Hey everyone.

I heard about two guys who sailed across the Atlantic on a raft, and supposedly encountered animals never before seen, such as sea monsters, and reported what they saw. I don't recall why they took the trip, or, if their reasons were simply scientific.

Does anyone know if this actually happened, and if so, who they were?

Thanks,

Mike.

Google had nothing to report, that I could find anyways.

Its funny how before we put lound engines on our ships seamonster sightings were common place.

Or before people had common knowledge of the animals in the sea and the required skill at identifying species. Like claiming a basking shark carcass was a sea monster.

anything unknown or not seen before was MONSTER

well seeing as though we know more about the moon's surface then the bottom of our oceans. And we know more about stars more then our Earth. I'm sure the story may have happened.

This has got to be Thor Heyerldahl's Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, when 6 Norwegians sailed from Peru to the Polynesian Isles on an Inka raft. They wrote a book about it, and indeed, they saw some strange things, like this deep-sea fish whose first live specimen jumped onboard during one night:

but only one of those is unresolved: a mass of bioluminescence more than nine meters long and constantly changing shape.They saw three of them at the same time, but none of these things surfaced, they remained underwater .I suppose it could have been a group of smaller fish, but it was getting dark and they (for obvious reasons) did not dive in to investigate and it should have been quite hard to tell for sure (As far as I remember, they had a marine biologist on board and all were really experienced seamen, they were not a bunch of amateurs who jump to early conclusions about sea monsters)

This is odd that you brought this up.

In the past, before the engine was invented...yes, I believe that people who sailed across the ocean did see unknown sea creatures and that we really don't see them now is because of the invention of the engine motor.

But I had wondered about this and for some reason I started to think about those boat races that they have, where they sail quite a distance to win some prize. They are out there all alone sailing with the wind. I wondered if they ever see anything unusual.

Until...a couple of weeks ago, I was watching some show, it was on channel 5 regular tv, don't recall the name of it, but they has mentioned on there that there was this one boat at rest on the water when they encountered something unusual....there was a guy aboard that said a large tenticle came up out of the water on their boat. I remember him saying it was rather large too and it scared them.

I think these sea creatures are out there but in some more less traveled areas of the sea.

Yes but marine biological knowledge was poor in the 1940's in comparison to what we know today and bioluminessence was not well studied at the time. It is more than likely a showl of fish such as lantern fish rather than one large fish, especially as it kept changing shapem or it could have been a group of firefly squid or something akin to that.

I DO know of a group of men who were stranded on a raft in the Atlantic. Apparently, they were mired in fog and suddenly smelt an overpowering stench of rotting fish, and heard a strange hissing. A turtle-like head on a long neck rose out of the water and looked straight at them. All of the men jumped overboard, and only one of them ever made it back to land.

The key words and phrases here are "stranded on a raft," (scared, probably a wee bit hysterical) "mired in fog" (could have seen things that weren't what they seemed) and "overpowering stench" (could have caused them to hallucinate). You see, applying rationality really does work.



All that confuses me here is this: deep-sea creatures are adapted to high pressure. If one jumped aboard a raft, it would fall apart because of the lack of pressure holding it together.

I suppose, if it didn't live too deep down...

Large tentacle would hardly be suprising as we know there are giant squid and octopus. Giant unknown sea creatures however are very unlikely as they would leave physical evidence which at some point would be washed up. There are species of beaked whale we only know about from their skulls if there were giant unknown species there would have been something washed up as evidence of there existance. It is much, much, much more likely that they were species which just unidentified on those old journies as marine zoological knowledge has only recently started to improve advance.

Yes but the bottom of the ocean is not a place large life could exist, lack of food and extremely high pressure would mean life would be severly restricted in size.

A point we keep bringing up, though no-one ever pays attention to it.

I know, people like to ignore information that contradicts their idea.

Aye, that they do. I told someone TK doesn't exist once and gave reasons. They kicked off at me.

I looked into the book, and the fish is a Snake Mackerel, and it lives not deeper than 600 meters, which was considered deep sea in the 40's.

That explains it then.

How long ago was this? A lot of animals we are now familiar with now were seen as monsters a while back ago. Like when the French were exploring Hudsons Bay and the Arctic ect, they described walruses to be half fish half oxen animals with horns coming out of there mouths.

But you have to remember that science back then consisted of wild religous theories and explanation of everything as "done by God" so you can't really use those as reports of sea monsters.

Thanks for the replys guys.

Clobhair-cean, I bet that is the same expedition I heard about. After being passed around, the information probably got all backwards. Either way, it's interesting to hear about.

Thanks again,

Mike

Good to hear.. I would recommend you the book about the expedition ("Across the Pacific by Boat" by Thor Heyerdahl), it is a fascinating read even though the theory it tries to prove is rubbish. The expedition was an astonishing feat, though: These Norwegians sailed from Callao (Peru) to Raroia Island (Polynesia), which meant covering 4300 nautical miles in 101 days with this "ship":

Maybe it's because what was unknown back then, is known now. Who'll take a raft across the Atlantic?
I do agree however though, that there are things underwater, we have no knowledge of.

Yes but I'm willing to bet that they are not large.

Yep. Add me to the list of rational thinkers, Matt, I've been saying that too, as you probably know. Although I guess sometimes you have to think about what the word monster actually means, without getting tangled up in mythological stories. I'd say a humbolt squid is a monster, a great white, a pacific octopus, even a whale, and as I've said before there's something ghostly and unnarutal-looking about nawhals that creep me out a bit (despite being beautiful creatures). there are enough scary critters lurking to get you without having to fabricate krakens and other horible beasties!

Are you refering to the Floridian "Sea serpent attack" of 1962? (Mentioned recently on Cryptomundo).

Doubtful story though. >>;

Exactly it comes from fear of the unknown, people know enough about many species to not fear them or only have contact with them in environments such as zoo's which makes them seem less fierce or dangerous. I know what you mean about the narwhal, is is a very weird looking animal. I would not like to be on the end of one of those tusks.
Apparently the name narwhal is Norsk for corpse whale, I never knew that. Wiki Narwhal

there were several successful crossings made in reed rafts or boats the Ra expeditions

there were two they were very similar to the tiki journey

I have seen 2 documentaries on the ra expeditions pretty amazing stuff i saw the movies in like 75

here is a link to more info

http://www.plu.edu/~ryandp/RAX.html

Indeed. In various bathysphere expeditions in the early '30s, Dr. William Beebe discovered five new species but failed to capture them. Said animals have not even been seen since. See also.



Indeed again.


EDIT: Fixed bleeding wrong link.

That link does not work, however his dive is not relatively that deep again however, we can dive much much deeper than that.

Link fixed for obvious mistake.

I can not find a single scientific paper refering to the species listed there. It is not recognised by fish base either.

Well, I just fixed the link. I've never heard of it before either.

I'd like to see more about those two supposed "findings" of further specimens by fishermen.

Photos? Descriptions? Any parts conserved? >>;

If it ain't on Fishbase, I'd say it does not exist since fish base is the best resource for find fish species available.

Look, just beacuse it dosen't exist, dosent mean it's not still out there.... ....wait a minute.

Fishbase refers to a 7.3 m specimen of Greenland shark.

I have my doubts about the factual accuracy; whilst it's probably the best compiled database avalible, at least at the moment, it can hardly be considered to be the ultimate resource of unrefutable information.

Well it is run by a university and the check there information very rigourously and it acceptable for use in scientific work
It also references all its data as well.