I’ve had a thought based on something that Jeremy Wade said.

I used to like the idea of sea monsters in my youth and become more cynical as time progressed and we’ve learnt more about whales, squid, ribbon fish, sunfish, dugongs and the deep sea.

But just perhaps …
… we know of many instances where tens of thousands of like creatures come together. We’ve seen it with spider crabs, other crabs, sea snakes, sardines, even hammerhead sharks.

What if a sea monster isn’t a single organism but a superorganism composed of tens of thousands of individuals swimming together. Such as eels.

If that is treated as a hypothesis, then that hypothesis could be tested by looking at the timing of sea monster sightings. The sightings would appear at the same time each year for a brief period of no more than a fortnight.

Is there any place on or off the web that records dates and places of sea monster sightings? To check for yearly periodicity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_monster#Currently_reported_specific_sea_monsters

PermeateFree said:

:)

Bubblecar said:

PermeateFree said:

:)

Animals are funny sleeping

The Svalbard Pliosaur.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/mar/16/jurassic-sea-monster-pliosaur-fossil

Bubblecar said:

The Svalbard Pliosaur.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/mar/16/jurassic-sea-monster-pliosaur-fossil

Not the sort of thing you would want to meet down a dark alley.

Bubblecar said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_monster#Currently_reported_specific_sea_monsters

Dates, dates. I need dates.
Shape is irrelevent for superorganisms such as a fish school..
Location is only slightly relevent.

Possibly a bit fantastical, but interesting:

https://www.strangescience.net/stsea2.htm

And it looks like someone has thought about this sort of thing before to some extent.

http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n2519/pdf/06_france.pdf

How much searching have you done?

http://tetzoo.com/blog/2019/4/27/sea-monster-sightings-and-the-plesiosaur-effect

Fishing gear entanglements as sea monsters. A real paper on this!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/faf.12505

buffy said:

“I offer my own parsimonious explanation that the observed ‘sea monsters’ may have been sea turtles entangled in pre‑plastic fishing gear or maritime debris.”

Fishing gear entanglements as sea monsters. A real paper on this!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/faf.12505

Thanks for that!

I wasn’t thinking of fishing gear entanglements. Or turtles. I was thinking of tens of thousands of breeding eels writhing together in a sex orgy. (Perhaps serotonin related like breeding locusts). Resulting in a snake-like object powerful enough to jump out of the water. If so, sightings would be seasonal, perhaps yearly in the same month each time. Seldom the same shape or size twice.

Very little is known of eel breeding behaviour.

From buffy’s link, an excellent starting point.

mollwollfumble said:

buffy said:

“I offer my own parsimonious explanation that the observed ‘sea monsters’ may have been sea turtles entangled in pre‑plastic fishing gear or maritime debris.”

Fishing gear entanglements as sea monsters. A real paper on this!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/faf.12505

Thanks for that!

I wasn’t thinking of fishing gear entanglements. Or turtles. I was thinking of tens of thousands of breeding eels writhing together in a sex orgy. (Perhaps serotonin related like breeding locusts). Resulting in a snake-like object powerful enough to jump out of the water. If so, sightings would be seasonal, perhaps yearly in the same month each time. Seldom the same shape or size twice.

Very little is known of eel breeding behaviour.

From buffy’s link, an excellent starting point.

I looked for “sea serpent” in the Trove newspaper collection.
18,528 total results. Eek. That looks like a good start, too.
A lot of them aren’t real sightings, far more are an appearance of sea serpents in fiction or names of ships or naval operations. A few are historical.

I haven’t seen any “new” sightings in the newspapers yet. Certainly nothing by that name after 1960.

Spiny Norman said:

The Loon

captain_spalding said:

Spiny Norman said:

The Loon

Last seen rusting away on a shore somewhere.

captain_spalding said:

captain_spalding said:

Spiny Norman said:

The Loon

Last seen rusting away on a shore somewhere.

roughbarked said:

captain_spalding said:

captain_spalding said:

The Loon

Last seen rusting away on a shore somewhere.

It’s circular because it looks like a pi.

captain_spalding said:

Spiny Norman said:

The Loon

the Lun

Ignoring all newspaper reports identified as oarfish or decomposed whale / shark.

No reports of new sea serpent sightings in Australian newspapers after 1960. Two reported sightings in 1960, one from Aberdeen and one from Bermuda.

No obvious regular timing so far. Here are sightings mentioned in Australian newspapers between 1954 and 1960.

8 Jun 1875 – off Brazil
25 Sep 1960 – Hamilton harbour, Bermuda
8 Jun 1890 (not a sea serpent, possibly an elephant seal or beached whale) Great Sandy Island, Qld
Sep 1955 – Lake Okanahen, British Columbia
Aug & 22 Sep 1933 – Loch Ness
9 Dec 1954 – Loch Ness
2 Feb 1925 – Port Stevens, NSW
6 Nov 1954 – Hobart, in the Channel – sketchy details
6 Aug 1948 – 1015 miles SE of St Helena

June, August, September are when the bulk of sea serpent sightings are, so far from the above list.

A note is that a Danish scientific expedition is claimed to have recovered a baby eel-like sea serpent by dredging off the Congo River Estuary circa 1949-1951. Details are sketchy but I’d like to look into this further. I don’t think there’s much hope that the DNA is intact after this time.

More details of the Danish expedition, but no mention of sea serpent, from wikipedia. The second of the three Danish Galathea expeditions took place in 1950 to 1952, in July 1951 when, while investigating the Philippine Trench, scientists secured biological material from a record depth of 10,190 m. It found the fish species Antipodocottus galatheae and Abyssobrotula galatheae, the snail species Guttula galatheae and, above all, living Monoplacophora, a class of “ancestral mollusc” which until then was known only from the fossil record. The biggest sensation at the time, however, was the discovery of barnacles on a rock from the bottom of the Philippine Trench.

The 1948 sighting is worth repeating.

mollwollfumble said:

Ignoring all newspaper reports identified as oarfish or decomposed whale / shark.

No reports of new sea serpent sightings in Australian newspapers after 1960. Two reported sightings in 1960, one from Aberdeen and one from Bermuda.

No obvious regular timing so far. Here are sightings mentioned in Australian newspapers between 1954 and 1960.

8 Jun 1875 – off Brazil
25 Sep 1960 – Hamilton harbour, Bermuda
8 Jun 1890 (not a sea serpent, possibly an elephant seal or beached whale) Great Sandy Island, Qld
Sep 1955 – Lake Okanahen, British Columbia
Aug & 22 Sep 1933 – Loch Ness
9 Dec 1954 – Loch Ness
2 Feb 1925 – Port Stevens, NSW
6 Nov 1954 – Hobart, in the Channel – sketchy details
6 Aug 1948 – 1015 miles SE of St Helena

June, August, September are when the bulk of sea serpent sightings are, so far from the above list.

A note is that a Danish scientific expedition is claimed to have recovered a baby eel-like sea serpent by dredging off the Congo River Estuary circa 1949-1951. Details are sketchy but I’d like to look into this further. I don’t think there’s much hope that the DNA is intact after this time.

More details of the Danish expedition, but no mention of sea serpent, from wikipedia. The second of the three Danish Galathea expeditions took place in 1950 to 1952, in July 1951 when, while investigating the Philippine Trench, scientists secured biological material from a record depth of 10,190 m. It found the fish species Antipodocottus galatheae and Abyssobrotula galatheae, the snail species Guttula galatheae and, above all, living Monoplacophora, a class of “ancestral mollusc” which until then was known only from the fossil record. The biggest sensation at the time, however, was the discovery of barnacles on a rock from the bottom of the Philippine Trench.

The 1948 sighting is worth repeating.

Sounds like a log floating on a current?