UPDATED WITH VIDEO (21 July) If a poll were conducted into the public’s beliefs in a range of phenomena or fables, including ghosts and sea monsters, my guess is that apparitions would get a far higher rating than the Loch Ness Monster or other maritime mysteries.
In a satisfying piece of synchronicity, it was encouraging to learn that last night, while I was dealing with the fall-out from Prof Brian Cox’s insistence that ghosts do not exist and people who believe in them are mistaken, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) was holding a meeting at which the existence of sea monsters was not only discussed but actually supported by at least one of the speakers.
Before the sceptics take to their keyboards and bombard me with comments about the difference between ghosts and sea monsters (apart from the fact that, as sceptics, they probably don’t entertain the possibility of either), I want to point out that in the quotes that follow, the statements made could equally apply to attitudes towards ghostly sightings.
Science writer and University of Portsmouth palaeontologist Dr Darren Naish, one of the speakers at “Cryptozoology: science or pseudoscience?”, a public event held at London Zoo on 12 July, 2011, said prior to the meeting:
“The huge number of ‘sea monster’ sightings now on record can’t all be explained away as mistakes, sightings of known animals or hoaxes. At least some of the better ones, some of them made by trained naturalists and such, probably are descriptions of encounters with real, unknown animals. And because new, large marine animals continue to be discovered – various new whale and shark species have been named in recent years – the idea that such a species might await discovery is, at the very least, plausible.”
The talks were chaired by Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature, and the event was organised by another of the speakers, Charles Paxton from University of St Andrews, who provided this interesting observation: “The plural of ‘anecdote’ can be ‘data’. Cryptozoological reports can be analysed in a rigorous, statistical manner if the conclusions are restrained.”
Cautiously, Naish (left) explains on Tetrapod Zoology that one of the subjects to be addressed at the meeting is “whether cryptozoology – whatever the term might mean – should be considered a valid branch of zoological science” though he adds that it should not be taken as evidence that the subject “has finally ‘come in from the cold’ nor that the doors are wide open for the acceptance by ‘mainstream science’ of cryptozoologists and cryptozoological investigations. Nevertheless, this is an important step and it demonstrates that the investigation of mystery animal reports remains a topic of interest to trained scientists, or some trained scientists, at least.”
He also makes a comment that certainly applies to those, like Brian Cox, who dismiss the existence of other phenomena, such as ghost sightings:
“What I object to in particular is the knee-jerk reaction that any interest in cryptozoology makes you a crank or a naïve believer in the impossible. Not only are some targets of cryptozoology entirely ‘believable’ (example: new marine sharks and cetaceans*), the assumption that people interested in cryptozoology necessarily ‘believe’ in the existence of the supposed targets of cryptozoology is erroneous. Clearly, you can investigate mystery animal reports because you’re interested in what they might tell you about the evolution and transmission of folklore, the reliability and abilities of eyewitnesses, and so on. Furthermore, I always thought that the scientific evaluation of claims of any kind was meant to be a good thing (see comments in Woodley et al. (2008)). Basically, there’s definitely science to do here, whether you advocate the possible existence of the respective supposed animal species or not.”
Anyone who dismisses the possibility that sea monsters exist needs to provide an explanation for a sighting reported by two experienced British naturalists, Michael J. Nicholl and E.G.B. Meade-Waldo, Fellows of the Zoological Society of London and best known for their ornithological work, at the beginning of the 20th century. Matthew A. Bille tells the story of their encounter at Strangemag.com: The men reported seeing “a creature of most extraordinary form and proportions” during a research cruise aboard the yacht Valhalla, 15 miles east of the mouth of Brazil’s Parahiba River.
They first spotted a large dorsal fin which they did not recognise as belonging to any known fish. Meade-Waldo turned his binoculars on the object and immediately a long neck, about the thickness of a slim man’s body, rose from the water to a height of seven or eight feet.
The sighting, which lasted several minutes and took place in perfect conditions, was reported in the ZSL’s Proceedings (1906) and in the book Three Voyages of a Naturalist. Writer Rupert T. Gould also gave it extensive coverage in his book The Case for the Sea-Serpent (1930).
The illustration I have used at the top of this Blog, incidentally, is not an eye-witness drawing but an imaginative depiction by James Huckaby. However, it does show a resemblance to another sighting of a sea serpent that has been reported in the waters of British Columbia, Canada. Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge and head of its Polar Ocean Physics Group – as well as being a member of the Society for Psychical Research – tipped me off about this particular monster. He tells me:
“A physical oceanographic colleague in Canada, Paul LeBlond, wrote an excellent book [see cover, above left] on the sea serpent which frequents BC waters: the ‘Cadborosaurus’ (because it was seen in Cadboro Bay). There is even (almost) physical evidence in that a young serpent was sicked up by a whale that was killed at the local whaling station in 1937. Unfortunately, although it was photographed, the body was not kept.”
If sea serpents do exist, they are not, of course, paranormal. But then it could be that some phenomena described as “paranormal” are also normal, natural events that we incorrectly label as paranormal because we do not yet recognise them for what they are.
UPDATE: Eight days after I posted the above, Paul LeBlond appeared in a special “Alaskan Monster Hunt” edition of Discovery Channel‘s “Deadliest Catch” series. After watching a video of an unidentified creature (see below) made by fisherman Kelly Nash the stars of the show, Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand, go in search of the monster and, it seems, after picking up a large underwater object on their radar, come very close to catching it.
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