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Marmara Monster

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Mighty_Emperor

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This doesn't seem to have come up here before and the report is distinctly Fortean:

The crew on a Turkish trawler caught a fish of a lifetime
The monster of the Marmara Sea



At the end of May a Turkish trawler caught a fish that no one has been able to identify. It was 7 feet long and had of weight of 1,400 pouf[sic]. It was "human in appearance" and had legs rather than fins. Some researchers believe it to be a coelacanth, while others call it a "monster" similar to Storsie of Sweden or Selma of Norway.


The Turkish biologist Muharrem Karakaya at the Fen-Edebiyat faculty on the Osmangazi Üniversity in Eskisehir, who is in charge of the investigations of the so far unidentified fish, has sent GUST the picture above, scanned from a Turkish daily, after he read about our serious research on the net.

Dr. Karakaya says in an email to GUST: "A Turkish fishery biologist has publicly said that the fish is a coelacanth, a Latimeria, but I know these unique fishes and this is definitely not that species".

"There are more unknown animals in the Marmara Sea than biologists, limnologists and other scientists wants to admit and strange fishes has both been seen and caught since World War II", he continues. "This is the first time a trawler captain has decided to keep his find and for that the university are very grateful".

When this is written autopsy results from the "monster" of the Marmara Sea has still not been released, but Dr. Karakaya believes it will be and has promised to keep us posted.

Source: Email from zoologist Muharrem Karakaya on 2 July 2003.

Feature: Jan Sundberg, GUST © 2003.
Click to expand...

http://www.bahnhof.se/~wizard/GUSTeng03/artiklar_marmarasjon.html

The picture is a bit misleading as it is clearly at an angle.

It appears to be a "Bigeye Ragged-Tooth Shark" which is of interest in itself:

Known from only 15 or so specimens, the Bigeye Ragged-Tooth Shark is perhaps the most poorly examined shark species in the world. Piecing together the life history and basic biology of this fish is thus a challenge in logic worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
Click to expand...

http://www.bahnhof.se/~wizard/GUSTeng03/artiklar_marmarasjon_2.html

Anyone got any further news in the last 6 months?

Emps
 
That first picture makes it look like those ugly fish from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life"!

And those eyes don't look that big to me...
 
Hmm - don't see how it's supposed to be 'human in appearance' or has 'legs rather than fins'. It looks like a shark, obviously. It's when I see such bad reporting of an find that one has to wonder about the descriptions of past sightings and finds.
 
Exactly JerryB
This is the sort of thing which will be (mis)quoted in a few years
time as a humanoid fishlike creature. Then there will be a comparison with the Babylonian legends of Berossus.
Sensationalist reporting like this really pisses me off. There are enough interesting things in the world without having to invent them.
 
Sounds intriguingly similar to the Canvey Island "monster" carcasses - which are a case which has always really intrigued me, not least because of the similarity to Lovecraft's Deep Ones... :eek!!!!:

Anyway, there is a thread on cryptozoology.com at the moment suggesting that the Canvey Island carcasses could have been misidentified angler fish - although the photo they provide of an angler fish doesn't look much like the description of the carcasses in the one report that seems to exist, rather similarly to in this report.

The report itself made me imagine something resembling either a Deep One or Abe Sapien from "Hellboy"... ;)
 
This thing's cropped up on many websites over the last few months.It's a sunfish.
 
I had the pleasure of observing one of these from a range of about 30 yds. while serving in the U.S. Navy in the mid-70's.This was in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida.I believe they're fairly widespread in tropical and semi-tropical waters.They could easily get into the Sea of Marmara through the Bosporus,I would suppose.
 
Does sound rather vague, so is calling it a sunfish. a Sunfish is a very distinctive tropical fish that has big fins and an almost circular body giving it the appearance of a `head with appendages` thing. there was a stuffed one in Penzance aquarium but that is long gone and I dont know what happened to the fish. They are very striking and could not be mistaken for anything else, but a person who had never seen a picture of one might be very puzzled.

Sunfish is also a dialect name for the basking shark. (looks similar to this beast) Which one do you mean??

It looks like a shark, and I bet it has the sharks very distinctive sandpaper skin. perhaps it is a shark, or maybe a monkfish. (sorta like halfway between a shark and a ray)

Scuse me for being an ignoramus, but where is the Marmara sea??
 
Homo Aves: The Sea of Marmara connects the Bosphorus to the Med (Turkey on one side and Greece on the other).

Emps
 
Looks very much like a shark, but not the Big Eyed Ragged Toothed Shark as "identifed" in the link. Who ever came up with that name?!.Possibly still a few speices of shark not identified yet.Sunfish in the UK area dont look anything like this, sorry but to tired to look up latin name.
 
Thank you. This means that it is an area of high currents, yes?
 
Homo Aves said:
Thank you. This means that it is an area of high currents, yes?
Click to expand...

Not that I'm aware of - the main current will be through the Bosphurus and Dardanelles and will dissipate in the wider sea but I do think its where the cold water of the Black Sea and the warm water of the Med mix. I've been on a few boats on it (and on the Bosphurus) but I could be wrong.

See:

http://www.1yachtua.com/Medit-marinas/Turkey/marmara_sea_current.htm

Emps
 
Michael Watson said:
Looks very much like a shark, but not the Big Eyed Ragged Toothed Shark as "identifed" in the link. Who ever came up with that name?!.Possibly still a few speices of shark not identified yet.Sunfish in the UK area dont look anything like this, sorry but to tired to look up latin name.
Click to expand...

The shark I thought of was the goblin shark which is the weirdest shark I have seen, however, having looked at the picture of a sunfish Quixote posted, it looks identical to the "monster"

It has a huge dorsal fin, small pectoral fins and a "frill" of a tail at the back. Last but not least, a tiny mouth, not like any sharks I can think of!

Here are a couple of pics of goblin sharks anyhow, looks nothing like the monster but is cool!
http://www.postmodern.com/~fi/sharkpics/ellis/goblin.htm

http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/mowstoni.htm

Edit-found a sunfish page that has pictures of them at every conceivable angle except the one we want!. However this set gets close.
http://www.earthwindow.com/mola5.html#
 
Not sure why the say it looks like the shark in the picture. It could hardly resemble anything less. Having said that, I have seen a picture of one before, just can't recall where. It might well be a sunfish although I don't think so. Something like it, though. Doesn't look like a shark to me.
 
The currents running through the Bosphorus are supposed to be quite powerful, but the run deep (hence the deceptively passive suface). Also, there are currents running both to and from the Black Sea - which means the carcass could have been borne from either direction into the Marmora.

As for what it is...*shrug* :)
 
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