Sea monster

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Picture taken from a Hetzel copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Sea monsters are sea-dwelling mythical or legendary creatures, often believed to be of immense size. Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or multi-armed beasts. They can be slimy or scaly and are often pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water. The definition of a "monster" is subjective, and some sea monsters may have been based on scientifically accepted creatures such as whales and types of giant and colossal squid.

Sightings and legends[edit]


Historically, decorative drawings of heraldic dolphins and sea monsters were frequently used to illustrate maps, such as the Carta marina. This practice died away with the advent of modern cartography. Nevertheless, stories of sea monsters and eyewitness accounts which claim to have seen these beasts persist to this day. Such sightings are often cataloged and studied by folklorists and cryptozoologists.


Sea monster accounts are found in virtually all cultures that have contact with the sea. For example, Avienus relates of Carthaginian explorer Himilco's voyage "...there monsters of the deep, and beasts swim amid the slow and sluggishly crawling ships." (lines 117-29 of Ora Maritima). Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed to have encountered a lion-like monster with "glaring eyes" on his return voyage after formally claiming St. John's, Newfoundland (1583) for England.[1] Another account of an encounter with a sea monster comes from July 1734. Hans Egede, a Dano-Norwegian missionary, reported that on a voyage to Gothaab/Nuuk on the western coast of Greenland he observed:[2]


Other reports are known from the Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans (e.g. see Heuvelmans 1968).

There is a Tlingit legend about a sea monster named Gunakadeit (Goo-na'-ka-date) who brought prosperity and good luck to a village in crisis, people starving in the home they made for themselves on the southeastern coast of Alaska.

A more recent development has been the two mysterious noises "Bloop" and "Slow Down" picked up by hydrophonic equipment in 1997 and not heard since. While matching the audio characteristics of an animal, they were deemed too large to be a whale. Investigations thus far have been inconclusive.

It is debatable what these modern "monsters" might be. Possibilities include the frilled shark, basking shark, oarfish, giant squid, seiches,[clarification needed - discuss] or whales. For example Ellis (1999) suggested the Egede monster might have been a giant squid. Other hypotheses are that modern-day monsters are surviving specimens of giant marine reptiles, such as an ichthyosaur or plesiosaur, from the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, or extinct whales like Basilosaurus. Ship damage from Tropical cyclones such as hurricanes or typhoons may also be another possible origin of sea monsters.

In 1892, Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans, then director of the Royal Zoological Gardens at The Hague saw the publication of his The Great Sea Serpent, which suggested that many sea serpent reports were best accounted for as a previously unknown giant, long-necked pinniped.

It is likely that many other reports of sea monsters are misinterpreted sightings of shark and whale carcasses (see below), floating kelp, logs or other flotsam such as abandoned rafts, canoes and fishing nets.

Legend of the Loch Ness Monster[edit]

The legend of the Loch Ness Monster dates back to the 6th century when Saint Columba was living in the land of Picts. He supposedly met with a large monster in Loch Ness. A century later Saint Adomnan wrote Life of Sant Columba cataloging events that Columba witnessed such as a large water monster killing a man in Loch Ness and then attempting to kill another but stopping only by St. Columba's commanding him to in the name of God. The problem with this story and others written by Adomnan is that by the time they reached his ears they had passed through many different people. Most likely many additions were made.[3]

Alleged sea monster carcasses[edit]

The St. Augustine Monster was a carcass that washed ashore near St. Augustine, Florida in 1896. It was initially postulated to be a gigantic octopus.

Sea monster corpses have been reported since recent antiquity (Heuvelmans 1968). Unidentified carcasses are often called globsters. The alleged plesiosaur netted by the Japanese trawler Zuiyō Maru off New Zealand caused a sensation in 1977 and was immortalized on a Brazilian postage stamp before it was suggested by the FBI to be the decomposing carcass of a basking shark. Likewise, DNA testing confirmed that an alleged sea monster washed up on Fortune Bay, Newfoundland in August 2001, was a sperm whale.[4]

Another modern example of a "sea monster" was the strange creature washed up in Los Muermos on the Chilean sea shore in July 2003. It was first described as a "mammoth jellyfish as long as a bus" but was later determined to be another corpse of a sperm whale. Cases of boneless, amorphic globsters are sometimes believed to be gigantic octopuses, but it has now been determined that sperm whales dying at sea decompose in such a way that the blubber detaches from the body, forming featureless whitish masses that sometimes exhibit a hairy texture due to exposed strands of collagen fibers. The analysis of the Zuiyō Maru carcass revealed a comparable phenomenon in decomposing basking shark carcasses, which lose most of the lower head area and the dorsal and caudal fins first, making them resemble a plesiosaur.

Legendary sea monsters[edit]

Prima fontana dei mostri marini - First sea monster fountain, Florence
Seconda fontana dei mostri marini - Second sea monster fountain, Florence

Historically reported sea monsters[edit]

Sea monsters actually reported first or second hand include

Currently reported specific sea monsters[edit]

Sea monsters in fiction[edit]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Edward Haies: Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage To Newfoundland, 1583 In the fifth section after the notice "Footnote 11: Stephen Parmenius"
  2. ^ J. Mareš, Svět tajemných zvířat, Prague, 1997
  3. ^ "The Monster and the Saint". Junior Skeptic (19): 1. 2004. 