fish stories ?

[lonehunter]

August 6, 1848, on board the Daedalus in the Atlantic Ocean, 7 men including the Captain reported seeing a creature about 60 ft long and 15 inches in diameter. A mane of a soft looking material flowed down it's back. The creature's body was a dark brown in color and it's throat area was a yellowish white. The creature was swimming approximately 15 MPH with its head constantly above the water. In modern times a creature matching this description has been seen off the coast of California by many reputable witnesses.

1961, Mrs. Stoudt of Oregon and her sister were walking their children along the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington State, when they saw what first appeared to be a tree limb in the water. As the object moved closer to them they described seeing a creature which had a snake like head, floppy mane, and 3 humps. It disappeared from view only to resurface closer to them. They said it looked like some sort of dinosaur. It appeared to be watching the passing ships, then it moved even closer to their position which caused one of the children to cry. The creature turned and looked at them and then swam off.

December 12, 1964, French photographer Robert Serrec was vacationing in Queensland, Australia. He was out off the coast in small row boats with his family and friends. They were in less than 6 feet of water when they noticed a giant snake like creature laying on the oceanbottom. They describe it as a grayish tadpole like creature with a snake like head, approximately 75-80 feet long. There appeared to be a large wound on the creatures back. They took pictures of the creature before it became bothered and swam off.
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[lonehunter]

1734, a Norwegian missionary named Hans Egede took a voyage to Greenland. Here's his undenied report,

" on the 6th of July 1734 there appeared a very terrible sea-animal which raised itself above the water. It's head seemed to reach the maintop. It had a long sharp snout, it blew like a whale, had broad large flappers and the body was, as it were, covered with a hard skin, very wrinkled. Moreover, the lower part was snakelike. When it submerged it raised its tail above the water, a whole ship length from its body."

At daybreak in January 1984, Jim Thompson a mechanical engineer from Bellingham, Washington was fishing for Chinook Salmon, off the Spanish Banks, about five miles from Vancouver, B.C. All of a sudden he reports a sea-like animal surfaced 200 feet away from him. It was some 20 feet long, and at least two feet wide. Thompson further said it had a,

"whitish-tan throat, bumps like giraffe horns, large floppy ears and a some what, pointed black snout. The shyly curious animal seemed surprised at seeing me. It quickly headed out to sea swimming efficiently by up and down wriggling. "

Last month fishermen in the icy Ross Sea encountered a deep-sea giant.

Almost 20 feet (6 meters) long, with spiked tentacles and huge, protruding eyes, it was feeding on Patagonian toothfish caught on longlines set by the fishermen.

The creature was hauled aboard and taken to New Zealand for analysis. This confirmed the encounter as the first live sighting of a colossal squid.

Usually called Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, scientists who examined the Ross Sea specimen coined the term "colossal squid" to distinguish it from giant squid (Architeuthis). They say the species is the biggest and most fearsome squid known to science and could grow to 40 feet (12 meters) in length—longer than a whale. Toward the end of World War I the German submarine UB-85 was caught on the surface, during the day, and sunk by a British patrol boat. The crew abandoned the sub and was picked up by the British. The U-boat commander, Captain Krech was questioned about why he had been cruising on the surface and he told this tale: The sub had been recharging batteries at night on the surface when without any kind of warning a "strange beast" began to climb aboard from the sea. "This beast had large eyes, set in a horny sort of skull. It had a small head, but with teeth that could be seen glistening in the moonlight." The animal was so large that it forced the U-boat to list greatly to starboard. The captain feared an open hatch would drop below the waterline, flooding the sub and sinking it. "Every man on watch began firing a sidearm at the beast," Krech continued. The animal had hold of the forward gun mount and would not let go.

The battle continued until the animal dropped back into the sea. In the struggle, though, the forward deck plating had been damaged and the sub could no longer submerge
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[lonehunter]

A U.S. Navy nuclear submarine left it's home port to start it's patrol. Mysteriously the boat's delicate sonar mechanism failed without warning only a few days into the voyage. The sonar was so critical to the sub's operations that the boat was forced to return to port for repairs. Examination of the sonar revealed that the rubber-like outer cover of the device had been torn off. Embedded in the tattered remains were enormous hooks. Scientists determined that these hooks, several times larger than had ever been seen before, were from a giant squid that had apparently attacked the sub, thinking it was a whale.



A sea serpent, 45 feet long and 15 inches in diameter, was reported off the coast of Maine by Captain George Little in 1780:

"I was lying in Round Pond, in Broad Bay, in a public armed ship. At sunrise, I discovered a large serpent, or sea monster, coming down the bay. It was on the surface of the water. The cutter was manned and armed. I went myself in the boat. We proceeded after the serpent. When within a hundred feet, the mariners were ordered to fire on him. Before they could make ready, the serpent dove."

On December 7th, 1905 at about 10:15 am the oceanographic research yacht, Valhalla, was cruising off the coast of Florida and a "large fin, or frill, sticking out of the water," was spotted. The frill was six feet in length and projected almost two feet out of the water. "A great neck rose out of the water in front of the frill," noted Mr. Meade-Waldo, a scientist on board. The neck appeared to be about the thickness of a man's body. The creature moved its head and neck from side to side in a peculiar manner.



Three days after the Valhalla incident the Happy Warrior, a merchant sailing ship, reported a "sea snake of great magnitude appeared off our port bow. Was several lengths of our ship. Had long neck. Sounded after few minutes. Estimated speed six knots." The Happy Warrior was cruising only 80 miles from where the Valhalla sighted it's creature.
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[lonehunter]

In 1808 an Australian three-masted bark was attacked by a sea monster that, "had climbed across bow and bitten or chewed, one of the hands." It's eyes were the size of a "warrior's shield." The attack continued until the captain went below and returned with guns. He fired them into the animal's eyes and the monster returned to the ocean.

Excerpt from the log of the ship General Coole, around 1780:

"A very large snake passed the ship. It was 3 or 4 feet in circumference. The back was of light color and the belly yellow." - S.H. Saxby, Master Mariner, Bouchurch, Isle of Wright.

Off the coast of Ireland on July 30th, 1915, the German submarine U-28 torpedoed the British ship Iberian. It went down rapidly, stern first. As the crew of the U-28 watched there was a large explosion that sent water and wreckage a hundred feet into the air. A "gigantic sea animal" was thrown to the surface and remained visible for about fifteen seconds before it sank. It was shaped like a sixty foot long crocodile with webbed feet.

On November 1st, 1983, a construction crew was working on Route 1 just north of the Golden Gate Bridge near Stinson Beach. Suddenly they spotted a creature, underwater, approaching the land. They estimated the creature's length at 100 feet and it's diameter at five. Using binoculars they watched it making coils, throwing it's head about and whipping it's body around.

Two years later, in San Fransico bay, twins Robert and William Clark were sitting in a car near the sea wall. They watched two seals swimming extremely fast across the bay. Then they noticed a "large black snake-like" animal" chasing the seals. They saw that the creature moved by forming it's body into coils and wiggling up and down. The animal apparently also had small, translucent fan-like fins that acted as stabilizers. Clyde Taylor and his daughter, Carol, were walking along the beach near the mouth of the Chester River in the Chesapeake Bay. Out in the bay they spotted a ripple moving across what was otherwise smooth, calm water. Following the ripple they spotted a creature in the water. It was black or amber in color, thirty feet long and as thick as a telephone pole. It traveled through the water with a up and down undulating motion. "The eye looked like a serpent's eye, like a large snake eye," said Clyde. "I could see no marking on the body - it was just a long tube, like an anaconda or python. It didn't look like a fish, but like a giant serpent." Carol Taylor got within 30 feet of the creature before it spotted her and disappeared into the water. "There was no way that it could have been someone faking something," she said, "there was no one in sight, there were no boats around, the water was only about knee-deep." The Taylors' encounter was only one of many sightings of a sea serpent that supposedly lives in the Chesapeake Bay. Appropriately the creature has been nicknamed "Chessie." Chessie, or the Chessies, since they have been seen in groups and differ in size, is a creature usually 30 to 40 feet in length, with a snake-like body, dark in color, having an elliptical, football-sized head. Enough reports have been filed about Chessie that Mike Frizzell, Director of Project Enigma, a study of the Chessie phenomena, was able to correlate it's appearances with motion of Bluefin fish in the area, suggesting that the serpent uses the fish as a food source. Large groups of people have spotted Chessie. In 1980 four charter boats carrying 25 people observed a version of the creature. Chessie has also been captured on video and film, though none of these has been clear enough to be accepted as proof of the monster.
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[lonehunter]

On August 6th, 1848, the Royal Navy frigate HMS Daedalus was cruising near the Cape of Good Hope when the Officer of Watch spotted an object in the sea. He drew the attention of the Captain and several crew members on deck to it. It was a large sea snake, or sea serpent, that they estimated to be sixty feet long, 15 inches in diameter, and moved through the sea with it's head some four feet out of the water.

Strangely enough it seemed to be able to move quickly through the water with neither vertical or horizontal undulation. The creature was dark brown, shading to yellow-white under the throat. On the back there seemed to be a seaweed-like mane. The Daedalus observed it for about twenty minutes.

In 1937 Alfred Peterson, a nurse aboard a British troopship in the China Sea, spotted what at first he thought was a big tree floating in the sea. A few minutes later he noticed it was still there, keeping pace with the ship. This peaked his interest and he took a closer look. What he saw was a 25 foot long, grey-black, body with a head shaped like a giraffe.
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[lonehunter]

[font "Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"]Mark Erdmann, a marine biologist from the University of California, was enjoying his 1997 honeymoon vacation in Indonesian when his new bride asked about a strange blue fish she saw in the market. Erdmann's mouth dropped open as he recognized the animal as a coelacanth. Erdmann knew that the fish was a member of a rare species and that until 1938 scientists had thought it had gone extinct with the dinosaurs. He also knew that at one time the fish was only thought to have lived off the Comoro Islands near Africa, but figured that they must have been discovered in Indonesia since then. It wasn't until Erdmann posted his honeymoon pictures, including one of the fish, on the web and he'd gotten a call from two coelacanth researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, that he realized he'd stumbled upon a major scientific discovery: The coelacanth had a additional habitat some 6000 miles away from the original ones.[/font]

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[font "Arial"]Probably no legendary sea monster was as horrifying as the Kraken. According to stories this huge, many armed, creature could reach as high as the top of a sailing ship's main mast. Kraken's would attack a ship, wrap their arms around the hull and capsize it. The crew would drown or be eaten by the monster. What's amazing about the Kraken stories is that, of all the sea monster tales we have, we have the best evidence that these are real. they are large enough to wrestle with a sperm whale. On at least three occasions in the 1930's they attacked a ship. While the squids got the worst of these encounters when they slid into the ship's propellers, the fact that they attacked at all shows that it is possible for these creatures to mistake a vessel for a whale. [/font]

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[font "Arial"]Perhaps the most astounding case reported, came in Japanese waters back in 1977. A fishing trawler netted a huge heavy catch. When the fishermen brought it aboard, they saw the badly decomposed body of a strange unidentified gigantic sea creature. Its long neck dangled when they hung it up. This was no figment of their imagination. This decomposing sea creature's body weighed in at 4000 pounds. Upon careful observation, it was definitely not a fish, nor a whale nor any other recognizable creature. The captain of the ZUIYO MARU took pictures , it measured 32 feet long! Flesh samples were taken along with full color pictures. When he returned to shore, the captain developed the pictures and brought the findings to marine scientists. After they scoured over the information and photos of the remains, the scientists were truly baffled. This creature was totally unknown and could not be classified[/font]

[font "Arial"][size 4]>> >> ''Sea Monster'' Seen in Western Canadian Waters >> 5/6/94 [/size]

>> VANCOUVER (Reuter) - A snorting, 20-foot-long >> ``sea monster'' was spotted by two university students >> off the shores of a Pacific coastal beach in Victoria, British >> Columbia, the pair said Friday.
>> Ryan Green, 18, a Simon Fraser University business student, >> described the rocky-faced creature as a twin-humped, >> round-bodied monster that swam across Telegraph Bay near >> suburban Saanich. It was about 49 feet from the rock Green and >> his friend, Damian Grant, were sitting on.
>> Green said he and the 19-year-old general arts student at >> the University of Victoria saw the heavy-breathing creature >> surface twice before it disappeared into the calm waters.
>> ``All of a sudden, this head comes up, like a whale with no >> spray. And then this hump, the size of an inner tube in >> diameter. And then another hump. It's nothing I've ever seen >> before,'' said Green.
>> He stressed that the puzzled pair was sober at the time of >> the sighting.
>> Ed Bousfield, a biology research associate with the Royal >> British Columbia Museum, said the reptile-like creature is >> probably a cadborosaurus, one of the last living dinosaurs

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[lonehunter]

[size 4]Saudi Gazette, September 30 1993. [/size]

"Remote Sea Monster"

Reverend Solomona and his son were fishing off the twin atolls of Manihiki and Rakahanga in the Cook Islands when they spotted birds circling over an area. Thinking that this signaled the presence of fish, they sailed to the location.

A creature, described as resembling a lizard but bigger than a whale, jutted its head out of the water, terrifying the two, who went home.

The Cook Islands News Daily, which reported it on September 29, 1993, said there were no further sightings.

[size 4]A Large Turtle [/size]

Scientific American, 48:292,1883.

Captain Augustus G. Hall and the crew of the schooner Annie L. Hall vouch for the following:

On March 30, while on the Grand Bank, in latitude 40 10', longitude 33, they discovered an immense live trunk turtle, which was at first thought to be a vessel bottom up. The schooner passed within twenty-five feet of the monster, and those on board had ample oppurtunity to estimate its dimensions by a comparison with the length of the schooner. The turtle was at least 40 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 30 feet from the apex of the back to the bottom of the under shell. The flippers were 20 feet long. It was not deemed advisable to attempt its capture.

[size 4]Vancouver Sun, October 30 1993. [/size]

Mating Monsters

Ed Bousfield, a biologist at the Royal B.C. Museum, reported that two pilots in a Cessna float plane may have disturbed a pair of sea monsters engaged in an intimate act. The two creatures, which had the traditional loops, had probably come into Saanich Inlet to breed. When the plane landed on the water they swam off at speeds up to 65 km/h.

"Baby Sea Serpent Reported"

Victoria, B.C., April 19 (AP) - Old Caddy and Amy Hiaschuckaluck Cadborosaurus, Pacific sea serpents, have been visited by the stork, Jordan River people believe. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lindner and Mr. and Mrs. A. Cox reported they saw the infant, which was about 25 feet long. They have named the youngster Jorda.

New York Times, April 20 1934.

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"Reports Monster off Victoria, B.C."

Victoria, B.C., March 3 (CP) - H.R. Fletcher, well known in local boating and life-saving circles, is the latest to report sea monsters in adjacent waters.

"I was trolling with a launch and was near the middle of Rose Bay when the thing appeared astern of the boat, about 40 feet away, looking directly at me," said Mr. Fletcher. "It kept about the same distance, being in sight for fully four minutes before it submerged.

"The head and neck were extended for at least four feet all the time. The head was shaped much like that of a shark, with the mouth slightly beneath, which remained closed, while the eyes were set back about eight inches. The neck was about 18 inches in diameter, and the skin was a grayish-brown in color and altogethor smooth.

"My theory is that there are several strange marine monsters, all different, in near-by waters and that some submarine disturbances is responsible for their prescence."

New York Times, March 4 1934.

Phillipine Giant Octopus Attack

On Christmas Eve, 1989, a sea accident occured in the southern Phillipines. Off Manticao, fishermen recovered twelve survivors hanging onto the overturned motorized canoe, as well a as the body of a twelve-week old boy. Survivors claimed that a giant octopus had attacked the vessel, grabbing its pontoons.

Agapito Cabellero, one of their number, said, "Suddenly the waters began to bubble. then we saw something that looked like a giant octopus. It was as huge as an imported cow." After the attack, the beast submerged rather than injure any survivors.
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[aquaman]

makes you wonder if its safe to go in the water
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[releaseit]

[size 2] It was June 2003 I was out fishing in my tube in Huntington Harbor and a fog bank moved in.[unimpressed][/size]

[size 2]I began paddling closer to shore to not get struck by a boat and I look down and there is a small thresher shark following me.[shocked]
( somewhere between 2-3' )[/size]

[size 2] I had a net with live smelt in it and I guess he wanted a snack. So I tried to shoo him off with my flipper and he decided to not only bite my flipper but tore it off my foot![crazy][shocked][/size]

[size 2] Luckily I was close enough to shore to make it in quickly without further incident with remaining flipper.[][/size]

[size 2] At first I was going to raise smelt out of water but I was afraid to change his attention to my feet.[shocked][/size]

[size 2] Pretty scary! After that I bought a pontoon tube in which you are completley out of water. I have used that ever since that incident.[cool][/size]
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[patches]

yessa i think i would too!! that would make me nervous!
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[aquaman]

so did we learn something maily never smack at a shark with your flippers
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