In the Hollywood blockbusters of horror "The Beast" and "Tentacles," viewers flinched in fear at the sight of giant octopuses, squids and octopuses hunting everything moving in the ocean depths and on its surface. The picture looked so convincing that one could only marvel at the effects and the author's imagination. And the question immediately arose: how likely are people to meet with such monsters, or are they just a figment of artistic imagination?
It should be noted that some invertebrate inhabitants of the sea depths really reach impressive sizes. For example, a mollusk found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and given the ominous nickname "killer" sometimes weighs more than 300 kg! If, for example, a diver kicks him into the flaps, then he is unlikely to get out of these "grips". The famous sea snakes and cephalopods - the "eight-armed" octopus, also known as the kraken, were and remain the record holders of the underwater world. These creatures are the heroes of numerous nautical stories.
Once, on November 30, 1861, a significant event for zoology took place - the French steamer "Alekton" entered the battle with the kraken. In a report submitted to the minister, the commander of the Alekton, Lieutenant Bouyer, described an unusual phenomenon that then excited the whole world. At two o'clock in the afternoon, not far from the Canary Islands, a huge and strange creature was seen floating slowly near the surface. On the head of the monster, like a ball of snakes, a dozen long tentacles swarmed. The ship was immediately put on alert. The muzzles of the guns were aimed at the monster, but the strong side roll prevented the bombardiers from accurately aiming. None of the ten shells hit the target. Then "Alekton" came close to the outlandish "beast", and several successfully thrown harpoons pierced his body.
The monster seemed to wake up from a daze and rushed to the ship with its beak wide open, but then swam away. "Alekton" again overtook the monster, and new harpoons stuck into it. The hunt lasted more than three hours, but the sailors did not manage to catch the kraken. They got only a small fragment of his tail weighing about 20 kg. The officers and sailors, carried away by the "battle," persuaded the captain to send the boat in pursuit of the kraken. But Bouyer did not dare. The huge monster could easily overturn the boat and strangle people with its tentacles. “I felt it my duty not to risk the lives of my sailors to satisfy curiosity, even if it served science,” wrote the commander of the Alekton. The crippled animal was left in the ocean. But the ship artist still managed to make a color drawing, which is kept today in the French Academy of Sciences.
More serious battles with kraken are well known. In October 1873, two fishermen were fishing herring in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. Tom Picot, a twelve-year-old boy, was with them. The crew members were already finishing their fishing when they noticed a long object on the surface of the ocean. The fishermen first mistook him for the wreckage of a ship, then swam up to him and hit him with a prison. At the same moment, a strange object rose above the water as a huge column, and people, to their horror, saw that they had attacked the kraken.
The animal rushed to the launch, two of its tentacles, like giant snakes, soared above the people and embraced it. The boat began to quickly fill with water, and the fishermen were in real terror. But the boy was not at a loss: he bravely rushed to the side of the launch, on which lay the tentacles of the kraken, and chopped them off with several blows of the ax. The boat straightened, and the kraken swam to the side. Fearing persecution, the fishermen with all their might drove the boat to the shore. Tom Picot himself brought war trophies to the village - two tentacles of a mysterious "enemy".
Some time later, one of them, a six-meter stump, fell into the hands of the naturalist R. Garvey. There was no limit to the scientist's enthusiasm: “I became the owner of one of the rarest sights of the animal world - the real 'hand' of the mystical devil fish, the dispute about the existence of which has been going on among naturalists for centuries. I have in my hands the key to the great secret, which means that a new chapter will henceforth be inscribed in natural history”.
The scientist hastened to meet with the happily escaped fishermen. “I found them still in the grip of the horror they had experienced,” he wrote. - When speaking, they often flinched. Most of all they were struck by the huge green eyes of the monster, sparkling with indescribable fury, and the beak, similar to the beak of a parrot, which suddenly jumped out of some cavity in the head, trying to tear them to shreds.
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Soon after the events described, one of the monsters fell into the hands of people alive. Newfoundland fishermen pulled ashore a seine cast into the sea. He seemed unusually heavy, twitching violently from side to side. With difficulty the net was pulled up to the shore. But when she appeared on the surface, the fishermen almost let go of her - the kraken himself was in the net. A mass of writhing tentacles appeared before my eyes, and in the center were two glittering pupils. Several long tentacles reached through the hole in the net, trying to reach people. For a minute they wriggled in the air, looking for a victim, but the distance was too great, and the tentacle snakes sank. Frightened fishermen were ready to chop off the net, but then there was a real daredevil among them. Seizing a convenient moment, he jumped from behind to the monster and thrust a long knife between the huge eyes of the kraken,and then quickly cut the head off the torso.
The giant went to R. Harvey entirely. When the scientist measured it, it turned out that it reached a length of more than 10 m. After that, it was placed in a huge tank filled with salt water. Later, the preserved animal was taken to London to the Natural History Museum.
In Richard Ellis's book Monsters of the Seas, there is another surprising piece of evidence, this time from the ship's doctor Thomas Bill of the whaler Kent. It happened in 1898. The whaler was that day at the pier of Bonin Island (Japan). The doctor decided to take a walk along the sandy shore and, having walked a hundred meters, suddenly saw a lying octopus of enormous size with thick tentacles. Not suspecting anything, he took it and stepped on his head without any fear. And then he almost paid with his life for his negligence: the octopus grabbed him by the hand with its tentacle and pulled him towards him. Screaming with fear and pain, the doctor tried to resist, but then another tentacle unexpectedly tied Thomas's arms and legs!
Fortunately, there were sailors nearby, armed with knives and axes. Two of them attacked a monstrous mollusk and, chopping off its terrible tentacles, freed the doctor, who was already almost losing consciousness. The length of the octopus from the body to the tips of the tentacles was almost 7.5 m. Discussing this episode, the ichthyologists came to the conclusion that there was no aggression from the octopus - the ship's doctor himself behaved carelessly.
And here is the San Francisco Chronicle report for December 27, 1989. On New Year's Eve, in Iligan Bay, Mindanao Island (Philippines), a huge squid attacked … a motorized passenger ship! A few hours later, the fishermen found 12 surviving passengers caught on the keel of an inverted launch. By this time they had been carried 17 miles from the scene.
According to one of the victims, lawyer Agapito Caballe, after the onset of dusk, water suddenly boiled powerfully around the 22-ton longboat moving at a low speed. In the light of lamps and flashlights, the shocked passengers saw a monster emerging: “His eyes, the size of a good pelvis, literally hypnotized people,” Caballe said after a long psychological rehabilitation. - With huge tentacles, the thickness of a 50-liter barrel, the octopus grabbed the hull of the launch and turned it upside down without any apparent tension! After sailing several meters, he grabbed three passengers - two women and a man - with tentacles and plunged into the abyss …”Experts are convinced that the monster lives in the Mariana Trench, which reaches a depth of more than 11,000 meters.
According to experts, in the Pacific Ocean the largest of the captured octopuses weigh up to 210-220 kg and a length with tentacles of 7-9 m. American scuba divers Clayton Fisher and John Lashel managed to shoot in an underwater cave at a depth of 120 m off the coast of Junei (Alaska) 6-meter octopus weighing 97 kg. A few years ago, diver Jack McLean dared to dive under a floating octopus and release air from breathing tanks under it. The mollusk abruptly surfaced, where it was hooked with hooks from a boat drifting nearby.
Measurements showed that the greatest length of the monster was 8.37 m, and the weight reached 214 kg! In March of the following year, the same Jack McLean in the same place (Pharaohs Bay, California) saw a 10-meter "eight-armed" monster weighing at least 300-320 kg. How he got to the waiting boat, McLean does not remember, for he constantly looked back at the furious octopus.
The newspaper "Honolulu Advertiser" (Hawaiian Islands) on July 27, 1986 reported the observation of an octopus … 12 m long near the Solomon Islands (Pacific Ocean)! As it turned out, this giant was attracted to the surface by a half-dead 5-meter herring shark. Allowing the stunned passengers and the crew of the ship to admire themselves, the imperturbable "master of the ocean" slowly plunged with his prey to the rocky bottom. And on May 14, 1999, the same newspaper published two pictures of a giant octopus at least 11–12 m long, reporting that such creatures appear off the coast of Hawaii on a regular basis.
As established by observations, squids and octopuses often attack even rather large 5-6-meter sharks. And they fight desperately. Octopuses feed on large green turtles, which are of natural gastronomic interest for them. Octopuses deal with these armored creatures quite easily. According to the observations of biologists, octopuses often gather around the habitats and breeding grounds of turtles and stay on duty for a long time in anticipation of the victim, who has lost vigilance.
In August 2001, the sea threw a block of amorphous creature 7 m in diameter and weighing 3 tons on the coast of Newfoundland Island! This creature had ribs and a spine, but the head was missing. An inexplicable feature of the find was the presence of white hair on the entire body. I must say that the mysterious remains of unidentified marine life, including those with tentacles, have been discovered by the inhabitants of the coastal regions of the seas and oceans since time immemorial. But who the found remains belonged to remained unknown. Later, the famous zoologist Adam Verill confidently identified the find as the remains of a gigantic octopus, sometimes overgrown with moss from old age.
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