Terrible sea creatures
The author of the book "The Bermuda Triangle" Charles Berlitz, considered very likely the existence, especially in the countless underwater caves and canyons of the ocean floor in the Bermuda Triangle, "as yet undiscovered deep sea monsters." Having reported about the ruins of stone structures allegedly discovered at the bottom of the sea near the Bahamas and about "pyramids that cannot be attributed to any of the eras or civilizations known to us," he says that divers have repeatedly met with "terrible sea monsters, whose appearance was before such degree unaccustomed that they seemed to come from the past.
Many of these animals - if only they are really animals - have been encountered at shallow depths. " And as an illustrative example C. Berlitz cited the report of an experienced professional diver from Miami, who in 1968, according to his statement, met with a nightmarish underwater "Bigfoot".
“We were located south of Great Isaac Light on the very edge of the continental shelf. A 10-meter boat, specially built for underwater and rescue operations, slowly towed me on a cable, and I examined the sandy bottom, at a depth of 11-13 meters. I was deep enough to see the bottom in front of the boat. And then I saw something rounded like a turtle or a big fish - 180 pounds.
To get a better look at what it is, I went deeper. The creature turned and looked at me at a 20-degree angle. The creature had a monkey face and a head stretched forward. The neck was significantly longer than that of a tortoise, and no less than 4 times as long as that of humans. Looking at me, the monster twisted its neck in a serpentine manner. His eyes were human-like, but larger. His face was like a monkey, with eyes adapted to underwater life. Having looked at me for the last time, it departed, as if from below it was pushed by some force."
Fortunately, this creepy creature soon disappeared into the cave of the overhanging rock wall, which, according to Berlitz, "may have saved the diver's life", since "in the Bahamas there is a legend about the existence of such a sea monster - his name is" luska "- with a snake neck, living in caves and eating people."
Repeatedly, in clear waters at shallow depths within the Bermuda Triangle, they clearly distinguished, according to Berlitz, the silhouettes of unknown creatures. Mass hallucination, in his opinion, is excluded, since these mysterious creatures in many cases were observed by numerous eyewitnesses near the ships.
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But do sea monsters really exist?
“No aquatic animal kills humans more cruelly than a polyp. When he attacks a shipwrecked or diver, he fights him, grabs him with his many suction cups and pulls him into the depths. Near Kartea, a polyp climbed into a merchant's pantry to feed on salted fish. Climbing a tree, he climbed over high fences. The barking dogs attracted the guards. They were shocked by the incredible size of the polyp. He seemed to be all smeared with brine and spread an eerie stench. The monster drove the dogs away with hard blows, scourged them with the ends of its tentacles, and beat them with thicker tentacles like clubs. A lot of tridents had to be driven into it, and only then was it possible to kill the monster. The polyp's head was about the size of a barrel. Its tentacles, thickened like clubs, could hardly be grasped by a man, and their length was 30 feet."
In this both terrible and, in his own way, beautiful and at the same time fantastic description, the Roman writer Pliny mixed fiction with truth - as many others did before and after him.
So, in Vram's "Lives of Animals" we can find the chilling story of the Norwegian bishop Erik Pontoppidan (1753). According to him, fishermen off the coast of Norway at times suddenly noticed that the sea around their boats was beginning to shallow: it was a kraken that was floating up. The fishermen fled in terror. “After that, a bumpy wide back of a monster appears from the water; it is incredibly huge. It often rises 30 feet out of the water. Water remains in the depressions on this rock-like back, and fish can be seen jumping there.
The hills and mountains of this living island are increasing, and from them, like the horns of a snail, tentacles stick out thicker than the thickest mast of the largest ship. These tentacles are so strong that they can sweep a gigantic vessel with a hundred cannons and drag it to the bottom. They spread out in all directions, intertwine and then bend to the surface of the water, then slowly straighten and move no less than the tentacles of any ordinary polyp.
1680 - In northern Norway, Friis reports, a baby of such a giant polyp is stuck between the rocks of a narrow fjord. His huge body filled the entire bay, tentacles entwined the rocks … it was not impossible to tear them off …”.
If there really were such incredible monsters, they could, perhaps, confuse and scare any brave man. But the good shepherd greatly exaggerated and (I will allow myself an exaggeration) made an elephant out of a fly.
Giant squids and octopuses can be found in the sea, this is not fiction. And in fact, their size is amazing. So, a dexterous tentacle, which serves to restrain victims and is dotted with suckers, can reach up to 15 meters in length. The largest giant squid caught so far had a length of 22 meters, and the diameter of its suckers was 10-15 cm. It can be assumed that there are giant squids 30-40 meters long, since the skin of whales found scars from suckers with a diameter of 45 see Squid refers to invertebrates, sea molluscs, and is related to the octopus. Since their tentacles (in an octopus - 4 pairs, in a squid - 5) grow, as it were, directly from the head, these mollusks are called cephalopods. The body of eight-armed cephalopods (the legendary kraken also belongs to them) has a rather bag-like shape,and in decapods it is, as a rule, elongated torpedo-like.
The smallest cephalopods, about 20 cm long, have probably been seen (and possibly tried) by everyone who once visited the Mediterranean coast. But we can say with the same confidence that the tourist will not meet giant cephalopods there; they live at depths of 250-500 meters and, probably, even deeper. This is evidenced, among other evidence, by the indigestible horny jaws of squid, extracted from the stomachs of sperm whales, which prefer to feast on giant squids and dive after them to a depth of 1500 m. In the stomach of one of the sperm whales, as many as 14,000 such jaws were somehow found!
These huge animals, armed with tentacles, still remain largely mysterious to science. And of course, they are dangerous to humans. Therefore, Thor Heyerdahl and his brave companions, setting off in 1947 on a 3-month expedition on the Kon-Tiki raft from Peru to Tahiti, armed themselves with heavy machetes. When, during the Second World War, namely on March 25, 1941, the British military transport "Britain" was sunk in the Atlantic, only a few managed to use the boats. Most of the people in distress ended up on large and small liferafts. They were so overwhelmed by soldiers crowding or grabbing at them that they sank deep into the water. One of the soldiers, who was sitting on the edge of such a raft, was suddenly grabbed by two huge squid tentacles, and he disappeared into the depths. Another soldier, with the help of his comrades, barely escaped from the second squid, which had already grabbed his leg.
And in conclusion, we present another excerpt from Bram's "Lives of Animals", which tells about the attack of a giant cephalopod on a ship, which took place on November 30, 1861 near Tenerife. Captain Buyer says:
“The vessel met a huge polyp floating on the surface of the water between Madeira and Tenerife. The animal was 5-6 meters long, not counting eight terrible tentacles studded with suckers. It was brick red in color. His eyes were monstrous and looked with a terrifying stillness. The weight of its fusiform, strongly swollen in the middle of the body was about 2,000 kg, and at the end of the body there were large rounded fins. They wanted to catch the animal in a loop and kill it with shots, but the captain did not dare to risk the life of his crew and lower the boat, which the monster could easily turn over with its terrible tentacles. After a three-hour hunt, only pieces of the animal's back were removed. So, although the latest observations do not support the legend of the kraken, we now have reliable evidence of the existence of giant cephalopods, which,20 feet or more in length, they can threaten people and even small ships."
G. Hefling