In the Hollywood horror films "The Beast" and "Tentacles," the viewer flinches with fear at the sight of incredibly huge octopuses, giant squids and octopuses hunting everything that moves in the ocean depths and on its surface. The picture was so convincing that one could only marvel at the effects and imagination of the authors. And the question immediately arose: what is the likelihood of people meeting with such monsters, or are they just a figment of the artistic imagination?
It should be noted that some of the invertebrate inhabitants of the deep sea are in fact impressive in size. For example, the clam, which can be found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and which has received 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 be able to get out of such natural "clutches". The legendary sea snakes and cephalopods - giant squids aka kraken - were and remain the record holders of the underwater world. These creatures are the heroes of many marine stories.
• 1861, November 30 - a significant event for zoology happened - the steamer "Alekton" (France) entered the battle with the kraken. In a report presented to the minister, the commander of the Alekton, Lieutenant Bouyer, describes an extraordinary phenomenon that then excited the whole world. At two o'clock in the afternoon, near the Canary Islands, a huge and strange creature was noticed, slowly swimming near the surface. On the head of the sea monster, like a ball of snakes, a dozen long tentacles swarmed. The ship was immediately put on alert. The muzzles of the cannons were pointed at the sea monster, but the strong rolling did not allow the bombardiers to aim well. All ten shells missed the mark. Then "Alekton" came close to the outlandish "beast", and several successfully thrown harpoons pierced the body of the animal.
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 caught up with the monster, and new harpoons stuck into it. The hunt lasted more than three hours, but the sailors could not catch the kraken. They got only a small fragment of his tail weighing up to 20 kg. The crew, carried away by the "battle", persuaded the captain to send the boat in pursuit of the kraken.
However, Bouyer did not dare. A huge animal could easily overturn a boat and drown people with tentacles. “I felt it my duty not to risk the lives of my sailors to satisfy curiosity, even if it was in the service of science,” wrote the commander of the Alekton. The monster was left in the ocean. But the ship's artist still managed to make a drawing, which is kept today at the French Academy of Sciences.
• There were also more serious battles with the kraken. 1873 October - Two fishermen were fishing herring in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. Tom Picot, a 12-year-old boy, was with them. The fishermen were already finishing their fishing when they saw an incomprehensible long object on the ocean surface. The fishermen at first mistook him for the wreckage of a ship, then swam up to him and hit him with a prison. At that moment, a mysterious object rose above the surface of the water in a huge column, and people, to their horror, saw that they had attacked the kraken.
The underwater monster turned to the launch, two of its tentacles, like giant snakes, soared over the people and enveloped it. The boat quickly began to fill up with water, and the fishermen were seized by real terror. But the boy was not at a loss: he bravely rushed to the side of the launch, on which were the tentacles of the kraken, and was able to chop them off with a few blows of the ax. The boat straightened, and the kraken swam to the side. Fearing pursuit, 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".
After some time, one of them, a 6-meter stump, ended up in 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 disputes about the existence of which have continued between naturalists for centuries. In my hands is the key to the great secret, which means, that from now on a new chapter will be inscribed in natural history”.
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The explorer hastened to meet the happily escaped fishermen. “I found them while still in the grip of a nightmare,” he wrote. - During the story, they often flinched. Most of all, they were struck by the huge green eyes of the monster, which sparkled with indescribable fury, and the beak resembling the beak of a parrot, which suddenly jumped out of a cavity in the head, trying to tear them to shreds.
• Soon after the events described, one of the monsters fell into the hands of people alive. Newfoundland fishermen hauled a seine cast into the sea onto land. He turned out to be unusually heavy, twitching violently from side to side. With difficulty the net was pulled up to the shore. But when it appeared on the surface, the fishermen almost let go of it - the kraken itself was in the net. A multitude of writhing tentacles appeared in front of his eyes, and two sparkling eyes in the center. Several long tentacles crawled through holes in the net, trying to reach people. For a minute they wriggled in the air, trying to find the victim, but the distance was very large, and the tentacle snakes sank. Frightened fishermen were ready to chop off the net, but then a daredevil was found among them. Having chosen a convenient moment,getting closer, he jumped up from behind to the monster and thrust a long knife between the huge eyes of the kraken.
The whole animal went to R. Garvey. When a scientist measured it, it turned out that it reaches a length of more than 10 meters. After that, he was placed in a huge tank filled with salt water. The preserved monster was later taken to the Natural History Museum in London.
• In the book "Monsters of the Seas" by Richard Ellis, there is another curious piece of evidence, this time belonging to the ship's doctor Thomas Bill of the whaler "Kent". This happened in 1898. The whaler was that day at the pier of the Japanese island of Bonin. The doctor wanted to take a walk along the sandy shore and, having walked a hundred steps, suddenly saw a huge octopus with thick tentacles lying down. Considering that the animal was dead, he, without suspecting anything, without fear, took and stepped on his head. And then he almost lost his life for his negligence: the octopus grabbed him by the hand with its tentacle and began to pull him towards him. Screaming in fear and pain, the doctor tried to resist, but then another tentacle suddenly tied Thomas's arms and legs!
The doctor was lucky that sailors armed with knives and axes were nearby. Two of them attacked a huge mollusk and, chopping off its terrible tentacles, freed the doctor, who was already almost unconscious. The length of the octopus from the body to the tips of the tentacles was almost 7.5 meters. Discussing this case, the ichthyologists came to the conclusion that in this episode there was no aggression from the octopus - the ship's doctor himself behaved carelessly.
• But such a message was published in the newspaper "San Francisco Chronicle" for December 27, 1989. On New Year's Eve, in Iligan Bay, the Philippine island of Mindanao, a giant squid attacked … a motor passenger ship! A few hours later, fishermen found 12 surviving passengers caught on the keel of an inverted launch. By that time they had been carried 17 miles from the scene.
According to one of the victims, lawyer Agapito Caballe, after the onset of dusk, the water suddenly began to boil violently around the 22-ton longboat moving at a low speed. In the light of lamps and flashlights, the shocked passengers examined the emerging monster: “His eyes, the size of a good basin, literally hypnotized people,” Caballe said after a long psychological rehabilitation. - With huge tentacles, as thick as a 50-liter barrel, the octopus grabbed the hull of the launch and turned it upside down without any apparent effort! Having sailed a few meters, he grabbed three passengers - two women and a man - with tentacles and sank into the abyss …”Experts are sure 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 more than 200 kg and a length with tentacles of 7-9 m. Scuba divers Clayton Fisher and John Lashel from America were able to shoot in an underwater cave at a depth of 120 meters off the coast of Junei (Alaska) 6-meter octopus weighing about a hundred kilograms.
• A few years ago, diver Jack McLean dared to dive under a swimming octopus and release air from breathing cylinders under it. The animal surfaced abruptly, where it was hooked with hooks from a boat drifting nearby. Measurements showed that the length of the creature was 8.37 meters, and the weight reached 214 kg!
• In March next year, the same Jack McLean at the same place (Pharaohs Bay, California) saw a 10-meter "eight-armed" monster weighing more than three hundred kilograms. How he was able to get to the waiting boat, McLean, after suffering a shock, does not remember.
• The Honolulu Advertiser (Hawaiian Islands) of July 27, 1986 reported an observation of an octopus … 12 meters long near the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean! As it turned out, this giant was attracted to the surface by a half-living 5-meter herring shark. Having given the shocked passengers and the crew of the ship an opportunity 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 meters long, while it was reported that such creatures appear off the coast of Hawaii with enviable regularity.
According to observations, giant squids and octopuses often attack even very 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 simply. 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.
• 2001, August - the sea threw a block of amorphous creature 7 meters in diameter and weighing 3 tons on the coast of Newfoundland! The creature had ribs and a spine, but the head was missing. An incredible feature of the find was the presence of white hair all over the body. It should be noted that the mysterious remains of unidentified marine life, including those with tentacles, have been found by residents of coastal areas of the seas and oceans since time immemorial. But who owned the discovered remains remained a mystery. Subsequently, the famous zoologist Adam Verill confidently identified the find as the remains of a gigantic octopus, which in places was overgrown with moss from old age.
Y. Pernatiev