When people don't know how to explain something they don't understand, they are overwhelmed by fear. This is the oldest and most powerful of human feelings. Seas and oceans with their powerful elements, bottomless depths, dying ships and drowning people have always generated phobias, irrational fears and belief in something supernatural.
The sea gods of Ancient Greece and Egypt were cruel and insidious, the Japanese Shinto deities bestow healing and knowledge from the sea, but they are just as angry and dragging the irreverent with powerful tentacles to the bottom.
Monster at the bottom
We have not noticed: from time to time in different places of the planet, different people, who do not even know about the existence of each other, come up with the same ideas. More often these are irrational social theories, which then lead to wars, disasters, and innumerable victims. And to fears. It is not surprising that in the 30s of the last century, when the wrong classes were destroyed in Russia, in Germany they were preparing for racial cleansing, and in America the Great Depression was raging, the Myths of Cthulhu arose in the inflamed brain of the day laborer Howard Lovecraft. Cthulhu is a monster sleeping at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, but nevertheless capable of influencing the minds of people. Apparently, it is Cthulhu who sends the same thoughts to different brains. After the death of the writer, Lovecraft's horrors became the basis for the entire industry of film adaptations and computer games. Therefore, in the popular culture of the 21st century, Cthulhu is something unknown, terrible, hostile to man. And certainly the sea.
Therefore, we asked ourselves the question: is there any reason to believe that, despite the unexplored depth of the ocean floor, the seas lying under the ice of the Arctic and Antarctic, there is still something that gives rise to both ancient and modern myths? Here dragons and mountain snakes have been in the tales of different nations for thousands of years, and the bones of pterodactyls were found only 200 years ago. So we went to look for Cthulhu. They were looking for scientists, commanders of nuclear submarines and Japanese fishermen. But first things first.
DEEP WATER GHOST
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Underwater robotics today enables marine biologists to go to places where there were fewer people than in space - to ocean depths of several kilometers. And it's akin to a revolution in biological science like the one that took place in the 19th century during Charles Darwin's trip around the world. Hundreds of new species of marine organisms are discovered every year. There are no giant monsters among them yet, but look at the discovery from a depth of 4290 meters.
Everyone, without saying a word, began to call this kid Casper, very much like the hero from the cartoon "Ghostbusters". And it differs markedly from the octopuses known to us that live in the coastal region: it does not have mantle fins, and the suckers on the tentacles are in one row, and not in two, as in all other species, it does not matter - northern or tropical. Those. deep-sea species present marine biologists with surprises. This Casper octopus was taken by an underwater robot accidentally off Hawaii on February 27, 2016. A year ago, no one suspected of its existence.
Scientists of the Russian National Center for Marine Biology, which began its work in Vladivostok in 2016, are sending their deep-sea expeditions to the northern seas - Okhotsk and Beringovo. They are interested in special ecosystems there on deep-sea underwater volcanoes, where life functions not thanks to the energy of the Sun and photosynthesis, as elsewhere on the planet, but according to completely different laws.
Andrey Adrianov, academician:
- Now we have good enough equipment to conduct such deep-sea research at a good level. Of course, we're looking forward to it. We already felt our appetite.
–50 percent of new organisms?
- New species. I'd like to see what is there, what is in the Bering Sea. Especially in these unusual ecosystems, where there are seepage of highly mineralized hot water, gases. These are very interesting communities. In general, there is an opinion that these could be the very first communities of living organisms on the planet, it was there that life could arise because there was a time when there were no photosynthetic organisms.
But we are interested in something gigantic and monstrous. Cthulhu.
Dmitry Rudas, underwater operator:
- Andrei Vladimirovich, but to the unusual, completely unusual. UFOs, aliens, Quakers.
Andrey Adrianov, academician:
- No, we have not encountered this. But again, there are modern theories that life on our planet could have been brought. If earlier these were fantasies, then now there are a number of scientific facts. The fact is that when you look at the most ancient rocks that we meet on planet Earth - carbonaceous chondrites. These rocks are also present in meteorites that fall to the Earth, i.e. a lot of material was brought to the planet from space during the meteorite bombardment when the Earth was forming. Now it is possible to recognize microscopic objects using paleontological methods, gigantic dinosaurs were found earlier, now small ones are also possible. Some paleontologists believe that they find ancient bacteria or archaea in these meteorites. They appeared long ago - 4 billion years ago. They could have been brought in. In the nucleus of comets. The comet's nucleus is icy. And in it they could be preserved. Naturally, only bacteria, the prokaryotic form.
- Where we were designed is a difficult question. But some amazing variety of life, its depth, its still unknown - it gives rise to such views that everything is too complicated to do without design.
If Cthulhu is hiding in the ocean, it is most likely in the microcosm, in unusual symbiosis that live without photosynthesis. By the way, a colleague of Academician Adrianov, American Shannon Bennett, head of science at the California Maritime Academy, where Casper's deep-sea octopus was discovered, believes that at the moment, world science knows less than 10 percent of the species of marine life.
KTULHU AND A TIRED BASE
But maybe those who have been under water the longest have seen or heard something? Under the shoulders of Vice Admiral Boris Prikhodko and the commander of the nuclear submarine K-430 Viktor Prokhorov for two, a total of about 15 years of work in autonomous campaigns, i.e. it is in the submerged position. But our questions are answered in a military way: everything that we saw and heard strange is entered in the logbooks, and they have not yet been declassified. In addition, the commander of K-430, which now stands as a monument to sailors of all generations on Gaydamak, explains that the service of a strategic ship is not about detecting something, but about their boat being under no circumstances. circumstances was not noticed. Therefore, there is only one reaction to any unusual phenomenon: an urgent immersion and silent following along the established horizon. The commander still remembers the commands on the bridge,when he leaves the superstructure into the hull.
Viktor Prokhorov, K-430 nuclear submarine commander:
All down - I plunge. All down - I plunge. All down - I plunge. Record in logbook. There is no one on the bridge - I am diving. I go downstairs, wipe the coaming, batten down the bottom. After that: boatswain - dive to a depth of 17 meters, take ballast, except for average. We take the main ballast, and the boat - shshshsh: sinks. It dives slowly, beautifully.
Honestly, even if Cthulhu existed, he himself would be far away from swimming, racing from such a leviathan. K-430 fell not only on the pedestal, but also in the Guinness Book of Records: it was the first in the world in the 70s to make a salvo of 8 ballistic missiles from under the water at once. At that time, it was approximately the same as if 8 ships "Vostok" with Gagarin had taken off from Baikonur at once.
STRICT KTULHU IN SINTO TEMPLE
With Shigeru Nishikawa, our conversation about sea deities arose by accident and in a seemingly completely inappropriate setting. At the boring business conference "Mariculture as a component of the export of Primorsky Krai" Nishikawa-san made a report on the Japanese traditions of this business. The report sounded unexpected advice: In the aquatic trade with Japan, do not establish contacts with companies that have been engaged in this type of product for less than 50 years. Most likely, these will be intermediaries. Therefore, we approached to clarify what the expert on the Russian-Japanese trade in seafood meant. It turned out that the maritime farming markets in Japan are so stable that all the companies that work for them started as families. The largest wholesale fish market in the world, the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, is just a few corporations that have grown out of fishing families. Although more than 60,000 people currently work in the market, this spirit of family and sea worship is still preserved. There are many deities in the Shinto religion, Nishikawa-san told us, they are called kami. One main sea kami Akkorokamuyu at the entrance to the Tsukiji market is set to the Namiyoke Inari temple, and every loader, seller, auctioneer, sushi barman, janitor - everyone who works for Tsukiji today comes to this temple. Therefore, there is no push there. Because the Accorokamui is a stern kami, a huge sea monster with large, bulging eyes. The legends about Akkorokamui say that it is bright red and resembles the reflection of the setting sun in the water. Its length reaches 120 meters. It also releases a dark liquid with an unpleasant odor into the water. You cannot offend him in any way. He is responsible for the health and intuition of the fisherman,but this is a formidable octopus and terrible in anger, and it is impossible to escape from its tentacles.
Nishikawa-san recounted all this with a half smile, but with very serious eyes. We didn't tell him about Cthulhu: Asian and European views on what is considered terrible and what is not - still differ greatly. But for some reason it seems to us that the Shinto Akkorokamui, which clearly descended from the Doflein octopus, which is found in our common sea with the Japanese, does without evoking a feeling of general unaccountable horror and fear from the bottom of the ocean.
The search for Cthulhu - or all life that is generated by the planet - is work for centuries to come. In the genes of the sea amoeba, there may be a chain leading back hundreds of millions of years. Here in Vostok Bay, near Nakhodka, a marine zoologist from St. Petersburg finds something new every day.
Alexander Kudryavtsev, Art. Researcher, Faculty of Biology, St. Petersburg State University:
- As a rule, in some of our samples, we find a number of species that are unique to this habitat. And there is a suspicion that we have discovered a certain number of species, but it is clear that now it is impossible to say for sure, because it is necessary to conduct light-optical studies, studies using an electron microscope, and read gene sequences. We maybe imagine 2-3, well, maybe 5 percent of all species that inhabit all habitats on planet Earth.
Cthulhu will be found - somewhere in the microworld of the sea, in the properties of creatures that we have not yet met. We are still dunno on our own planet, and therefore crazy ideas come to our minds at once, and we are terrified of everything unknown, not-so, different.