Monsters or rakshashas have been mentioned in mythology but even in modern history there have been accounts where monsters have been spotted. In this series of sea creatures of the deep, we will take a look at few such incidents. The descriptions have been collected from various sources and Metaphysics Knowledge has tried to present them in an unbiased form.

The Discovery of Coelacanth

In 1938 a strange fish was picked up min the nets of a South African trawler. It turned out to be a coelacanth, a fish that had been in existence about 300 million years ago, and was believed by scientists to have been extinct for   about 70 million years.

The coelacanth had no special protective features, so its survival all these millions of years was particularly remarkable. If the lowly coelacanth had such powers to survive, why not other ancient marine species? Might there be a few survivors somewhere in the depths of the ocean?

Sea Creatures of the Deep

The sea is vast and incredibly deep. Ships travel over only a small portion of the surface, and trawlers normally sink their nets to a depth of about 60 feet. Until recently scientists believed that fish could not survive at great depths, but a research vessel has now brought up a fish from a depth of over 26,000 feet. Although the ocean at that level is totally black, that fish still retained two small eyes eyes-evidence that it had once lived far closer to the surface.

We know that marine creatures are amazingly adaptable. Salmon leap rapids. A variety of lung fish can live out of water for four years. It is not impossible that certain prehistoric sea monsters have adapted to living in the ocean deeps.

PreHistoric Sea Creatures

At one time, perhaps as long as 200 million years ago, the seas was filled with giant monsters. There were massive sharks far larger than any we know today, enormous crabs, sea serpents of fantastic lengths, and huge lung fish, skates, and rays. Many of these creatures developed body armor and protective devices such as stings to insure their survival.

In 1930. Dr. Anton Brun caught the six-foot-long larva of an ell at a depth of only 1000 feet. On the assumption that to would mature to 18 times its length – although some eels reach 30 times their larval size – this eel would grow to a mammoth 110feet. Perhaps there are still larger species existing at still greater depths.

Sea Creatures in Tales of Seamen

Irrespective of the fact that whether they exist or not, sea monsters have long been a part of mariners’ tales. Among the many stories is one that took place in the late 18th century when a Danish sailing ship was having many days to spare due to lack of winds.

The Skipper – Magnus Dens – thought that it is a good opportunity to do some maintenance work on the ship and hence the sailors were put on the task to clean the exterior of the ship. This was done by hanging planks made of wood.

One day as the work was going on in routine, there was a shocking incident. A monster suddenly appeared from the sea and took two men into the sea. Infact a third man was also held by the sea creature but he managed to hold on tight to the railing of the ship. In the meantime the co workers on the ship came with axes and chopped off the arm of the monster after which he left and went down into the sea again. Of course the third person could not be saved and he died on the ship within the next 24 hours.

The Master of the ship described the arm as  being tapered in shape and extrapolating the length from the piece that was cut off, it was estimated that the entire arm could have been as long as 40 feet.

Pierre Denys de Montfort: The French Naturalist

Since those days technology was not as advanced as today, there were very few people who were ready to believe what Captain Den had to say. These days one can instantly shoot a video through mobile phones and upload on youtube for the entire world to see and judge for themselves and the GPS can give exact location of the ship at the time of the incident or possibly the satellites can detect something.

So the dilemma of the people in those days can be understood. However there was a French naturalist namely Pierre Monfort, who was willing to take up the story for further investigation to prove it either way. He started off by assuming that the monster sighted by Den’s ship was actually a huge octopus.

He included Dens’ account in his unfinished six-volume work The Natural History of Molluscs. These books were published in Paris between 1802 and 1805, and, unfortunately for Denys de Montfort’s reputation, he included a mixture of science and imagination in which fact was hard to distinguish from fiction.

The Frenchman’s one scientific supporter was the German naturalist Lorenz Oken, who, for all his renown, was slightly suspect because he also believed there were more and stranger things beneath the surface of the sea than had ever been seen above it. Despite great ridicule and criticism, Denys de Montfort continued to compile reports of “the sightings of monsters and serpents of the sea by mariners whose sincerity I do not and will not doubt.”

In Search for Monster Sea Creatures

True to his word, he followed every lead to find his giant octopus. Sometime in the 1790s he journeyed to  the northern Port of Dunkirk, where a group of American whale fishers were living and working. He wanted to interview the seamen and hear at first of the experiences that few people apart  from himself would credit. For example, here is a report he repeated: “One of those captains, named Ben Johnson, told me that  he  had harpooned a male whale, which, besides its very prominent penis placed under the belly, seemed to have another one coming out of its mouth”

Great Norwegian sea serpent

Descriptions of long, serpent-like creatures are common in accounts of sea monsters throughout history. Illustrated above is a woodcut from the 16th century of the

We will continue with our journey of deep sea monster creatures in our next posts…