Sea monsters are beings from
folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
believed to dwell in the sea and often imagined to be of immense size. Marine
monsters can take many forms, including sea
dragons,
sea serpents, or tentacled beasts. They can be slimy and scaly and are often pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water. The definition of a "monster" is subjective; further, some sea monsters may have been based on scientifically accepted creatures, such as
whales and types of
giant
In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: ''gigas'', cognate giga-) are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''giant'' is first attested in 1297 fr ...
and
colossal squid.
Sightings and legends
Sea monster accounts are found in virtually all cultures that have contact with the sea. For example,
Avienius
Postumius Rufius Festus Avienius (sometimes erroneously Avienus) was a Latin writer of the 4th century AD. He was a native of Volsinii in Etruria, from the distinguished family of the Rufii Festi.
Avienius is not identical with the historian ...
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
Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1539 – 9 September 1583) was an English adventurer, explorer, member of parliament and soldier who served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and was a pioneer of the English colonial empire in North America ...
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. 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
Godthåb
Nuuk (; da, Nuuk, formerly ) is the capital and largest city of Greenland, a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark. Nuuk is the seat of government and the country's largest cultural and economic centre. The major cities from other coun ...
on the western coast of
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...
he observed:
a most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crow's nest on the mainmast
The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall spar, or arrangement of spars, erected more or less vertically on the centre-line of a ship or boat. Its purposes include carrying sails, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a navigation lig ...
. The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship.
Ellis (1999) suggested the Egede monster might have been a
giant squid.
There is a
Tlingit
The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ), 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.
Other reports are known from the
Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...
,
Indian and
Southern Oceans (e.g. see Heuvelmans 1968).
Cryptozoologists
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness M ...
suggest that modern-day monsters are surviving specimens of giant marine reptiles, such as an
ichthyosaur or
plesiosaur, from the
Jurassic
The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...
and
Cretaceous Periods, or extinct whales like ''
Basilosaurus
''Basilosaurus'' (meaning "king lizard") is a genus of large, predatory, prehistoric archaeocete whale from the late Eocene, approximately 41.3 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). First described in 1834, it was the first archaeocete and prehistor ...
''. Ship damage from
Tropical cyclones
A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Dependi ...
such as hurricanes or typhoons may also be another possible origin of sea monsters.
In 1892,
Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans
Anthonie (Antoon) Cornelis Oudemans Jzn (November 12, 1858 – January 14, 1943) was a Dutch zoologist. Although he was a specialist in acarology, the study of the ticks and mites, he was often best known for his books on sea monsters and the do ...
, then director of the Royal Zoological Gardens at
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...
, 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
Pinnipeds (pronounced ), commonly known as seals, are a widely range (biology), distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic, mostly marine mammal, marine mammals. They comprise the extant taxon, extant family (biology ...
.
It is likely that many other reports of sea monsters are misinterpreted sightings of shark and whale carcasses (see below), floating
kelp
Kelps are large brown algae seaweeds that make up the order Laminariales. There are about 30 different genera. Despite its appearance, kelp is not a plant - it is a heterokont, a completely unrelated group of organisms.
Kelp grows in "underwa ...
, logs or other flotsam such as abandoned rafts, canoes and fishing nets.
Alleged carcasses
Sea monster corpses have been reported since recent antiquity (Heuvelmans 1968). Unidentified carcasses are often called
globsters
A globster or blob is an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water. A globster is distinguished from a normal beached carcass by being hard to identify, at least by initial untrained observers, ...
. 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
The basking shark (''Cetorhinus maximus'') is the second-largest living shark and fish, after the whale shark, and one of three plankton-eating shark species, along with the whale shark and megamouth shark. Adults typically reach in leng ...
. Likewise,
DNA testing confirmed that an alleged sea monster washed up on Newfoundland in August 2001, was a
sperm whale.
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
Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbrell ...
as long as a
bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
" 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.
In May 2017,
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
published an article claiming a giant sea monster's corpse was found in Indonesia, and also published an alleged photograph of "it."
Example
*
*
Aspidochelone
According to the tradition of the '' Physiologus'' and medieval bestiaries, the aspidochelone is a fabled sea creature, variously described as a large whale or vast sea turtle, and a giant sea monster with huge spines on the ridge of its back. ...
, a giant turtle or whale that appeared to be an island and lured sailors to their doom
*
Bakunawa
*
Capricorn, Babylonian Water-Goat featured in the
Zodiac
The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The pat ...
*
Cai Cai-Vilu
*
Cetus
Cetus () is a constellation, sometimes called 'the whale' in English. The Cetus was a sea monster in Greek mythology which both Perseus and Heracles needed to slay. Cetus is in the region of the sky that contains other water-related constellat ...
, a monster sent by
Poseidon
Poseidon (; grc-gre, Ποσειδῶν) was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses.Burkert 1985pp. 136–139 In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a ...
to devour
Andromeda, only to be destroyed by
Perseus
*
Charybdis of
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
, a monster whose mouth formed a whirlpool that sucked any ship nearby beneath the ocean
*
Cirein-cròin
*
Curruid, from whose bone the
Gae Bulg is made in
Celtic mythology
*
Devil Whale
The Devil Whale is a legendary demonic whale-like sea monster (or a sea turtle in some legends). According to myths, this whale is of enormous size and could swallow entire ships. It also resembles an island when it's sleeping, and unsuspecting ...
, a demonic whale the size of an island
*
Hafgufa, a whale of fabulous size, described as a ''sjóskrímsli'' 'sea monster' together with the
lyngbakr
*
Hydra, Greek multi-headed dragon-like beast
*
Iku-Turso
Iku-Turso (, "the eternal Turso"; also known as Iku-Tursas, Iki-Tursas, Meritursas, Tursas, Turisas among others) is a malevolent sea monster in Finnish mythology, best known for appearing in the ''Kalevala''. Nowadays ''Meritursas'' means octop ...
, reputedly a type of colossal octopus or walrus
*
Ipupiara
*
Jörmungandr
In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr ( non, Jǫrmungandr, lit=the Vast gand, see Etymology), also known as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent ( non, Miðgarðsormr), is an unfathomably large sea serpent or worm who dwells in the world sea, encir ...
, the Midgard Serpent and nemesis of
Thor in
Norse mythology
*
Kraken, a gigantic
octopus,
squid, or
crab-like creature
*
Lacovie
*
Leviathan
Leviathan (; he, לִוְיָתָן, ) is a sea serpent noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Amos, and, according to some ...
*
Lusca
In Caribbean folklore, the Lusca is a name given to a sea monster said to exist in the region of the blue holes nearby Andros, an island in the Bahamas.
Description
It is described as a giant octopus, a giant cuttlefish, or a half dragon, half oc ...
*
Makara
''Makara'' ( sa, मकर, translit=Makara) is a legendary sea-creature in Hindu mythology. In Hindu astrology, Makara is equivalent to the Zodiac sign Capricorn.
Makara appears as the vahana (vehicle) of the river goddess Ganga, Narmada, a ...
*
Proteus
*
Scylla of
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
, a six-headed, twelve-legged serpentine monster that devoured six men from each ship that passed by
*
Sirens
* 'Super stinger', the Arctic
lion's mane jellyfish
*
Taniwha
In Māori mythology, taniwha () are large supernatural beings that live in deep pools in rivers, dark caves, or in the sea, especially in places with dangerous currents or deceptive breakers (giant waves).
They may be considered highly respected ...
*
Tiamat
In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat ( akk, or , grc, Θαλάττη, Thaláttē) is a primordial goddess of the sea, mating with Abzû, the god of the groundwater, to produce younger gods. She is the symbol of the chaos of primordial crea ...
*
Timingila
*
Umibōzu
*
Yacumama
Older reports
Sea monsters reported first or second hand include
* A
giant octopus
''Enteroctopus'' is an octopus genus whose members are sometimes known as giant octopus.
Etymology
The generic name ''Enteroctopus'' was created by Alphonse Tremeau de Rochebrune and Jules François Mabille in 1887 and published in 1889, join ...
by
Pliny
Pliny may refer to:
People
* Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), ancient Roman nobleman, scientist, historian, and author of ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Pliny's Natural History'')
* Pliny the Younger (died 113), ancient Roman statesman, orator, w ...
(not to be confused with the documented
Giant Pacific octopus
The giant Pacific octopus (''Enteroctopus dofleini''), also known as the North Pacific giant octopus, is a large marine cephalopod belonging to the genus ''Enteroctopus''. Its spatial distribution includes the coastal North Pacific, along Mexico ...
)
*
Sea monk
* Various
sea serpents
*
Tritons by
Pliny
Pliny may refer to:
People
* Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), ancient Roman nobleman, scientist, historian, and author of ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Pliny's Natural History'')
* Pliny the Younger (died 113), ancient Roman statesman, orator, w ...
* Cormac Ua Liatháin in the 6th century supposedly saw a horde of tiny creatures the size of frogs that had spines, which attacked his boat in the North Atlantic according to an account written by
Adomnan of Iona
Newer reports
* ''
Cadborosaurus'' of the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...
*
Champ of
Lake Champlain
*
Chessie of the
Chesapeake Bay
*
Nessie
NESSIE (New European Schemes for Signatures, Integrity and Encryption) was a European research project funded from 2000 to 2003 to identify secure cryptographic primitives. The project was comparable to the NIST AES process and the Japanese Gov ...
of
Loch Ness
Loch Ness (; gd, Loch Nis ) is a large freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands extending for approximately southwest of Inverness. It takes its name from the River Ness, which flows from the northern end. Loch Ness is best known for claim ...
*
Issie of
Lake Ikeda,
Kyushu
*
Ogopogo
In Canadian folklore, the Ogopogo is a lake monster said to inhabit Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, Canada. Some scholars have charted the entity's development from First Nations folklore and widespread water monster folklore motifs. The O ...
of
Okanagan Lake
*
Lusca
In Caribbean folklore, the Lusca is a name given to a sea monster said to exist in the region of the blue holes nearby Andros, an island in the Bahamas.
Description
It is described as a giant octopus, a giant cuttlefish, or a half dragon, half oc ...
*
Morgawr
*
Ningen, a humanoid creature sighted in the seas north of Japan
*
Fjörulalli, also called ''Shore Laddie'', Arnarfjörður, Westfjords, Iceland
*
Sea Horse
A seahorse (also written ''sea-horse'' and ''sea horse'') is any of 46 species of small marine fish in the genus ''Hippocampus''. "Hippocampus" comes from the Ancient Greek (), itself from () meaning "horse" and () meaning "sea monster" or " ...
Arnarfjörður, Westfjords, Iceland
*
The Shell monster Arnarfjörður, Westfjords, Iceland
*
Hafmaður Arnarfjörður, Westfjords, Iceland
In fiction
*Creatures of
H. P. Lovecraft's
Cthulhu Mythos, including
Cthulhu itself.
*Creatures in such
sci-fi
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universe ...
/
horror films as ''
Deepstar Six'', ''
The Rift'', ''
Deep Rising'' and ''
Deep Shock''.
*
Clover
*Cyrus from ''Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent'' by
Bill Peet
*Fictional portrayals of the
Giant Squid, like in ''
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea''.
*
Giant octopus
''Enteroctopus'' is an octopus genus whose members are sometimes known as giant octopus.
Etymology
The generic name ''Enteroctopus'' was created by Alphonse Tremeau de Rochebrune and Jules François Mabille in 1887 and published in 1889, join ...
in ''
It Came from Beneath the Sea
''It Came from Beneath the Sea'' is a 1955 American science fiction monster film from Columbia Pictures, produced by Sam Katzman and Charles Schneer, directed by Robert Gordon, that stars Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, and Donald Curtis. The ...
''.
*
Iku-Turso
Iku-Turso (, "the eternal Turso"; also known as Iku-Tursas, Iki-Tursas, Meritursas, Tursas, Turisas among others) is a malevolent sea monster in Finnish mythology, best known for appearing in the ''Kalevala''. Nowadays ''Meritursas'' means octop ...
in
Lönnrot's ''
Kalevala
The ''Kalevala'' ( fi, Kalevala, ) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and ...
''
*
Giganto
*
Godzilla
*
Mothra
is a fictional monster, or ''kaiju'', that first appeared in the 1961 film '' Mothra'', produced and distributed by Toho Studios. Mothra has appeared in several Toho ''tokusatsu'' films, most often as a recurring character in the ''Godzilla'' ...
(Aqua Form)
*
Gorgo
*
Manda
*
Kraken as depicted in ''Clash of the Titans'' (both the
1981
Events January
* January 1
** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union.
** Palau becomes a self-governing territory.
* January 10 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensiv ...
and
2010 versions).
*
Kraken as depicted in ''
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest''.
*
Ebirah
*
Titanosaurus
*
Zigra
*
Moby Dick
''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship ''Pequod'', for revenge against Moby Dick, the giant whi ...
*
Rhedosaurus
The ''Rhedosaurus'' is a fictional dinosaur that debuted in the 1953 monster film ''The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms'', directed and co-written by Eugène Lourié. The ''Rhedosaurus'' is depicted as a giant, destructive, prehistoric reptile that ...
*
The Terrible Dogfish
The Terrible Dogfish ( it, Il Terribile Pescecane) is a dogfish-like sea monster, which appears in Carlo Collodi's 1883 book '' The Adventures of Pinocchio'' (''Le avventure di Pinocchio'') as one of the main antagonists and the final one. It i ...
*
Jaws
*
Sigmund and the Sea Monsters
''Sigmund and the Sea Monsters'' is an American children's television series that ran from September 8, 1973 to October 18, 1975, produced by Sid and Marty Krofft and aired on Saturday mornings. It was syndicated by itself from December 1975 to ...
*
Sea Serpent as depicted in C.S. Lewis' novel, ''
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader'', and its 2010 film adaptation, ''
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader''.
*The
Meg, the giant
moray eel
Moray eels, or Muraenidae (), are a family of eels whose members are found worldwide. There are approximately 200 species in 15 genera which are almost exclusively marine, but several species are regularly seen in brackish water, and a few are f ...
Great
Abaia, and the
giant squid Lusca
In Caribbean folklore, the Lusca is a name given to a sea monster said to exist in the region of the blue holes nearby Andros, an island in the Bahamas.
Description
It is described as a giant octopus, a giant cuttlefish, or a half dragon, half oc ...
. The Great are 3 sea monsters featured as bosses in the survival video game
Stranded Deep
*In
Ninjago: Seabound, Wojira is a Giant Sea Serpent and Dragon that can controls water and wind using the storm and wave amulets.
*In the 2021 film: ''
Luca'', Luca Paguro and his friend, Alberto Scorfano are 12-13 year old sea monsters that assume the form of Humans when they are dry on land.
*the 2022 film:
The Sea Beast
See also
*
Here be dragons
"Here be dragons" ( la, hic sunt dracones) means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of a medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps where potent ...
References
{{Authority control
Monster
Maritime folklore