Sea Monsters

A vast portion of the oceans are still unvisited by man. I believe that there are huge versions of common aquatic creatures. Squid for example. The Kraken legend derives from this. Seamonsters have always fascinated me.

OP is still traumatized by his dream of Chrissy Metz in a bikini in a municipal swimming pool.

There would be sea monster carcasses washing up somewhere if they existed.

Does anybody remember the prologue in one of Herman Melville books where he talks about taking a nap and draping the hand over the edge over the bed... and a monster grabbing it? I'm serious. My edibles are kicking in but I'm going to rabbit hole this.

I’ve had that feeling in the Gulf swimming in deeper water. Anything could be down there. Me yarbles started to tingling.

Don't go near the water!!!

Linda Moulton Howe gets to the bottom of the oceans (& other stuff) in her latest YT upload.

Starts around 11:16 =

I used to think that there had to be some large undiscovered animals somewhere in the world, but decades later it's seeming unlikely.

[quote]There would be sea monster carcasses washing up somewhere if they existed.

If they exist below a thermocline in the deep ocean, their dead bodies would not necessarily be able to penetrate that and rise to the surface.

Does anyone else feel sick while looking at images of prehistoric sea creatures? I think it's a primal fear.

"Sigmund, you're through!"

I’m on a sea monster diet.

More images please!

Sea monsters are cancelled for eating trans women of color!

"ferried at the though"

what?

The Mola Mola is freaky!

Sea monsters - one of my favorite topics. If anyone can recommend a book, I'd be delighted. I've read a lot about the Loch Ness monster already.

Yeah cool thread. Thanks for the links guys

Meet Deep Blue, at 20 feet in length, possibly the largest great white shark existing today.

Thanks for your post, R11. I had to look up thermocline and found very interesting articles about oceans.

There are very likely prehistoric-like things living the depths of the oceans, 13,000 feet down and deeper, that we have never seen.

I prefer Sea Monkeys

[quote] Is anyone else ferried at the though of sea monsters?

No, I take my yacht. Who would be caught dead on a ferry?

If they’re all as lame as the blobfish then I’m not worried.

Stupid goddamn blobfish.

R22 Just to be clear. you do know this was a toy, right?

[quote]If they exist below a thermocline in the deep ocean, their dead bodies would not necessarily be able to penetrate that and rise to the surface.

Could nuclear blasts alter that?

R29 Yes, I do, but for a very long time that was considered to be the definitive image of whatever lives there, if anything actually does. It's an intriguing subject.

Blasphemy, r29!

A real life sea monster...Megalodon. And only extinct for a couple of million years. Can you imagine?

OP, sea monsters are merely a powerful metaphor for the horrible dangers that lurk everywhere, all through out our lives. If you've not realized that by now, you have not adequately worried about your vulnerability and your mortality. There is a much more anxiety in this world than you have suffered. Yet.

Everyone’s so awestruck by Megalodon but it was a loser. It had evolved to be so big to hunt whales, but then there was a new girl in town and it was Megalodon that was on the menu. Bye bitch.

[quote] A real life sea monster...Megalodon. And only extinct for a couple of million years. Can you imagine?

I CAN imagine!

I have always been puzzled by divers who say shit like “sharks must be respected” and “as long as you know that you are entering their world” and “it was a case of mistaken identity”. How does any of this shit help you when you are being attacked?

The CREEPSHOW 2019 series has a Loch Ness Monster episode designed by Tom Savini.

Sea "monsters" are merely the usual suspects. Giant squid, rays...

I believe that creatures like the Loch Ness Monster and Champ, are primitive Snake Necked Turtles.

This picture was in a book I read as a kid. It might have been Time Life's Mysteries of the Unexplained. I was terrified of it.

This terrifying creature was the source of many sea monster myths, until everyone realized it just wanted a little rub.

Part 1

Part 2

[quote]It had evolved to be so big to hunt whales, but then there was a new girl in town

The LindaLavinodon?

My uncle has a theory that Chessie (the Chesapeake Bay's version of the Loch Ness Monster) is really just manatee sightings that have ventured north from Florida. He's probably right, the water's probably getting too warm for them down south thanks to global warming.

Oh god, I do believe the beast whose name starts with a D is here.

.......

I'm more terrified by rogue waves that are very real and happening all the time on seas around the world.

We can also find comfort in our sea monsters (or at least in our Greenland sharks). This is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve read over the past couple of months.

[quote] In​ 1606 a devastating pestilence swept through London; the dying were boarded up in their homes with their families, and a decree went out that the theatres, the bear-baiting yards and the brothels be closed. It was then that Shakespeare wrote one of his very few references to the plague, catching at our precarity: ‘The dead man’s knell/Is there scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives/Expire before the flowers in their caps/Dying or ere they sicken.’ As he wrote, a Greenland shark who is still alive today swam untroubled through the waters of the northern seas. Its parents would have been old enough to have lived alongside Dante; its great-great-grandparents alongside Julius Caesar. For thousands of years Greenland sharks have swum in silence, as above them the world has burned, rebuilt, burned again.

Brandon Flynn loves himself sea monsters.

I watch a show on Greenland sharks. Apparently they pickle and ferment them. Its a Greenland speciality. Hakarl it's called. Fascinating sharks.

Big fluffy mystery sea kitties!

Was it a Greenland shark that pair of asshole Norwegian men (or Danish or Icelandish) were torturing on Youtube? The shark was apparently hundreds of years old and those idiots were making fun of it. It made me furious.

No, they were taunting a tuna. They were messing with a marlin. They were sassing a salmon.

[quote]the water's probably getting too warm for them down south thanks to global warming.

Um, no.

Sea Monsters vs Space Monsters =

As a kid the movie Tentacles scared the crap out of me

......

[quote] Sea "monsters" are merely the usual suspects. Giant squid, rays...

Oh please. Rays don’t hurt anyone.

There goes a narwhal

Here comes a bikini whale!

bump.

Some sea monsters have a wonderful sense of humor about it all

I surf and when you see dolphins at first, it scares the living crap out of you (they're bigger than you think, are silent and like to get close), then you realize they're dolphins and it's great. This is when you realize you're in a world that you know very little about, and you're a tiny speck. I prefer to surf in murky water, so I don't freak out about dark figures in the water.

My Scottish relatives have always told me the monsters in the lochs are giant eels, nothing more.

"Sea monsters - one of my favorite topics. If anyone can recommend a book, I'd be delighted. I've read a lot about the Loch Ness monster already."

I would suggest "Monsters of the Sea: The History, Natural History, and Mythology of the Oceans' Most Fantastic Creatures" by Richard Ellis. It's a very interesting books, with a lot of great information. It's where I found out about something called a "Jenny Haniver." It's basically a carcass of some kind of sea creature; sometimes it's parts of carcasses sewn together. It's fashioned into some kind of shape resembling something vaguely humanoid; they've been passed off as mermaids to gullible people. Of course they're hoaxes, but I'd never hear of them before and they're really something to see. You can almost believe, looking at one, that it is some kind of strange sea monster.

Yes that was very good R50.

R67 That's the very book I've been eyeing. Thanks for the info, I'll order that one.

FYI: These bitches are still alive today.

Has anyone on here been to the web site

mentioned at the end of R44?

"I’ve been having nightmares about them [sea monsters] since I was a toddler "

Funny thing, I've been having nightmares about lava and volcanoes since I was a kid, but I love volcanoes in real life. I climb them, I love thermal basins and geyers, I've flown over lava lakes in craters and poked around live lava flows! But even though I love vulcanism, my subconscious still uses them as a symbol for something I fear. I wish I knew what.

But I've never had any fear of sea monsters, and I've been swimming (SCUBA diving) with sharks, and had a whale swim under my kayak in Antarctica. Really! I was kayaking on a calm day in a bay on the Antarctic Peninsula, and there were whales all around... and giant bubbles rose up from the deep and popped all around my kayak. I wasn't frightened, I was THRILLED!

R21: there’s a crustacean called an isopod that’s ubiquitous right around here. 1000 miles from salt water: they’re called sowbugs, and their main defense is curling up into a little ball that ends up looking like a snail shell. It’s just that wet in the midwest. Ghosts of the shallow seas that once covered us.

Ps: it’s mentioned in your linkt article.

Paintings and illustrations of sex monsters are terrifying. I know they don't exist but to even imagine something like that is scary as hell.

Do Greenland sharks ever eat people?

Greenland sharks live deep down in the sea, so far down that the only way they're ever going to eat a human is if someone attaches weights to a corpse. Lots of weights.

[quote] illustrations of sex monsters

*Sea* monsters, R75? Or has the thread taken a turn...

Netflix has a creepy as fuck sea monster movie called Sweetheart.

Scientists thought the coelacanthhad gone extinct even before the asteroid hit and in 1938 fishermen caught one. You never really know what else is hiding down there.

Yeah, the repeated posts of dubious YT videos is a hallmark of the creature know as D Rochelle.

[quote]Meet Deep Blue, at 20 feet in length, possibly the largest great white shark existing today.

Jesus fuck that is one bigass shark!

I think it's indisputable that there are numerous life forms that exist in the deepest parts of the ocean that mankind hasn't discovered yet, but as to whether they could be massive enough to qualify as sea monsters I'm not sure. Anything huge enough to be considered 'monstrous' would surely need to have a huge food supply too, so you'd think it's not particularly sustainable purely from a logical perspective.

Fascinating to consider though, considering we have explored relatively little of the world's oceans - around 5% according to one article I just saw (from 2016). 95% of the ocean is unexplored - so what could be living there? Anything!

Most animals at the bottom of the sea are quite small. That horrible looking angler fish looks fearsome but is too small to do much damage to a human.

It gives me chills just imaging what an ancient ocean looked like

Seriously r85. Imagine encountering a Moasasaur and a Tylosaurus!

Those days when the Kraken used to attack pirate ships….

I'm a comin' to get ya!

**chomp** **chomp**

There’s the Magical Liopleurodon of Charlie, Let’s Go to Candy Mountain fame.

A lot of "sea monster" sightings are thought to be Giant Oarfish, a huge eel-like fish that can grow up to 20 feet long. Normally they stay deep in the ocean and have no interaction with humans, but on the rare occasions they come to the surface they can give the classic sea-serpent effect of showing multiple loops of body breaking the surface.

And they have the classic sea monster's dorsal crest.

Another video of marine biologist Ocean Ramsey and her team swimming with a Great White Shark believed to be “Deep Blue” about 10 miles off Oahu.

I find this to be totally mesmerizing... the video, the music, the wonderful idea of this amazing creature that migrates from Baja Mexico to Hawaii every 16 months or so and is thought to be about 50 years old.

SHHEEE MONSHTERSH!

I have a fear of oceans and deep water overall.

I have dreams about telepathic sharks trying to compel me to get close enough to the edge of the boat so they can get me.

You rang?

There are a lot of gross looking sea creatures but no real sea "monsters." Too bad. I think life would be more interesting if they existed. I've always found illustrations of imaginary sex monsters scary as hell. Has there ever really been a great sea monster horror movie ("Jaws" doesn't count; sharks are real)? I'd like to see one with great special effects.

The question about Greenland sharks attacking people is something I have wondered about. Does anyone know?