of London (yes, the place where the 1905 sighting in Brazilian waters was presented by Nicoll and his compatriot) had I guess what would be termed a symposium on the topic of ocean creature cryptozoology back in the Summer of 2011. The paleontologist who provided one of the presentations goes by the name of Dr. Darren Naish (a paleontologist) who co-authored a paper on the possiblity of (If memory serves, I believe that there is a thread here on JREF about the paper) of larger animals remaining to be discovered in the ocean. I believe that that paper appeared in a peer-reviewed journal as well. The paper concluded that it was likely that larger creatures remain yet to be discovered--and the authors may have used some form of statistics to come to that conclusion.
URL link to an article about the 2011 Zoological Society of London meeting:
http://www.niburunews.com/index.php...-seas&catid=18:nature-a-environment&Itemid=37

As I hope I have made the point, none of the evidence presented is half-baked. You may wish to disagree on the conclusions I have made about the 1905 sighting (it is perfectly a-okay and understandable to say it was mistaken ID), but you can't argue with the overall context about the ocean, and what lives in it, and how much Mankind knows about what is in the ocean.
 
To weigh in, briefly.

I would agree that there are oceanic mammals and fish not yet discovered, and probably large species at that.

The sea serpent in question seems very odd, from a functional point of view. It doesn't have the appearance of any aquatic mammal that I can recall, of contemporary species or lost to time species.

If it is a large bodied aquatic reptile (or mammal), why the stabilizing fin? If it is fish, then it behaved unlike any oceanic fish I know of, holding its head high above the water line.

I'm thinking they did not see a member of the animal kingdom at all based simply on what we know of animal body function and mechanics.
 
Crap I missed the beginning of this one, I have spent about 40 years of my life on the Ocean around the Boston area up ta Maine, seen a lot of weird stuff, nothing I would call a sea serpent, but it has gotten close a few times.

Tim :)
 
Zippy Omicron said:
c)--According to NOAA, 95% of the world's oceans remain unexplored. See this URL link: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html
Click to expand...

That does not translate to "95% of the world's oceanic vertebrates remain undocumented".

Let me ask you a question relating to the context of a sea serpent. What part of the 95% NOAA Number is frozen or otherwise uninhabitable for a sea serpent (and so therefore doesn't count when we are talking sea serpents)?
 
Zippy Omicron said:
Shrike,

I think that you may have missed the whole point of the discussion as I have posted it, from what I can see.
Click to expand...

Umm, no. Your point is one on which I almost daily trade barbs with bigfooters and other cryptozoologists, and have been doing so for years.

I am a biologist. You needn't lecture me on the vastness of our planet or the wonderful creatures discovered each year. I get that. I am one of the people who goes into the field to find such things.

I never indicated that a creature such as that described in 1905 could not exist. We know, in fact, that creatures broadly resembling the description did exist long ago. How do we know that? There is evidence of their existence in the fossil record. For those creatures that looked kind of like the creature reported in 1905, that record stops at the end of the Mesozoic Era. To me, the far more significant piece of negative evidence that indicates such creatures are extinct is not the failure of a carcass to be washed up or otherwise collected during recorded history, it is the absence of such creatures in the previous 65 million years of recorded prehistory.

(Just to save you another lengthy essay, yes, I am aware that the fossil record is incomplete.)

So what do we do with an anecdotal account from 1905 that, based on the description, seems to have been some kind of plesiosaur? We can ignore the mountains of evidence of human fallibility and conclude that, at least in 1905, there was at least one relict plesiosaur swimming around off the coast of Brazil. The vastly more likely explanation, however, is that the observation was erroneous.
 
Just as an aside, and apropos of nothing at all.......

If plesiosaurs had survived the Mesozoic, where would you expect to find their fossils? They would have had to have died in a shallow sea or a lagoon, wouldn't they, that then was upthrust above sea level. I am sure there must be such places dating from later than 65m YBP, but I don't know of any. The Himalayas are 70m years old, so the shallow sea from which they formed is too old, and the Himalayas are the youngest mountain chain on the planet. Is there somewhere on the planet yielding oceanic fossils from later than 65m YBP?

I'm not seeking to undermine your argument, Shrike....just curious about the fossil record of this era.

Mike
 
Last edited:
Well, I don't think the alleged sea serpent actually looks like prehistoric reptiles. The reason is the fin. It seems to be a dorsal fin. Marine reptiles with dorsal fins were fish (or dolphin) - like. Plesiosaurs had no dorsal fins, neither had mosasaurs, just ichtyosaurs. Actually this is also valid for mammals. Seals don't have it, manatees don't have it. Pleiosaurs and mosasaurs, by the way were not actually similar to serpents. Plesiosaurs had long necks but the necks were attached to stubby body. Mosasaurs looked like crocodiles with fins, not unlike the geosaurs, which were marine crocodiles and looked like crocodiles with fins plus a tail fin.

Now, evolution, especially through sexual selection, can create very weird things, so I would not say such a fin would be impossible. An animal could develop one for sexual display. But again, what's more likely? They saw, say, the mating ritual of sea serpents or they mis identified something.

To the tree trunk, you could also add a rotting whale carcass, perhaps partially eaten by sharks. The neck could be the lower jaw bone and the fin, a pectoral fin missing the end. Could also have been a manatee stranded by sea currents - they still live at Paraiba's shore.

As for the absence sites which could contain fossils related to the surviving plesiosaurs, cited by MikeG, sorry, its a non-issue. There are lots of marine sedimentary deposits from the Tertiary and Quaternary; they range from shallow to deep (including several types of continental shelves), cold, hot, restricted, deltaic, coral reefs, lagoons, etc. They are present in continental parts of the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Remember also that big marine animals tend to live at or near the continental shelves. Or at least they stay there for quite a long time. Its where most of the food is. These are the places we know better. And no sea serpent has evern been found.
 
Correa Neto said:
As for the absence sites which could contain fossils related to the surviving plesiosaurs, cited by MikeG, sorry, its a non-issue. .........
Click to expand...

No, don't be sorry, that was what I was after. I was asking a question out of ignorance and curiosity, rather than trying to make a point........and you've given me the answer. Thank you.

Mike
 
To be clear: I am not a refuse-nik (dismiss things straight out of hand), but a skeptic (and that requires an open mind to things presented to me--and it requires some activity outside of thought experiments).

This is the question: Could there be large creatures (even creatures possibly larger than many whales) unknown to science roaming the world's oceans? and what is the answer to this: Possible? Probable? Absolutely yes? Highly improbable? Not at all correct?

We know this:

a)--The world is covered with approx. 70% water.

b)--According to a US government agency, 95% of the world's oceans have not been explored (I should tell you a lot of the undersea Arctic was explored by US submarines during the Cold War, as they had to learn to fight under the ice with Soviet submarines);

c)--According to recent (2012) statistical and observational analysis in a peer-reviewed journal, there may be upwards of a million species that live in the oceans, with perhaps 2/3rds of those unknown, and uncatalogued by science;

d)--From time to time, say over the last two, or three, hundred years, unverified sightings of large creatures unknown to science have been reported by eyewitnesses who have traversed the oceans. A percentage of these have been described, for lack of a better term, as "Sea Serpents."

e)--in 1905, two credible witnesses who were scientists observed a creature for upwards of 10 minutes near Brazil that appeared to have a long neck; one of the scientists called it a "Sea Serpent," and thought it might be a mammal; this sighting was reported and recorded in a science society's journal;

f)--carcasses coming ashore/beach strandings are not where most ocean creatures go to die;

g)--A number of animals (catalogued by science) in the sea have been identified via eyewitness reports, and a few beach strandings, but nearly nothing else is known about them outside of morphological data, and DNA testing if it is performed;

h)--From time to time, prehistoric survivals are identified as currently living in the ocean, including the recently identified-as-such pygmy right whale; I think that this may also show that the niche it occupied in prehistoric times remains viable and extant in the ocean;

i)--In the fossil record there are a number of species that had long necks and occupied an ocean niche successfully for millions of years; I don't see why such a niche couldn't be occupied with analogue creatures today.

j)--Nature has all sorts of adaptations to the environment. For example:

1)--long bodies (oarfish, blue whale);
2)--long snouts (sail fish, long nose saw sharks);
3)--long fins (humpback whales);
4)--long tusks (narwhals, walruses);
and so on.

So I don't see why a long neck wouldn't be considered also a standard adaptation, and why there would be such an aversion to the concept.


If you would like to find out an answer to this question of whether large creatures unknown to science exist or not, you would have to set up the research plan.

It may include:

a)--a literature search. This may involve going to a University library and using their computer search materials and looking for articles in scientific journals; nature and naturalist magazines; newspapers (I would point out that it might be appropirate to look at newspapers of all the countries that border the Pacific rim as a starting point--yes this would require a lot of time to do, but if there are intersted parties living in say, New Zealand or Alaska or Japan or Peru or Mexico or the Phillippines or Russia or Canada or the west coast of the USA, it might break down this tasking to manageable proportions)

b)--Contacting experts in the field of ocean study. This would include marine biologists, bio-acoustics personnel or scientists that study cetaceans or pinnipeds, or oceanographers, or others that work at oceanographic institutes with appropriate expertise, and ask this question set: In your opinion, are there large creatures in the oceans presently unidentified and uncatalogued by science? If so, why would you conclude that? If you think not, why not?

c)--I am certain that there are other research-linked concepts one could do to make progress in ascertaining the answers to the questions posed. This could include Freedom of Information Act inquiries (USA), and analogues that other nations might have of Federal government agencies.

As you can see, this doesn't involve thought experiments, or being an arm-chair general.

I am not a biologist, but I have worked with a number of scientists in different disciplines. So I am coming to this subject from a different angle. I think science is a wide-open field of endeavor. I think ocean science is also a wide-open field of endeavor.

Let's talk about things from an engineering-linked angle.

I wonder if some of the keys to solving this issue may involve technologies developed for the US Navy, and the recorded data from these technologies. Let me explain.

On every submarine there is what I would term a "catalogue/encyclopedia" of sounds that is contained in the submarine's computer. It helps to identify natural sounds (and what they are) from man-made/mechanical sounds when they are encourntered during underwater operations. This allows the crew to do their work without making the mistake of attacking whales or schools of fish, etc. There was a substantive, long-duration program to record all the sounds made in the ocean (and may still be extant) that began I think in the 1950s and lasted at least through the 1980s, if my memory serves.

One of the key people who worked on this effort was a marine biologist/bio-acoustics expert named Dr. Marie Fish. She was awarded the Distinghished Public Service Award by the US Navy for her work in the mid-1960s. She also appeared in the National Public Radio program (late 1970s, but can be accessed on the Web I think) entitled "Ocean Hour," where she discussed her work. Here is her short obituary that appeared in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/02/obituaries/marie-fish-88-dies-navy-oceanographer.html

If a person was interested, I think it would be constructive to inquire about this program, what it entailed and learn whether there were animal sounds recorded that are currently not linked to known creatures.

Additionally...an anecdote from my past.

A while back I had the fortunate happenstance of meeting and getting to know one of the originators of the US Navy's space program. This person was the chief manager of the program for a period. One of the key things that the US Navy was concerned about was tracking Soviet submarines, and they wanted to be able to conduct this tracking from orbit.

The US Navy has, for a quite long time, an affinity for infrared sensors. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, research into infrared remote sensing by the US Navy was extant, and it may be continuing. It was found that infrared could help identify and track Soviet submarines and US submarines. What they found was that as a large body goes through the water, it changes the temperature of the water it passes through for a specific period of time, and that temperature change can be viewed by infrared at a distance. The duration of the change in water temperature is partly determined by the depth of the vehicle. As time progressed, and sensors matured, they were able to identify by infrared not only whether there was a submarine, but whose it was, and to some extent, the type of submarine.

But what the US Navy engineers didn't anticipate was that non-submarine entities were also showing up in the recorded data. As I was told, whales also showed up in the tracking, and additionally (as it was told to me), from time-to-time other things that weren't whales also showed up, with some of those being larger than whales.

They were able to substract out the non-submarine entities because those did not follow a grid pattern, or follow a straight line for any period of time as submarines would do.

Just an anecdote.
 
Last edited:
Zippy Omicron said:
We know this:


b)--According to a US government agency, 95% of the world's oceans have not been explored (I should tell you a lot of the undersea Arctic was explored by US submarines during the Cold War, as they had to learn to fight under the ice with Soviet submarines);
Click to expand...

But surely we have dragged huge nets through more than 5% of the world's oceans. You can explore and catalog the biodiversity of an ocean by dragging nets through it. We do that already.

It is incomplete but it is still there. The figure "95% unexplored" suggests a complete blankness. As if we have no biodiversity samplings at all for 95% of the oceans.

c)--According to recent (2012) statistical and observational analysis in a peer-reviewed journal, there may be upwards of a million species that live in the oceans, with perhaps 2/3rds of those unknown, and uncatalogued by science;
Click to expand...

Yet, we would hesitate to say that we have only discovered 66% of the living baleen whale species. The unknowns aren't distributed evenly. We would never predict that there are just as many undiscovered species of tuna as there are of crabs. Do you understand why and how this relates to sea serpents?
 
^Indeed. Consider just about any marine species > 1m long. It doesn't matter if its cod, flounder, sea bass, tuna, sharks, sea cows, whales, seals, sea lions, sea otters, etc. In case after tragic case, our history of marine exploitation is one in which markets develop for some species, we use technology to get ever-more-efficient at harvesting said species, the population plummets, and we pursue the last marketable stocks to the ends of the earth until the marketability collapses and we move on to the next thing.

When you do things like this in earnest, and globally, for about 5 centuries, you don't leave much of a window open for something large to escape notice and capture.
 
Zippy,

Thanks for your posts. I know you spend time on them.

You have left out one important avenue of relevant research, however: the general problems with eyewitness testimony.
 
A little bit more

Jerrywayne,

You are correct. Eyewitness testimony is the/a key sticking point. Did they see what they claimed? Did they misidentify? Are there people (similar to in Sasquatchery) who hoax claims? Which is why, in part, I focused on one sighting that involved scientists (in 1905) that I managed to track down in the little time I had alloted to do this. But it also involves the willingness of eyewitnesses to come forward and report what they have seen. As Nicoll mentioned in that 1908 volume, even back then there was ridicule heaped upon people who mentioned that they saw creatures outside of the normal spectrum.

A little bit more about my anecdote. The person who talked with me about this infrared business and monitoring things from space was a person by the name of Dr. John Nicolaides (now deceased). If anyone wishes to engage in due diligence, you will be able to learn what that PhD was in. And perhaps more about his professional history.

This person had a large number of citations and awards on the wall in his house--specially that wall that was immediately beneath the staircase going up to the second floor. He had awards/citations from the US Navy, US Army, US Air Force, and Department of Defense. Some of these awards had ribbons on them also. For what it is worth, he also had a photograph of him standing with Ronald Reagan, when Reagan was President.

I knew this Nicolaides well enough to to tell everyone reading this that he wasn't pulling my leg. I also know that I didn't mishear what he said, either. But the anecdote was as described. The US Navy had been collecting data that was for tracking and discerning US and Russian subs; but it also picked up data on whales; and of creatures that were not whales, that from time to time were larger than whales. No numbers, no frequencies of spotting these in the data was told to me.

The anecdote tells me that there remains unexplored avenues for information acquisition. A Skeptic has to be open to that opportunity. I am open to that opportunity. (I also included the Marie Fish material, because that too is a currently unexplored avenue for information acquisition.)

One might ask how was this discernment done--as in, how did the US Navy analysts know when they were looking at submarines, or whales, or something else? I must tread carefully, as this topic may have sensitivies even now. But I think I can say the following: Varying classes of submarines have unqiue temperature signatures; whales have unique temperature signatures; and those creatures not whales also have unique temperature signatures. (But this is only a partial explanation.) The calibration of infrared sensors and their development took a long time. The first efforts involved flying over water with aircraft over the submerged subs at low altitude--then they proceeded to engage in tests at higher and higher altitudes. Then, they put the sensors on spacecraft, and those tests proceeded as well. I think one of the first spacecraft series to have infrared sensors (and send imagery to Earth) was the Transit satellites.

And there continue to be sightings of creatures uncatalogued by science into more recent times, albeit unverifiable ones. I provide this URL link where there is a description of two sightings in the 1980s in the San Francisco Bay area. But yes, these weren't trained observers. But these again were sightings of something with a long neck. (Scroll down.)

http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Sea_serpent

RE: Trawling nets. Again, I am going to ask where these trawling efforts are done. Can you provide a map or maps? That would be helpful. This might be an avenue of further research, as it might aid in where mid-water/pelagic trawling goes on, and where it doesn't. And those that engage in this trawling could possibly be an untapped source of eyewitness sightings of uncatalogued creatures as well.

I have seen this Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_bottom_trawlers where they discuss bottom trawling, and the history of either curtalment of the practice, or outright bans:

"...

Today, some countries regulate bottom trawling within their jurisdictions: [1]

• The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration banned bottom trawling off most of its Pacific coast in early 2006 and has restricted the practice severely off its other coasts as well. [2] This Federal regulation affects areas between 3–300 miles from the coast (areas within 3 miles (4.8 km) of the coast are State regulated).

• The Council of the European Union in 2004 applied "a precautionary approach" and closed the sensitive Darwin Mounds off Scotland to bottom trawling.

• In 2005, the FAO’s General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) banned bottom trawling below 1000 metres and, in January 2006, completely closed ecologically sensitive areas off Italy, Cyprus, and Egypt to all bottom trawling. //

• Norway first recognized in 1999 that trawling had caused significant damage to its cold-water lophelia corals. Norway has since established a program to determine the location of cold-water corals within its EEZ so as to quickly close those areas to bottom trawling.

• Canada has acted to protect vulnerable coral reef ecosystems from bottom trawling off Nova Scotia. The Northeast Channel was protected by a fisheries closure in 2002, and the Gully area was protected by its designation as a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in 2004.

• Australia in 1999 established the Tasmanian Seamounts Marine Reserve to prohibit bottom trawling in the south Tasman Sea. Australia also prohibits bottom trawling in The Great Australian Bight Marine Park near Ceduna off South Australia. In 2004, Australia established the world’s largest marine protected area in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park where fishing and other extractive activities are prohibited.

• New Zealand in 2001 closed 19 seamounts within its EEZ to bottom trawling, including in the Chatham Rise, sub-Antarctic waters, and off the east and west coasts of the North Island. New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton announced on 14 February 2006 that a draft agreement had been reached with fishing companies to ban bottom trawling in 30 percent of New Zealand's exclusive economic zone, an area of about 1.2 million km² reaching from sub-Antarctic waters to sub-tropical ones. [3] But only a small fraction of the area proposed for protection will cover areas actually vulnerable to bottom trawling. [4]

• Palau has banned all bottom trawling within its jurisdiction and by any Palauan or Palauan corporation anywhere in the world. [5]

..."

This bottom trawling ban also includes a large area in the Aleutians: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Large...+Saved+From+Destructive+Bottom...-a0128448434


I am certain everyone is aware of the carcass that was netted by a Japanese trawler in 1977. But the key item was that the creature (identified to be the remains of a basking shark, see this URL link: http://www.paleo.cc/paluxy/plesios.htm) was already dead and in a state of decomposition when captured.

As to the thinking expressed in this thead that trawling equates with an area being explored and known similar to what we would know about Yellowstone National Park, or regions of Antarctica, I would suggest that you ask marine scientists and oceanographers about whether such a viewpoint is valid or not. And see what they say.

It is definite that there are large animals unknown and uncatalogued by science still in the oceans awaiting discovery (the statistics quoted earlier in this thread of the 2012 paper make those nearly 100% definite odds). Whether that also includes long-necked creatures remains unproven, but it equally remains that their existence is a possiblity.

And it is up to interested Skeptics to attempt to track down the information to determine how much a possiblity that existence may be.
 
Let's look at the problem as one of probabilities.

What is the probability that an undiscovered species of sea creature with average length = 1 meter exists?

For the purpose of this discussion, I'd say 50-75%. There's a lot of unexplored seafloor, and a small local population of creatures of this size could probably go unnoticed or unreported.

What is the probability that an undiscovered species of sea creature with average length = 5 meters exists?

For this, I'd say near zero. Creatures of this size need a lot of food and the deep ocean is very nutrient-poor, making it unlikely that a sustainable population of large creatures exists on the ocean floor. Large creatures have a lot more biomass, so they don't decay away as readily, increasing the chance that they'd wash up on shore and be found somewhere. Large creatures are also much more likely to be observed directly and reported.

So, while it's interesting to contemplate the possible existence of sea monsters, I think it's improbable that they exist (at least as commonly envisioned.)

NB: I am not a marine biologist, nor did I sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. Your mileage may vary. Use only as directed. Consult your physician. Carthaginio delendo est.
 
Let's look at the problem as one of probabilities.

What is the probability that an undiscovered species of sea creature with average length = 1 meter exists?

For the purpose of this discussion, I'd say 50-75%. There's a lot of unexplored seafloor, and a small local population of creatures of this size could probably go unnoticed or unreported.

What is the probability that an undiscovered species of sea creature with average length = 5 meters exists?

For this, I'd say near zero. Creatures of this size need a lot of food and the deep ocean is very nutrient-poor, making it unlikely that a sustainable population of large creatures exists on the ocean floor. Large creatures have a lot more biomass, so they don't decay away as readily, increasing the chance that they'd wash up on shore and be found somewhere. Large creatures are also much more likely to be observed directly and reported.

So, while it's interesting to contemplate the possible existence of sea monsters, I think it's improbable that they exist (at least as commonly envisioned.)

NB: I am not a marine biologist, nor did I sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. Your mileage may vary. Use only as directed. Consult your physician. Carthaginio delendo est.
 
Zippy,

I was going to save some of this for my cryptid thread, but since you mentioned the 1980's sea serpent of San Francisco -

Here are video stills from the Clark brothers: http://home.access4less.net/~sfseaserpent/id7.html, make of them what you may.

Scroll down here to an informed conclusion that what the brothers claimed to have seen is not possible: http://home.access4less.net/~sfseaserpent/id4.html

Here is the web page article by one of the experts who endorsed the sea serpent video, and tell me what you think: http://my.opera.com/mycpaiva/blog/2...esonychids-post-deluvian-animals-in-existence
 
Thanks Jerrywayne for these links. I will get back to you once I look at all of them.

The view that the world is fully explored is incorrect. I think, with the information that I have in hand currently, that stating that trawling is the equivalent of saying that a region is well explored by humans is false. I was attempting to think of a relevant metaphor, and it may be somewhat akin to saying when one is flying a bush plane over tropical rainforest (say in the Amazon) that you are "exploring" the region. The people in the plane are not really "exploring" in the same way as someone is on the river, or under the forest canopy.

I have an additional question in regards to trawling. Are there news reports or instances of such nets capturing 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 foot live creatures? Thought I would ask that as well.
 
Jerrywayne,

I had a chance to look at the links you provided. Thanks for posting them.

The one on Chupacabras I shrug my shoulders. I was under the impression that one of those large-eared hairless dog-like/coyote-like things was taken in for DNA testing, although I don't recall what they found out.

The SanFrancisco sightings. I would like to see the entire 2004 video, and any others that they managed to film (plenty of video stills showing something, but it was from such a far distance that the original video was taken from versus the target object, can't say anything other than that). I will attempt to investigate this further.

The descriptions that the brothers provided to the US Naval Oceans Systems Center analyst about the 1985 sighting event shows, I think, the difficulties of having people who are unfamiliar with what they were looking at attempting to describe (as best they can) what they saw to someone who has familiarity with the subject, but was not an eyewitness. Bascially he told them that what they described and the behaviors seen couldn't exist on any known animal, based on the information known to Forrest Wood about what exists in the oceans (and yes, I am not familiar with any animal who locomotes with that exaggerated an up-and-down motion that was described--kind of like a snake, but moved 90 degrees vertically).

But I give them one kudo--the brothers apparently attempted to write down (when it was freshly recent) everything that they could recall that they saw. That's a good first step.

I also noticed that these sightings were not eyewitnessed (even though it is of a specific geographic area, and not on the ocean) on a daily, or weekly, or even monthly occurrence. Only from time to time.

I think that they did see something, and it was outside-of-the-ordinary enough to their sense of reality that they needed to talk about it with others.

The Bay might be an appropriate area to concentrate some resources to learn more, and to evaluate whether something of interest is indeed happening there. The reality may be less exotic than what they feel it is, but it may be more interesting than merely mistaken ID of pinnipeds or birds or something similar.

But nothing won't be known for sure unless some activities are engaged in there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom