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23rd January 2013, 01:17 PM | #121 |
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Zippy,
There are a number of points in common with UFOs. As with UFOs, the only data we have is a claim- a large unidentified animal was claimed to be have been seen. Nothing, absolutely nothing can be used to make us sure the description provided accurately matches what was there. Just like UFOs, where the "aliens" require accepting the report "as is", "sea serpent" requires accepting the sighting at face value. You can not exclude misidentification, regardless on how unlikely you might think it can be. Misidentification, by the way, is the most likely explanation. See, they were relatively close to a river's mouth. Logs have more than once been confused with lake or se monsters. Logs are carried by rivers. Note that no observer, regardless on how skilled he/she can be is flawless. Even if 99% of the times correct, the sighting might as well have been the 1% fail. |
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23rd January 2013, 01:22 PM | #122 |
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Crap. Double post. Some mod please delet it please.
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23rd January 2013, 01:42 PM | #123 |
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Damn small cellphone screen and keyboard...
Regarding the second sighting, two words: whale shark. Some years ago one caused a flap of sea monster sightings, here in Brazil, relatively near the Paraiba do Sul river mouth. Now, what's more likely: a mistake or a sea serpent, an unknown animal never seen later, even with increased ship transit in Brazil's territorial waters, never a carcass washed ashore or one caught in fishing nets? Shrike: Here in Brazil we have river otter (ariranha) that can reach 2m long. Beautiful noisy active critters, can be quite territorial and aggressive. Once met a zookeeper who said he would never dare enter their pond. Never heard about them adventuring in the sea, but I guess a flood could eventually bring a family group to the sea. Not sure if their range encompass the Paraiba river (surely not the Paraiba do Sul - but I guess the sighting was closer to Paraiba river). Will check. |
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23rd January 2013, 02:05 PM | #124 |
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Thanks Correa Neto for your responses. I would like to have someone look at the actual picture that was included with the report, but I was admonished not to reproduce it. It is a very interesting picture.
It shows a long-necked thing (leaning at an angle) with a space between its neck and this squarish-frill-type thing. (head, neck) then with some water spacing inbetween (then squarish frill thing). Is it possible for you (or anyone else) to post a map with the coordinates of where this sighting happened marked out? (Both sets of coordinates that both scientists mentioned.) That would be helpful. As to it being a tree trunk, they are mentioning that there was something akin to propulsive activity in the water..."moving its neck from side to side" and "curious wriggling movement"....so I don't know. I am adding this in addendum/edit, on the tree trunk explanation. I don't know if we can apply that here (although the location of the event would make it a prime candidate for such an ID), as the scientists looked at it with high-power binoculars. I have a ten-power set here in the house, and when I look at birds sitting in trees about 600 feet away (they look like dark blobs to my naked eye) with the binoculars, you can tell that they are birds, with feathers, their color schemes, and tell that they are animate, rather than inanimate. So I am thinking at 100 yards or even 120 yards with high-power binoculars as they had in the 1905 event, they would have been able to discern whether it was a floating tree trunk, rather than something that was animate--as they both concluded that it was. The surfacing event and wriggling motion was close enough via technological means to see sufficient details--that is my viewpoint. Also, I must ask: Can you have tree trunks in rivers that have two-tone coloring? If someone can respond to that, I would be appreciative. But again, everyone's encouraged to weigh in. |
23rd January 2013, 04:42 PM | #125 |
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23rd January 2013, 05:28 PM | #126 |
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Google Earth shows the coordinates are of a point some 43km E of the shore, 53 km SE from the mouth of Paraíba river. If Google Earth´s sea bottom topography is OK but of low resolution, as it seems to be, they were over the continental slope; without a better topography of the area, I can't go in to any more detail.
Zippy, you are trying to find reasons to back the accuracy of the description while ignoring all the problems. Again, you can't ignore the possibility of a mistake. There's a huge thread about UFO evidence where a poster trued to do the same with a number of UFO sightings. He ignored all sorts of possible issues regarding observation conditions - one case was a UFO sighting from a boat, seen through binoculars. He used the very same arguments you are using - the eyewitnesses could not have been mistaken. It as a flying saucer, not a blimp. I guess you can see the paralels here. I am a rather good observer too, but I am pretty aware of the fact I can be fooled, mistaken or just not manage to propperly identify what I saw. I could post a list here. In most of these cases, I managed to identify properly what I was seeing. Some, I do not and include things in the water. I bet you can understand that under the certain conditions, the illusion may persist, the memories may be distorted (what was the time between the sighting and the writing of the text ?), and the interpretation of something unidentified may unfold in rather strange ways. The oceans, or any large body of water, is a rather difficult environment to gauge distances. There are few if any differences, boats rock and floating things move. So, they might as well having been mistaken. Again, what's more likely? A mistake or a sea serpent, an animal never seen again later (despite the increase in the number of ships in the area in later times), never washed ashore, never captured in fishing nets? Regarding ariranhas, I made a mistake - maximum size is 1.8m, not 2m. Still a big critter. They were quite widespread, but I only found refferences of their existence further north and further south, but not at the rivers nearby the alleged sighting site. Aniway, at http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficheir...Otter_Anjo.JPG you'll find a picture that will show why they are such a good candidate for misidentification (I know at least a possible case). But I still think a semisubmerged log is the most likely candidate. |
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23rd January 2013, 06:39 PM | #127 |
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Originally Posted by mike3
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
For someone to be taken seriously they need to be able to give specific details--enough that we can go back out and verify the story. If they can't, they're out, automatically and without hesitation. If the data aren't there, the story's out, automatically and without hesitation. If the data ARE there, then we start looking into things more carefully. And through it all, I would assume that the person is merely mistaken and would be looking for alternate explanations. The issue is, I'm not a blank slate here. I've got biological and paleontological knowledge, and they need to demonstrate that certain parts of it are wrong in order for me to believe they saw Bigfoot. For me to believe they saw something strange, sure, I can believe that without question--as I have stated several times. It's not the "I saw something strange" part that I'd be questioning--I see strange stuff in the desert and in woods all the time. It's the "....therefore Bigfoot" part. The other issue is that I know a bit about how human minds work. Once we have an answer we stick with it. So yeah, my criteria are going to be extremely high. There is a reason for that, however: I'm acting to ensure you're not tricking yourself. I'm not asking for any unreasonable data; in fact, I'm treating them with an unearned respect by actually taking them seriously. These are the standards all of us who do this sort of work have to live by. They want to play at taxonomy (and the "...therefore Bigfoot" part is taxonomy), they've got to play by the rules--if only to keep them from fooling themselves. As for when it's happened, it happened to me. I was in Romania, doing some paleo work. I had to avoid one outcrop, because of a 6' long lizard (that's nose to base of tail, not nose to end of tail). My professor thought I was mistaken, and they had a good laugh about it for two days--I HAD indulged in some local distilled spirits the day before, after all. I was good natured about it; I knew what I saw, and they weren't cruel, just picking on me. Anyway, two days later that professor was in the same area. When he got back he apologized to me, and provided photos of the lizard. Then there were the bald eagle sightings back in Ohio. And the great snowy owl sightings (a blizzard blew them pretty far south). Both confirmed after a few sightings--and the bald eagles even had a webcam looking at the nest. Paleontology is rife with such sightings. I'm still looking for sea shells in a formation that's rumored to produce them, but which scientists have never collected from. It happens all the time. Again, this is stuff that anyone serious about this research should do as a standard operating procedure, and which anyone at all should expect to be asked to do before they're taken seriously.
Originally Posted by Zippy Omicron
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23rd January 2013, 06:47 PM | #128 |
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100% agree with this, and as I have cited before on this forum, I have personal experience with this.
A few years ago, I was with a group of friends, who also happened to be "serious" amateur astronomers. We were doing some maintenance work on the outside of one of the domes at our local observatory when we heard a loud "humming" sound. All of us looked up at about that same time, and we all agreed later that we initially saw the same thing; a black, oval object flying overhead. It appeared to be about as big as a house, at least several hundred feet of altitude and travelling fast from east to west, heading over a group of tagaste trees (a.k.a. tree lucernes) on the western boundary. However, our initial impressions of size, height and speed were completely shattered when this "object" landed in one of the tagaste trees, swung through 90° and hung on one of the branches. What is important here is that there were several of us, and we were all, by nature, sceptical types; all used to the discipline of making careful and considered observations, yet in the heat of that moment, we all literally lost perspective and incorrectly observed the same thing; a fast moving object of considerable size and at considerable high altitude. I popped inside to telephone the nearest apiarist to offer him a free swarm. |
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23rd January 2013, 06:54 PM | #129 |
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For some context, here is M.J. Nicoll's book, THREE VOYAGES OF A NATURALIST. The sea serpent sighting is on page 22:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tj0...page&q&f=false |
24th January 2013, 08:07 AM | #130 |
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Re: apparent movement of object if it was a tree: Tree is in ocean and rolling in the waves. It is moving.
Re: apparent two-toned effect of object: In addition to the other potential explanations offered, even an object of one solid color can appear two-toned in sunlight, when wet, on the water. Re: observation and binoculars: I am an ornithologist and an avid birder. In open environments, I consistently underestimate distances to objects; in forested environments, I'll often overestimate those distances. For all we know, the object was much farther from the observers than they claimed. I have often mistaken inanimate objects for birds (or other creatures). Sometimes the use of my binoculars (10X and probably far superior in performance to the optics the witnesses had in 1905) reveals the error, sometimes it doesn't. I have more than once trained my 45x spotting scope on something because I couldn't tell with my binocs if it was even a bird or not. My best example of mistaken identity by highly trained field biologists? I was once in the field with a raptor biologist and experienced eagle watcher on the Chesapeake Bay. We walked into the ruins of an abandoned homestead on the coast and found a Turkey Vulture carcass inside. It had a naked head, small beak, two-toned wings, and a vulture's relatively blunt-clawed toes. It was also in an abandoned house, which is one of the preferred nesting sites for Turkey Vultures. This guy picks up the carcass by its foot and says to me "Check it out: immature Bald Eagle!" He was serious. I didn't press it at the time because I didn't want to embarrass him. Now either he had a complete brain-to-mouth malfunction or I've had a complete memory malfunction about the characters I noted on that carcass. Either way, one of two highly trained ornithologists who examined the carcass in the field at a distance of 0m was completely wrong about what it was. |
24th January 2013, 08:28 AM | #131 |
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We have been scouring the oceans with big nets for thousands of years. No sea serpent.
We have been capturing large aquatic animals for thousands of years and inspected the contents of the stomach. No sea serpent. This kind of evidence can be looked at as being robust when taken in context. |
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24th January 2013, 09:11 AM | #132 |
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OK. Thanks to everyone who is weighing in with their views.
Mistaken identity is indeed possible. I am not convinced that it is a tree trunk, at least at this juncture. As the report states, the yacht was put upon a circuit of the area two more times, which I think indicates they wanted to see if they would witness it again. I don't think that they would do that if they thought it was a tree trunk. I look at the complete behavior of the eyewtinesses, as recorded. I do think the second sighting of something has nothing to do with the first one. Jerrywayne, I will check out that link. I have been attempting to see if the image from the Proceedings report is on the Web, so it can be linked to. I feel it is important for everyone to see what Nicoll drew, and then you get the "complete report" in your hands, as I would say. I think I have found a link to an illustration quite similar to the one in the Proceedings report, about five minutes ago (via a Yahoo search of "sea serpent drawing by Nicoll"). But I have noticed that, although they are quite simlar, they are not the same. The differences being that the angle of the neck (in the Proceedings drawing, the angle is 160 degrees; in the Web article, 150 degrees--yes I measured them with a protractor) and the length of the head (the Proceedings drawing is slightly more elongated than the Web article's one--which shows a more compact head). Also, there is more space between back of neck and the described frill (two inches in the Proceedings depiction, versus one inch in the Web illustration). So I think that the picture in the Web article (which is sourced to the book that Jerrywayne is linking to on Google Books) was somewhat redrawn. Additionally, the coloring (in ink) of the creature is less dark in the Proceedings article. http://www.guerrillaexplorer.com/cry...a-sea-serpent/ If you think the outline of the thing equals a tree trunk, you tell me. |
24th January 2013, 09:35 AM | #133 |
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24th January 2013, 10:52 AM | #134 |
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Further elucidation on the 1905 Brazil sighting
First, I would like to thank Jerrywayne for providing an avenue to acquire further data on this sighting event.
Here is the URL ink directly to the book: http://books.google.com/books?id=cqQ...d=0CDAQ6AEwAA# The full title is: “Three Voyages of a Naturalist: Being an Account of Many Little-Known Islands in Three Oceans Visited by the “Valhalla” RYS” by MJ Nicoll, Member of the British Ornithologists’ Union with an Introduction by The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Crawford KT FRS. (London: Witherby & Co., 1908) (This edition came from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library in La Jolla, California.) From the Preface, page XVI About the ship: “First, however, I must tell of the good ship that carried us safely through calms and storms by sail and steam for over 72,000 miles. ‘Valhalla,” RYS, is, I believe, the only ship-rigged yacht in the world. She is of 1700 tons displacement, and is fitted with auxillary screw, which, under favourable conditions, will drive her through the water at a speed of about 10 ½ to 11 knots an hour. It is under sail, however, that ‘Valhalla’ is at her best, and on many occasions we logged 16 knots per hour.” Page XVII “…The total number of crew carried, including officers, engineers, and stewards, was about sixty-five…” Reading the Preface informs the reader that these were expeditions very much akin to that was done by Charles Darwin and other naturalists—collecting plants, insects, fish, birds, and mammal specimens, and taking them back to the UK. And observing things in situ. Page XXIII of the Preface. (The third expedition in which the creature sighting happened to take place on. It shows that while both were ornithologists, they were actually specimen sample collectors—they were recording whatever they saw, and taking specimens. There are many photographs in this book—but these were of things on the deck--including specimens, or on land for the most part. This is a very short excerpt of a very lengthy description of what they did. Since I would argue that Nicoll and everyone else on board the ship had exceptional amounts of at-sea experience, I think that his statements of distance should be given more weight, rather than less. But that is only my opinion.) “…It was not until the autumn of 1905 that I again set out in the “Valhalla” on my last and , perhaps, most interesting voyage. On this cruise we had a somewhat larger party, for besides Lord Crawford, the Hon. Walter Lindsay, Dr. A. Dean, and myself, Mr. EGB Meade-Waldo was invited to accompany us for the purpose of collecting insects, and thus I was able to devote my whole time to birds, mammals fishes, and reptiles, with the consequence that examples of several new species were obtained. We sailed from Cowes on 8th November, 1905, and, after calling at Las Palmas, ran down amongst the South Atlantic Islands to the Cape of Good Hope; thence northwards through the inhospitable waters of the Mozambique Channel to Madagascar and the little-known islands which lie to the north-west. After visiting the Seychelles we returned home via the Suez Canal, completing a voyage of seven months, during which time we had covered about 19,000 miles….” [there is mention of visiting St. Paul’s Rocks on 2nd December, and were at Bahia from 10th to 30th December 1905.] … Page XXIV-XXV of the Preface: “The results obtained during this voyage were more important than those of the two proceeding ones. The collection of bird-skins, numbering five hundred, contained specimens of eight species new to science. Besides these there were many rarities, few of the birds of the small coral islands to the north-west of Madagascar having been previously represented in the National [UK] collection.” … (What follows is further data dealing with the eyewitness report of the “sea serpent”—and Nicoll also describes it as such. In this version, things are expanded out a bit more than in the Proceedings report. The creature was under observation for probably the better of ten minutes, beginning at about fifty yards from the ship (while under sail power), and increasing distance. A few minutes of observing the “frill” and then the rest of the creature emerged above the surface, exhibiting propulsion activity. Interestingly, the “frill/fin” is described by Knoll as “soft” and “rubber-like.” Doesn’t strike me as a tree trunk. Indeed, this sighting is not quite actually in or near the mouth of a river, but 14 miles out in the open ocean, according to what Nicoll writes (if I understand correctly). One may argue that he was completely fooled by a tree trunk, but he observed the phenomenon for a good number of minutes, as well as via binoculars.) [pages 21 to 26] Chapter III ITAPARICA- BAHIA. “Before describing our doings at Bahia, I must refer in detail to an important incident which occurred on the high seas during our second voyage thither. On the 7th December, 1905, when in latitude 7 [degrees] 14 [minutes] S., longitude 34 [degrees] 25 [minutes] W., and about fourteen miles from the coast of Brazil near Para, a creature of most extraordinary form and proportions was sighted by two of us. At the time we were under sail only, and were slowly making our way to Bahia. It was at about 10 o’clock in the morning, and I was leaning on the rail of the poop deck, when a large fin suddenly appeared close to the ship at a distance of about fifty yards. This fin resembled that of no fish I had previously seen, and I pointed it out immediately to Mr. EGB Meade-Waldo, who was on deck with me at the time, and we watched it together for several minutes. As we passed slowly by, a long eel-like neck surmounted by a head, shaped somewhat like that of a turtle, rose out of the water in front of the fin. This creature remained in sight for a few minutes, but we soon drew ahead of it, and it became lost to view, owing to the ripple of the water. Owing to the fact that we were under sail at the time, it was not possible to go about and make a closer inspection, and with great regret we had to be content with the view we had had of this remarkable monster. A full account of it was given at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London, on 19th June, 1906, and I quote below from the report which was printed in the “Proceedings” of that Society (10th October, 1906, p. 721):-- …..[snip, as this is the same material as I posted earlier in this thread] “This creature was an example, I consider, of what has been so often reported, for want of a better name, as the “great sea-serpent.” I feel sure, however, that it was not a reptile that we saw, but a mammal. It is of course, impossible to be certain of this, but the general appearance of the creature, especially the soft, almost rubber-like fin, gave one this impression. It is often said that, if there were such a monster, remains of it would have been found long ago, but this is not necessarily so. Supposing the “sea-serpent” lives in deep holes, such as there were in the spot where we saw our “monster,” then there would be little chance of remains being washed ashore, and the amount of deep-sea dredging that has yet been done is very small, so that it is not surprising that no parts of this creature have been obtained in that way. That it is not more often reported is not to be wondered at, when one realizes how often it is that a ship may sail for days together without sighting another ship, even in seas where there is considerable traffic. Also it must be remembered that such ridicule is generally bestowed on the reports of sea-monsters that many persons hesitate to describe what they have seen. I know myself of several instances of unknown sea-monsters having been seen by reliable witnesses, who, to avoid the inevitable “chaff,” would not publicly state their experiences.” From where I stand, I think we have an excellent eyewitness (in actuality there were two), and the sighting lasted of sufficient duration (upwards of probably ten minutes) that I think—only in this case—we should be able to rule out mistaken identification of a tree trunk. I think in ten minutes of observation a tree trunk would have been able to be discerned. But I will leave the door open on mistaken ID. |
24th January 2013, 01:38 PM | #135 |
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^So the part they were able to publish in the Proceedings was a more conservative account than what they put in the book. I wonder why . . .
There are two ways to interpret the account. On the one hand, we could look at this as an amazing encounter with a species that looks just like the one in the description: A really big, long-necked, fin-backed sea creature of the open oceans, most likely reptilian or mammalian. The amazing part is that no such creature is ever recorded as having been washed ashore matching anything like the description, no one harpooned anything like that during the Golden Age of whaling, despite today's technology no one has photographed one, and there is nothing resembling such a creature in the fossil record of any era younger than the Mesozoic. Alternatively, one could accept the negative evidence for such creatures as grounds plenty firm enough to establish that a creature like that described does not exist. Given that perspective, the tale is a cautionary one about how trained observers can write convincing accounts of something they've seen, but they can still be way off in their interpretation of what it was. |
24th January 2013, 02:34 PM | #136 |
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Yes. A branch could have been mistaken for the "neck and head" while the submerged trunk as the "fin". As the log rocks due to waves, they "see" the neck moving. The submerged part of the trunk responds for the "underwater activity".
The new text posted also contains a tidbit of information that forces me to question the accuracy of the whole thing. They claim the sighting happened at "latitude 7 [degrees] 14 [minutes] S., longitude 34 [degrees] 25 [minutes] W., and about fourteen miles from the coast of Brazil near Para". As I told you before, the coordinates would put you at the continental slope, a bit more than 50Km SE of the mouth of Paraíba do Norte river. Now, this is not "near Pará". Pará state is located almost 1400Km towards NW! By the way, what would such an animal eat? Think about it. The "deep holes" where this sea serpent is supposed to dwell, taking in to account the sighting location, would actually be actually the continental slope and its not very rich in food. And if its a deep sea critter, what was it doing sticking its neck at the surface? Breathing? Large concentrations of food and fishes are found in open waters, yes, but where there are sea mountains rising closer to the surface, within the photic zone. These areas area heavilly fished. Whats the number of sea serpents caught by fishing nets? |
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24th January 2013, 02:36 PM | #137 |
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Shrike and Correa N,
Your points are well taken. I would only add that these were trained observers. Not merely "untrained observers," as the category that I myself might be lumped into. They spent a lot of time on the ocean, and observing those things in the ocean, and on the ocean, and in the air above the ocean. And got specimens from beneath the waves as well. But like I said, I leave the door open for mistaken ID. It may be that the Proceedings report was a very condensed version of what Nicoll and Meade-Waldo saw (keep in mind that they apparently also made an oral presentation to the Society as well about this sighting), and not only did that condensed version appear in the book (I decided not to retype all of that in), but more data was provided in the book version's accounting--probably from the same originating data set as was used for the Proceedings reportage--their record notebooks. RE: Not coming across such a carcass in the intervening 100 years. (To my dim recollection, carcasses are not that common to come on shore, despite numerous reports of beaching whales and porpoises, so I don't know if that should be the "limiting factor" arguing against existence.) But I would direct your attention to the recent stranding of the pygmy right whale carcass (from 2002) that recently had DNA testing done. Here is an article that appeared in December 2012. It was found that it belonged to a previously-believed extinct cetacean branch. http://phys.org/news/2012-12-elusive...r-thought.html I will also provide this URL link to what is known about the pygmy right whale. Not much. http://acsonline.org/fact-sheets/pygmy-right-whale/ And I will additionally direct your attention to the pygmy beaked whale, of which there have been exceptionally few seen. According to Wikipedia, it was identified from a rotting carcass in Baja, CA in 1990 (and a skeleton from 1991), and confirmation via back-tracking to another beach stranding from 1955 in Peru. URL Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoplodon_species_%22A%22 And one more, for good measure. Apparently the most rare cetacean currently catalogued by science is the spade-toothed whale. Here's an article about it, where it does state it has never been before seen in its complete physical form (some bone parts earlier), via two beach strandings in New Zealand (2012 report): http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gr.../2012/nov/06/1 It additionally says that "..the spade-toothed beaked whale lives in the South Pacific Ocean, a vast and poorly-known area that covers more than 85 million square kilometers--14 percent of the Earth's surface..." I would argue that this also is true for vast tracts of the Atlantic as well, and parts of the Indian, etc. Just keep in mind that the oceans are vast in dimensionality and depth. Even with common shipping lanes, doesn't mean that everything has been catalogued that cavorts and breeds in these oceans Mankind has labeled. And I would argue the opposite of Shrike's argument: Every year new species of plants, insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and even mammals are discovered. Some thought extinct re-discovered. And keep in mind that despite the giant squid being known to exist for quite some time, and even with several carcasses (some more, some less intact) in hand, the first time one was filmed in the wild was only in the last fourl years or so. And now, they have recorded one not caught on a hook (CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley (USA) allegedly is going to be talking about this most recent filming this very evening on the 6:30 PM newscast.) But look at how long that took. They're even finding new species in the middle of metropolitan areas. Here's a news story from within the last five years or so: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/l...bug/index.html Here's an additional line of "food for thought": I haven't done it yet, but I am seriously considering of engaging in a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request of the US Navy, and asking if they have any reports of strange, unusual, or uncatalogued creatures as eyewitnessed by US Navy personnel, say from 1940 through 2010. Any US citizen can engage such a FOIA request. I wonder if they might have such reports. Also, still working on attempting to find out if there are any animals that have been ID'ed or catalogued as a new species based on one viewing incident. |
24th January 2013, 04:12 PM | #138 |
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So my story of the raptor biologist misidentifying a raptor he was holding in his hand at the time didn't illustrate the point clearly enough?
"Not much" is in the eye of the beholder. Did you follow your own link to read that "several dozen" specimens have been examined? Yep, Mesoplodon peruvianus is rare and seldom observed. We know now, however, that the first collected was in 1955. Your link suggests that 65 official encounters are recognized, with at least 6 individuals collected as fishing bycatch. You also listed Mesoplodon traversii (spade-toothed beaked whale) as somehow relevant to the discussion. Did you follow your own link to learn that this species was first described in 1873? How about the genus Mesoplodon as a whole? Did you read that it is the most speciose genus of whales, with 14 recognized species? Yes, there are a few forms of beaked whale that are rarely observed and have been collected and described relatively recently. There is also a fossil record of this genus dating to the Miocene. No one disputes that new species continue to be discovered and described. What I do dispute is the existence of entirely new species (and genera and families and orders) based on the flimsiest of evidence: anecdotal accounts of observations. |
24th January 2013, 05:37 PM | #139 |
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Originally Posted by Zippy Omicron
The issue is, unless field markers can be identified, field IDs mean remarkably little. It's a guess--even if it's a known species. That one I saw on a birding trip with my brother-in-law: he had IDed a bird as one species, until I pointed out a few field markers that disproved the hypothesis. My brother-in-law is part of a few organizations for bird watching, and probably has as many field hours as most researchers (most of us do more writing than field work). Let me put this in perspective: A guy who's field notes are utilized in research projects missed a field marker noted by some yahoo who generally only looks at birds when they're on his plate. We all have stories like that, by the way--it's humbling, and often useful. Even if field markers CAN be identified, that method only works for known species, and sometimes not even then. For unknown species careful inspection under controlled conditions (neither of which is possible in a boat, from ANY distance) is almost always necessary. Something other than someone's say-so is ALWAYS necessary, without exception. |
24th January 2013, 06:00 PM | #140 |
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Case in point the "rediscovery" of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
Original "sightings" by reputable ornithologists - and after 5 years intensive, organised, scientific searching, not a scrap of good evidence has been turned up to confirm the existence of the bird. Personally? I believe it was mis-identification in the first place. ETA: I have been on the reverse of this process. I sighted a Brown Booby in Victoria Australia and was pooh-poohed as a novice and being completely mistaken by the resident "experts" for ages, despite the fact that I was very familiar with the bird. They mostly used known distribution maps to prove me wrong (irony being that they used their distribution maps to disprove my distribution map). The curator of a NZ natural history museum then pointed out that they had a number of bird carcasses in their archives that had been found in the area of my sighting. "Experts" can be wrong. |
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24th January 2013, 06:01 PM | #141 |
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A little bit more about the context
Shrike,
I think that you may have missed the whole point of the discussion as I have posted it, from what I can see. Let me explain a little bit more. My argumentation, in a nutshell, is this. a)--In 1905, an animate object (a "sea-serpent" type creature as interpreted by the two scientists who viewed it--from approx. fifty yards to over 150 yards over a timeframe that apparently was pretty near a 10 minute observational event) was eyewitnessed--both by eyeball and via binoculars--and reported in a presentation to a science society; its configuration was unlike any known creature catalogued by science; b)--New living things are being discovered (or in some cases, re-discovered) every year--most unanticipated, some anticipated to exist (via local villagers having seen them prior to, and talking about them); this includes insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, plants, and birds; a number of these are being found not only on land, but in the seas/oceans; c)--According to NOAA, 95% of the world's oceans remain unexplored. See this URL link: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html Here is a direct quote: "... Yet for all of our reliance on the ocean, 95 percent of this realm remains unexplored, unseen by human eyes. ..." d)--The reason I was posting the other creatures in my immediately previous posting were these--humans have seen these creatures on rare occasion, but know hardly anything at all about them, and that includes what their feeding habits are, how large an area as to where they exist, and so on. This is because all these quite rare cetaceans (these are the examples that I was posting the URL links to) live in the ocean, a place that covers over 70% of the planet we live on, and which we do not live in. e)--Having seen a creature doesn't make the creature known; indeed, even if one has one or two beach strandings doesn't make a creature known, like the sceintific data that is currently in hand for the bottlenose porpoise. Based on my reading of your posting, you have applied the same logic-based trends (as to the rare cetaceans I have posted URL links to--you claim that makes them known if they were seen, even though most weren't explicitly verifiable until a carcass from a beach stranding appeared, and even then not much is known about them, other than morphological aspects in great part) as to the 1905 Brazil sighting; but it seems you have the added tenet that because you aren't aware of such a creature being recorded by science subsequently, and that it was only seen once--as far as any meager literature search has gone--it completely can't exist. f)--In regards as to whether this creature has been reported by others either before 1905, or afterwards, I can only say this. I personally only looked for data on this 1905 sighting alone in the time alloted, so I could put something down of detail for this subject thread. (Doing literature searches takes a great deal of time and effort--and before the Science Citation Index and its descendents appeared, there weren't too many decently exhaustive compilations of scientific journals on subjects that one could visit in one publication, in one place--whether you could put a volume on your lap, or slip a CD into a computer to look at things.) Others with more time than myself can be encouraged to look for more such sighting of this type of (alleged) creature. g)--The oceans are not inconsequential things. I would suggest Shrike, if you are ever able to get the opporunity, to travel by ship across the Pacific. If you ever get the chance, you will learn it takes a good while, even under power from diesel engines, etc. It won't be hours, or even a few short days. The distances are great. So is it possible that there are creatures unknown to science living in the world's oceans? You bet. As a matter of fact, it is nearly 100% probable that creatures unknown, undescribed, and uncatalogued by science presently live in these oceans. (I would say it is 100% probable.) Anyone who wishes to take the opposing side of the argument that this is not possible, won't be on the winning side of that argument. I will leave you with these closing thoughts: a)--a recent paper (November 2012) estimates that up to a million species live in the seas, and with over 2/3rds of them may be currently undiscovered (the periodical is Current Biiology). Here is the URL link to a news story: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-...-undiscovered/ and b)--The Zoological Society of London (yes, the place where the 1905 sighting in Brazilian waters was presented by Nicoll and his compatriot) had I guess what would be termed a symposium on the topic of ocean creature cryptozoology back in the Summer of 2011. The paleontologist who provided one of the presentations goes by the name of Dr. Darren Naish (a paleontologist) who co-authored a paper on the possiblity of (If memory serves, I believe that there is a thread here on JREF about the paper) of larger animals remaining to be discovered in the ocean. I believe that that paper appeared in a peer-reviewed journal as well. The paper concluded that it was likely that larger creatures remain yet to be discovered--and the authors may have used some form of statistics to come to that conclusion. URL link to an article about the 2011 Zoological Society of London meeting: http://www.niburunews.com/index.php?...ment&Itemid=37 As I hope I have made the point, none of the evidence presented is half-baked. You may wish to disagree on the conclusions I have made about the 1905 sighting (it is perfectly a-okay and understandable to say it was mistaken ID), but you can't argue with the overall context about the ocean, and what lives in it, and how much Mankind knows about what is in the ocean. |
24th January 2013, 06:27 PM | #142 |
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To weigh in, briefly.
I would agree that there are oceanic mammals and fish not yet discovered, and probably large species at that. The sea serpent in question seems very odd, from a functional point of view. It doesn't have the appearance of any aquatic mammal that I can recall, of contemporary species or lost to time species. If it is a large bodied aquatic reptile (or mammal), why the stabilizing fin? If it is fish, then it behaved unlike any oceanic fish I know of, holding its head high above the water line. I'm thinking they did not see a member of the animal kingdom at all based simply on what we know of animal body function and mechanics. |
24th January 2013, 06:35 PM | #143 |
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Crap I missed the beginning of this one, I have spent about 40 years of my life on the Ocean around the Boston area up ta Maine, seen a lot of weird stuff, nothing I would call a sea serpent, but it has gotten close a few times.
Tim |
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25th January 2013, 08:19 AM | #144 |
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That does not translate to "95% of the world's oceanic vertebrates remain undocumented".
Let me ask you a question relating to the context of a sea serpent. What part of the 95% NOAA Number is frozen or otherwise uninhabitable for a sea serpent (and so therefore doesn't count when we are talking sea serpents)? |
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25th January 2013, 08:36 AM | #145 |
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Umm, no. Your point is one on which I almost daily trade barbs with bigfooters and other cryptozoologists, and have been doing so for years.
I am a biologist. You needn't lecture me on the vastness of our planet or the wonderful creatures discovered each year. I get that. I am one of the people who goes into the field to find such things. I never indicated that a creature such as that described in 1905 could not exist. We know, in fact, that creatures broadly resembling the description did exist long ago. How do we know that? There is evidence of their existence in the fossil record. For those creatures that looked kind of like the creature reported in 1905, that record stops at the end of the Mesozoic Era. To me, the far more significant piece of negative evidence that indicates such creatures are extinct is not the failure of a carcass to be washed up or otherwise collected during recorded history, it is the absence of such creatures in the previous 65 million years of recorded prehistory. (Just to save you another lengthy essay, yes, I am aware that the fossil record is incomplete.) So what do we do with an anecdotal account from 1905 that, based on the description, seems to have been some kind of plesiosaur? We can ignore the mountains of evidence of human fallibility and conclude that, at least in 1905, there was at least one relict plesiosaur swimming around off the coast of Brazil. The vastly more likely explanation, however, is that the observation was erroneous. |
25th January 2013, 08:49 AM | #146 |
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Just as an aside, and apropos of nothing at all.......
If plesiosaurs had survived the Mesozoic, where would you expect to find their fossils? They would have had to have died in a shallow sea or a lagoon, wouldn't they, that then was upthrust above sea level. I am sure there must be such places dating from later than 65m YBP, but I don't know of any. The Himalayas are 70m years old, so the shallow sea from which they formed is too old, and the Himalayas are the youngest mountain chain on the planet. Is there somewhere on the planet yielding oceanic fossils from later than 65m YBP? I'm not seeking to undermine your argument, Shrike....just curious about the fossil record of this era. Mike |
25th January 2013, 09:06 AM | #147 |
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Well, I don't think the alleged sea serpent actually looks like prehistoric reptiles. The reason is the fin. It seems to be a dorsal fin. Marine reptiles with dorsal fins were fish (or dolphin) - like. Plesiosaurs had no dorsal fins, neither had mosasaurs, just ichtyosaurs. Actually this is also valid for mammals. Seals don't have it, manatees don't have it. Pleiosaurs and mosasaurs, by the way were not actually similar to serpents. Plesiosaurs had long necks but the necks were attached to stubby body. Mosasaurs looked like crocodiles with fins, not unlike the geosaurs, which were marine crocodiles and looked like crocodiles with fins plus a tail fin.
Now, evolution, especially through sexual selection, can create very weird things, so I would not say such a fin would be impossible. An animal could develop one for sexual display. But again, what's more likely? They saw, say, the mating ritual of sea serpents or they mis identified something. To the tree trunk, you could also add a rotting whale carcass, perhaps partially eaten by sharks. The neck could be the lower jaw bone and the fin, a pectoral fin missing the end. Could also have been a manatee stranded by sea currents - they still live at Paraiba's shore. As for the absence sites which could contain fossils related to the surviving plesiosaurs, cited by MikeG, sorry, its a non-issue. There are lots of marine sedimentary deposits from the Tertiary and Quaternary; they range from shallow to deep (including several types of continental shelves), cold, hot, restricted, deltaic, coral reefs, lagoons, etc. They are present in continental parts of the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. Remember also that big marine animals tend to live at or near the continental shelves. Or at least they stay there for quite a long time. Its where most of the food is. These are the places we know better. And no sea serpent has evern been found. |
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25th January 2013, 09:43 AM | #148 |
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25th January 2013, 10:10 AM | #149 |
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To be clear: I am not a refuse-nik (dismiss things straight out of hand), but a skeptic (and that requires an open mind to things presented to me--and it requires some activity outside of thought experiments).
This is the question: Could there be large creatures (even creatures possibly larger than many whales) unknown to science roaming the world's oceans? and what is the answer to this: Possible? Probable? Absolutely yes? Highly improbable? Not at all correct? We know this: a)--The world is covered with approx. 70% water. b)--According to a US government agency, 95% of the world's oceans have not been explored (I should tell you a lot of the undersea Arctic was explored by US submarines during the Cold War, as they had to learn to fight under the ice with Soviet submarines); c)--According to recent (2012) statistical and observational analysis in a peer-reviewed journal, there may be upwards of a million species that live in the oceans, with perhaps 2/3rds of those unknown, and uncatalogued by science; d)--From time to time, say over the last two, or three, hundred years, unverified sightings of large creatures unknown to science have been reported by eyewitnesses who have traversed the oceans. A percentage of these have been described, for lack of a better term, as "Sea Serpents." e)--in 1905, two credible witnesses who were scientists observed a creature for upwards of 10 minutes near Brazil that appeared to have a long neck; one of the scientists called it a "Sea Serpent," and thought it might be a mammal; this sighting was reported and recorded in a science society's journal; f)--carcasses coming ashore/beach strandings are not where most ocean creatures go to die; g)--A number of animals (catalogued by science) in the sea have been identified via eyewitness reports, and a few beach strandings, but nearly nothing else is known about them outside of morphological data, and DNA testing if it is performed; h)--From time to time, prehistoric survivals are identified as currently living in the ocean, including the recently identified-as-such pygmy right whale; I think that this may also show that the niche it occupied in prehistoric times remains viable and extant in the ocean; i)--In the fossil record there are a number of species that had long necks and occupied an ocean niche successfully for millions of years; I don't see why such a niche couldn't be occupied with analogue creatures today. j)--Nature has all sorts of adaptations to the environment. For example: 1)--long bodies (oarfish, blue whale); 2)--long snouts (sail fish, long nose saw sharks); 3)--long fins (humpback whales); 4)--long tusks (narwhals, walruses); and so on. So I don't see why a long neck wouldn't be considered also a standard adaptation, and why there would be such an aversion to the concept. If you would like to find out an answer to this question of whether large creatures unknown to science exist or not, you would have to set up the research plan. It may include: a)--a literature search. This may involve going to a University library and using their computer search materials and looking for articles in scientific journals; nature and naturalist magazines; newspapers (I would point out that it might be appropirate to look at newspapers of all the countries that border the Pacific rim as a starting point--yes this would require a lot of time to do, but if there are intersted parties living in say, New Zealand or Alaska or Japan or Peru or Mexico or the Phillippines or Russia or Canada or the west coast of the USA, it might break down this tasking to manageable proportions) b)--Contacting experts in the field of ocean study. This would include marine biologists, bio-acoustics personnel or scientists that study cetaceans or pinnipeds, or oceanographers, or others that work at oceanographic institutes with appropriate expertise, and ask this question set: In your opinion, are there large creatures in the oceans presently unidentified and uncatalogued by science? If so, why would you conclude that? If you think not, why not? c)--I am certain that there are other research-linked concepts one could do to make progress in ascertaining the answers to the questions posed. This could include Freedom of Information Act inquiries (USA), and analogues that other nations might have of Federal government agencies. As you can see, this doesn't involve thought experiments, or being an arm-chair general. I am not a biologist, but I have worked with a number of scientists in different disciplines. So I am coming to this subject from a different angle. I think science is a wide-open field of endeavor. I think ocean science is also a wide-open field of endeavor. Let's talk about things from an engineering-linked angle. I wonder if some of the keys to solving this issue may involve technologies developed for the US Navy, and the recorded data from these technologies. Let me explain. On every submarine there is what I would term a "catalogue/encyclopedia" of sounds that is contained in the submarine's computer. It helps to identify natural sounds (and what they are) from man-made/mechanical sounds when they are encourntered during underwater operations. This allows the crew to do their work without making the mistake of attacking whales or schools of fish, etc. There was a substantive, long-duration program to record all the sounds made in the ocean (and may still be extant) that began I think in the 1950s and lasted at least through the 1980s, if my memory serves. One of the key people who worked on this effort was a marine biologist/bio-acoustics expert named Dr. Marie Fish. She was awarded the Distinghished Public Service Award by the US Navy for her work in the mid-1960s. She also appeared in the National Public Radio program (late 1970s, but can be accessed on the Web I think) entitled "Ocean Hour," where she discussed her work. Here is her short obituary that appeared in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/02/ob...nographer.html If a person was interested, I think it would be constructive to inquire about this program, what it entailed and learn whether there were animal sounds recorded that are currently not linked to known creatures. Additionally...an anecdote from my past. A while back I had the fortunate happenstance of meeting and getting to know one of the originators of the US Navy's space program. This person was the chief manager of the program for a period. One of the key things that the US Navy was concerned about was tracking Soviet submarines, and they wanted to be able to conduct this tracking from orbit. The US Navy has, for a quite long time, an affinity for infrared sensors. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, research into infrared remote sensing by the US Navy was extant, and it may be continuing. It was found that infrared could help identify and track Soviet submarines and US submarines. What they found was that as a large body goes through the water, it changes the temperature of the water it passes through for a specific period of time, and that temperature change can be viewed by infrared at a distance. The duration of the change in water temperature is partly determined by the depth of the vehicle. As time progressed, and sensors matured, they were able to identify by infrared not only whether there was a submarine, but whose it was, and to some extent, the type of submarine. But what the US Navy engineers didn't anticipate was that non-submarine entities were also showing up in the recorded data. As I was told, whales also showed up in the tracking, and additionally (as it was told to me), from time-to-time other things that weren't whales also showed up, with some of those being larger than whales. They were able to substract out the non-submarine entities because those did not follow a grid pattern, or follow a straight line for any period of time as submarines would do. Just an anecdote. |
25th January 2013, 11:28 AM | #150 |
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But surely we have dragged huge nets through more than 5% of the world's oceans. You can explore and catalog the biodiversity of an ocean by dragging nets through it. We do that already.
It is incomplete but it is still there. The figure "95% unexplored" suggests a complete blankness. As if we have no biodiversity samplings at all for 95% of the oceans.
Quote:
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25th January 2013, 11:47 AM | #151 |
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^Indeed. Consider just about any marine species > 1m long. It doesn't matter if its cod, flounder, sea bass, tuna, sharks, sea cows, whales, seals, sea lions, sea otters, etc. In case after tragic case, our history of marine exploitation is one in which markets develop for some species, we use technology to get ever-more-efficient at harvesting said species, the population plummets, and we pursue the last marketable stocks to the ends of the earth until the marketability collapses and we move on to the next thing.
When you do things like this in earnest, and globally, for about 5 centuries, you don't leave much of a window open for something large to escape notice and capture. |
26th January 2013, 06:10 AM | #152 |
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26th January 2013, 09:01 AM | #153 |
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Zippy,
Thanks for your posts. I know you spend time on them. You have left out one important avenue of relevant research, however: the general problems with eyewitness testimony. |
26th January 2013, 01:17 PM | #154 |
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A little bit more
Jerrywayne,
You are correct. Eyewitness testimony is the/a key sticking point. Did they see what they claimed? Did they misidentify? Are there people (similar to in Sasquatchery) who hoax claims? Which is why, in part, I focused on one sighting that involved scientists (in 1905) that I managed to track down in the little time I had alloted to do this. But it also involves the willingness of eyewitnesses to come forward and report what they have seen. As Nicoll mentioned in that 1908 volume, even back then there was ridicule heaped upon people who mentioned that they saw creatures outside of the normal spectrum. A little bit more about my anecdote. The person who talked with me about this infrared business and monitoring things from space was a person by the name of Dr. John Nicolaides (now deceased). If anyone wishes to engage in due diligence, you will be able to learn what that PhD was in. And perhaps more about his professional history. This person had a large number of citations and awards on the wall in his house--specially that wall that was immediately beneath the staircase going up to the second floor. He had awards/citations from the US Navy, US Army, US Air Force, and Department of Defense. Some of these awards had ribbons on them also. For what it is worth, he also had a photograph of him standing with Ronald Reagan, when Reagan was President. I knew this Nicolaides well enough to to tell everyone reading this that he wasn't pulling my leg. I also know that I didn't mishear what he said, either. But the anecdote was as described. The US Navy had been collecting data that was for tracking and discerning US and Russian subs; but it also picked up data on whales; and of creatures that were not whales, that from time to time were larger than whales. No numbers, no frequencies of spotting these in the data was told to me. The anecdote tells me that there remains unexplored avenues for information acquisition. A Skeptic has to be open to that opportunity. I am open to that opportunity. (I also included the Marie Fish material, because that too is a currently unexplored avenue for information acquisition.) One might ask how was this discernment done--as in, how did the US Navy analysts know when they were looking at submarines, or whales, or something else? I must tread carefully, as this topic may have sensitivies even now. But I think I can say the following: Varying classes of submarines have unqiue temperature signatures; whales have unique temperature signatures; and those creatures not whales also have unique temperature signatures. (But this is only a partial explanation.) The calibration of infrared sensors and their development took a long time. The first efforts involved flying over water with aircraft over the submerged subs at low altitude--then they proceeded to engage in tests at higher and higher altitudes. Then, they put the sensors on spacecraft, and those tests proceeded as well. I think one of the first spacecraft series to have infrared sensors (and send imagery to Earth) was the Transit satellites. And there continue to be sightings of creatures uncatalogued by science into more recent times, albeit unverifiable ones. I provide this URL link where there is a description of two sightings in the 1980s in the San Francisco Bay area. But yes, these weren't trained observers. But these again were sightings of something with a long neck. (Scroll down.) http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Sea_serpent RE: Trawling nets. Again, I am going to ask where these trawling efforts are done. Can you provide a map or maps? That would be helpful. This might be an avenue of further research, as it might aid in where mid-water/pelagic trawling goes on, and where it doesn't. And those that engage in this trawling could possibly be an untapped source of eyewitness sightings of uncatalogued creatures as well. I have seen this Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_bottom_trawlers where they discuss bottom trawling, and the history of either curtalment of the practice, or outright bans: "... Today, some countries regulate bottom trawling within their jurisdictions: [1] • The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration banned bottom trawling off most of its Pacific coast in early 2006 and has restricted the practice severely off its other coasts as well. [2] This Federal regulation affects areas between 3–300 miles from the coast (areas within 3 miles (4.8 km) of the coast are State regulated). • The Council of the European Union in 2004 applied "a precautionary approach" and closed the sensitive Darwin Mounds off Scotland to bottom trawling. • In 2005, the FAO’s General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) banned bottom trawling below 1000 metres and, in January 2006, completely closed ecologically sensitive areas off Italy, Cyprus, and Egypt to all bottom trawling. // • Norway first recognized in 1999 that trawling had caused significant damage to its cold-water lophelia corals. Norway has since established a program to determine the location of cold-water corals within its EEZ so as to quickly close those areas to bottom trawling. • Canada has acted to protect vulnerable coral reef ecosystems from bottom trawling off Nova Scotia. The Northeast Channel was protected by a fisheries closure in 2002, and the Gully area was protected by its designation as a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in 2004. • Australia in 1999 established the Tasmanian Seamounts Marine Reserve to prohibit bottom trawling in the south Tasman Sea. Australia also prohibits bottom trawling in The Great Australian Bight Marine Park near Ceduna off South Australia. In 2004, Australia established the world’s largest marine protected area in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park where fishing and other extractive activities are prohibited. • New Zealand in 2001 closed 19 seamounts within its EEZ to bottom trawling, including in the Chatham Rise, sub-Antarctic waters, and off the east and west coasts of the North Island. New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton announced on 14 February 2006 that a draft agreement had been reached with fishing companies to ban bottom trawling in 30 percent of New Zealand's exclusive economic zone, an area of about 1.2 million km² reaching from sub-Antarctic waters to sub-tropical ones. [3] But only a small fraction of the area proposed for protection will cover areas actually vulnerable to bottom trawling. [4] • Palau has banned all bottom trawling within its jurisdiction and by any Palauan or Palauan corporation anywhere in the world. [5] ..." This bottom trawling ban also includes a large area in the Aleutians: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Larges.....-a0128448434 I am certain everyone is aware of the carcass that was netted by a Japanese trawler in 1977. But the key item was that the creature (identified to be the remains of a basking shark, see this URL link: http://www.paleo.cc/paluxy/plesios.htm) was already dead and in a state of decomposition when captured. As to the thinking expressed in this thead that trawling equates with an area being explored and known similar to what we would know about Yellowstone National Park, or regions of Antarctica, I would suggest that you ask marine scientists and oceanographers about whether such a viewpoint is valid or not. And see what they say. It is definite that there are large animals unknown and uncatalogued by science still in the oceans awaiting discovery (the statistics quoted earlier in this thread of the 2012 paper make those nearly 100% definite odds). Whether that also includes long-necked creatures remains unproven, but it equally remains that their existence is a possiblity. And it is up to interested Skeptics to attempt to track down the information to determine how much a possiblity that existence may be. |
26th January 2013, 01:41 PM | #155 |
beer-swilling semiliterate
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Connecticut, or King Arthur's Court. Hard to tell sometimes.
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Let's look at the problem as one of probabilities.
What is the probability that an undiscovered species of sea creature with average length = 1 meter exists? For the purpose of this discussion, I'd say 50-75%. There's a lot of unexplored seafloor, and a small local population of creatures of this size could probably go unnoticed or unreported. What is the probability that an undiscovered species of sea creature with average length = 5 meters exists? For this, I'd say near zero. Creatures of this size need a lot of food and the deep ocean is very nutrient-poor, making it unlikely that a sustainable population of large creatures exists on the ocean floor. Large creatures have a lot more biomass, so they don't decay away as readily, increasing the chance that they'd wash up on shore and be found somewhere. Large creatures are also much more likely to be observed directly and reported. So, while it's interesting to contemplate the possible existence of sea monsters, I think it's improbable that they exist (at least as commonly envisioned.) NB: I am not a marine biologist, nor did I sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. Your mileage may vary. Use only as directed. Consult your physician. Carthaginio delendo est. |
26th January 2013, 01:41 PM | #156 |
beer-swilling semiliterate
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Connecticut, or King Arthur's Court. Hard to tell sometimes.
Posts: 25,791
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Let's look at the problem as one of probabilities.
What is the probability that an undiscovered species of sea creature with average length = 1 meter exists? For the purpose of this discussion, I'd say 50-75%. There's a lot of unexplored seafloor, and a small local population of creatures of this size could probably go unnoticed or unreported. What is the probability that an undiscovered species of sea creature with average length = 5 meters exists? For this, I'd say near zero. Creatures of this size need a lot of food and the deep ocean is very nutrient-poor, making it unlikely that a sustainable population of large creatures exists on the ocean floor. Large creatures have a lot more biomass, so they don't decay away as readily, increasing the chance that they'd wash up on shore and be found somewhere. Large creatures are also much more likely to be observed directly and reported. So, while it's interesting to contemplate the possible existence of sea monsters, I think it's improbable that they exist (at least as commonly envisioned.) NB: I am not a marine biologist, nor did I sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. Your mileage may vary. Use only as directed. Consult your physician. Carthaginio delendo est. |
26th January 2013, 02:22 PM | #157 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 1,083
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Zippy,
I was going to save some of this for my cryptid thread, but since you mentioned the 1980's sea serpent of San Francisco - Here are video stills from the Clark brothers: http://home.access4less.net/~sfseaserpent/id7.html, make of them what you may. Scroll down here to an informed conclusion that what the brothers claimed to have seen is not possible: http://home.access4less.net/~sfseaserpent/id4.html Here is the web page article by one of the experts who endorsed the sea serpent video, and tell me what you think: http://my.opera.com/mycpaiva/blog/20...s-in-existence |
26th January 2013, 03:45 PM | #158 |
Scholar
Join Date: Nov 2012
Posts: 51
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Thanks Jerrywayne for these links. I will get back to you once I look at all of them.
The view that the world is fully explored is incorrect. I think, with the information that I have in hand currently, that stating that trawling is the equivalent of saying that a region is well explored by humans is false. I was attempting to think of a relevant metaphor, and it may be somewhat akin to saying when one is flying a bush plane over tropical rainforest (say in the Amazon) that you are "exploring" the region. The people in the plane are not really "exploring" in the same way as someone is on the river, or under the forest canopy. I have an additional question in regards to trawling. Are there news reports or instances of such nets capturing 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 foot live creatures? Thought I would ask that as well. |
26th January 2013, 05:00 PM | #159 |
Scholar
Join Date: Nov 2012
Posts: 51
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Jerrywayne,
I had a chance to look at the links you provided. Thanks for posting them. The one on Chupacabras I shrug my shoulders. I was under the impression that one of those large-eared hairless dog-like/coyote-like things was taken in for DNA testing, although I don't recall what they found out. The SanFrancisco sightings. I would like to see the entire 2004 video, and any others that they managed to film (plenty of video stills showing something, but it was from such a far distance that the original video was taken from versus the target object, can't say anything other than that). I will attempt to investigate this further. The descriptions that the brothers provided to the US Naval Oceans Systems Center analyst about the 1985 sighting event shows, I think, the difficulties of having people who are unfamiliar with what they were looking at attempting to describe (as best they can) what they saw to someone who has familiarity with the subject, but was not an eyewitness. Bascially he told them that what they described and the behaviors seen couldn't exist on any known animal, based on the information known to Forrest Wood about what exists in the oceans (and yes, I am not familiar with any animal who locomotes with that exaggerated an up-and-down motion that was described--kind of like a snake, but moved 90 degrees vertically). But I give them one kudo--the brothers apparently attempted to write down (when it was freshly recent) everything that they could recall that they saw. That's a good first step. I also noticed that these sightings were not eyewitnessed (even though it is of a specific geographic area, and not on the ocean) on a daily, or weekly, or even monthly occurrence. Only from time to time. I think that they did see something, and it was outside-of-the-ordinary enough to their sense of reality that they needed to talk about it with others. The Bay might be an appropriate area to concentrate some resources to learn more, and to evaluate whether something of interest is indeed happening there. The reality may be less exotic than what they feel it is, but it may be more interesting than merely mistaken ID of pinnipeds or birds or something similar. But nothing won't be known for sure unless some activities are engaged in there. |
26th January 2013, 05:18 PM | #160 |
Slithering Through life
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Plymouth, MA
Posts: 1,661
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I know this is old as the hills but I have always found it a pretty cool read, so many people involved and it lasted about a month, then in 1962 it reappeared.
Gloucester Sea Serpent http://www.americanmonsters.com/site...achusetts-usa/ Tim |
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The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. W B |
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