Sea dragon - legend and truth

When flying close to the Indian Ocean on the last day of 1968, two Soviet pilots looked at giant snake monsters. They are not the only ones who meet " sea ​​dragons, " an animal whose existence has been studied since the 13th century.

There really exist sea dragons

Since ancient times, sea ​​dragons have been a popular topic in spiritual, literary, painting, belief . activities of coastal residents; even the Bible speaks of it. Northern Europeans even described sea dragons with wavy bodies, up to 30 m long, heads like horse heads. However, only in the last few centuries, the authenticity and attractiveness of this topic has risen strongly due to a series of events about sea dragons recorded.

During the Atlantic crossing in 1843, Spanish sailor Roberto Garcia confirmed that a black dragon about 10 meters long appeared on an intense sea afternoon. British sailor Charlie Hoose when crossing the Indian Ocean on a turbulent day in 1901 also saw a giant snake-like monster. Both the crew of Paulina crew assured on July 13, 1858, they witnessed sea dragons fighting whales!

On August 6, 1848, the British sailors Daedalus saw about halfway between the Cape of Good Hope and the island Elena, a very large, snake-shaped animal that swam in the sea, its head rising to the surface. Seven years earlier, one day late in 1841, near Oporto, the British warship group Plumper drew a strange animal and when comparing the drawings of two crews, they were identical. So are the later drawings of the crew of the Emogen (1856) and the Princess (1858).

The British sailors Daedalus saw in the middle of the Cape of Good Hope and Elena Island
a very large, snake-shaped animal swimming in the sea in 1948 (Simulation photo: answers.com)

At the end of the First World War, a German ship sank the Iberian British ship in the North Atlantic. According to the commander and the German sailors, after the British ship exploded under the water, along with the wreck of the wreck emerged a very large snake-shaped animal, it struggled intensely for about 12-15 seconds and then dive. lost. In 1947, the American ship Santa Clara also encountered similar monsters. In 1951, fishermen of Herios Bay witnessed a snake-shaped animal longer than 12m, blue-gray, with pointed fins, like a cod fin and swimming very fast.

In the Indian Ocean on December 2, 1968, when flying at a height of 30 m from the sea, two Soviet pilots Ivan Djouss and Fedor Dolienko suddenly saw a giant monster longer than 10 m, a diameter of almost 1 m. swimming in zigzag. A few minutes later, they saw a second monster with a similar shape.

On a beautiful morning in January 1984, the engineer engineer Jim Thomson just caught a fish near Vancouver (Canada) when suddenly about 60 m from his ship emerged a snake shaped animal about 8 m long , sharp black snout, big ears, pretty horns on the head. The animal looked at him for a moment and tumbled quickly into the water.

Scientists say?

Sea dragon drawings on books and newspapers
(Photo: Giorgio Baldessin)

Since the 13th century, there have been people specializing in the study of ' sea ​​dragon phenomenon ' but only since the end of the 19th century did the research really be systematic and scientific. Head of this field must mention the scientist Jzlo Oudamans - Member of the Dutch Zoological Society. With the work of a giant Sea Snake nearly 600 pages, published in 1892, Oudamans presented in detail, convincingly about the existence of sea dragons. According to him, by that time, it was recorded 162 appearances of sea dragons and published 350 articles (narrative, research .) about this animal.

In 1868, the body of a " sea ​​dragon " was washed up on Stonsa beach by the famous doctor Barclay. He published data about it: Body length of 16.75 m, diameter of 0.9 m, with feathers in the neck, swimming fins that looked like goose wings. Unfortunately, his report was not noticed by contemporary biologists.

In 1899, the British ship Emu on the way to Sydney (Australia) stopped on Sawa Island and found here the body of a snake-shaped monster 18m long, weighing about 30 tons, head like horse head, teeth, dark gray skin very hard, rotting hairs . Two prestigious scientific papers of the time, English Mecanic and Nature, reported the event. However, due to the discomfort of the decomposing flesh, the sailors did not take any parts of the animal as evidence to support the study of sea dragons.

On January 13, 1903, the French Zoological Society met to hear reports of scientist Emilio Racovitza (who participated in Antarctic expedition) about the reality of sea dragons. He successfully defended his view of colleagues and the French Zoological Association agreed to publish this report in the Society's scientific journal.

Also in France, in 1968, the book According to the Famous Zoologist Bernard Evenmal's book, "The Hidden Animal Society" - was published and immediately resonated. In the book, the author cited 500 cases of sea monsters. He divided them into 3 groups with 9 categories, in which one group is considered a sea dragon with 4 types of models (mane type, finnage type, yellow belly eel type and water lizard type).

Along with the events and discoveries, the number of people who believe in sea dragons is constantly increasing. According to them, the vast ocean contains many strange animals that the scientific community does not know or does not have the conditions to access carefully; Sea dragons are one of them. Witnesses encountered, reporting, redrawing sea dragons in many parts of the world and the depiction of various witnesses of sea dragons in each region was very similar - it was a good evidence.

On the contrary, many people consider sea dragons to be just legendary animals. According to them, although there have been many stories and pictures about sea dragons, no one has captured, photographed, recorded and recorded it yet. No case has been discovered that sea dragon corpses drifted ashore but were examined scientifically in front of the wide and objective witness of mass media. Large-scale hunts with modern equipment supported in areas where sea dragons are suspected have not found any traces of this monster. Therefore, the encounter with sea dragons is either fabricated, or hallucinate, or by mistake with normal marine animals (sharks, sperm whales, sea lions, octopus .) in conditions special only.

Scientists and aquatic creatures expressed a more cautious view. They argue that if sea dragons actually exist, they are probably one of the prehistoric species left behind - such as a certain species of fish , often live in the deep sea and rarely float to the face. country. This hypothesis is easy to accept because in fact there are many species of ' living fossils ' - as in the case of Ceratodus, half a half-lizard fish are still surviving in Australia after the extinction of the genus millions of years ago. , or as the Apterix in New Zealand is considered a small and deformed descendant of the giant Moa which has long been extinct.

Another hypothesis is that sea dragons may be a very large sea snake , because scientists have found hundreds of species of snakes living in the oceans of the family Hydrophiidae, including two main varieties Laiticanda and Aepysurus, including species. big and up to 8 - 9m.

Thus, up to now, it is not possible to confirm whether sea dragons are true or not. This is also a cause of the attractiveness of this topic, making more and more people interested and eager to welcome new information and final conclusions about it in the future.