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Underwater Cryptid Encounters

whoisquilty

Gone But Not Forgotten
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I'm interested in sightings of sea or lake monsters from underwater by divers or swimmers. Has anyone read about incidents like this?

I remember reading about one in Loch Ness where a diver went down to retrieve some items from a recently-sunk tour boat and met up with a huge black thing.

Also, I thought there was one in Lake Okanagan where a group of divers were down at night monitoring fish migration (or something) and looked up to see the silhouette of something big and scary swim between the divers and the lighted boat.
 
The Loch Ness story sounds like something that happened in Loch Treig (on Rannoch Moor) back in the 1950s . The story goes that a professional diver was in the loch , when he saw an unusual creature on the loch bed . He surfaced , and the story goes that he vowed never to dive again . This may be a FOAF story as I have heard it many times , but the deatils are always vague .
 
Class: Lake Monster
Length: Unknown
Width: Unknown
Country: USA
Body of Water: Lake Tahoe
Nearest City: Lake Tahoe, Nevada
Description: Lake Tahoe has its own creature, dubbed "Tahoe Tessie" by the locals. Of indeterminate size and shape, some believe that she is actually a giant sturgeon. Supposedly Jacques Cousteau dived Lake Tahoe, but refused to divulge the film, as "the world wasn't ready" to see it yet. Though Tessie is not as well documented as other lake monsters, Lake Tahoe and nearby Reno are great places to visit, so a trip to Lake Tahoe to search for Tessie would still be entertaining whether you see the creature or not.
source http://www.mysteriousworld.com/Journal/ ... aSerpents/
 
I was thinking about this the other day, ones where the witness(es) were underwater, anyone know any?

The only ones that I can think of are the story of a diver repairing a boat in Loch Ness in the late 19thc who said he saw a "froglike thing" the size of a goat, the Champ or Ogopogo sighting where it brushed a female swimmers legs, it's in Shuker's In Search of Prehistoric Survivors I think. I also remember in FT a few years ago, that there'd been some "monster" sightings in Lake Windermere and divers had seen unusually large eels - 6-8feet long.

Anyone know any others?
 
There's that photo of Nessie's fin from (I think) the 1970s, taken underwater if that helps. Not sure of the tale behind it, though.
 
I seem to recall accounts of beasties spied from diving bells too...
 
There's the one about the diver in Florida I think, who was chased out of an underwater cave by a giant crustacean, another diver (Gulf of Mexico?) watched his college being swallowed and immediately spat out by a giant Grouper the size of a VW Beetle.

Also as I've posted before, in Gower a few years ago someone is supposed to have found a giant lobster claw whilst spear fishing. Leading to a reply from Lordmongrove about a giant Geordie crustacean somewhere called the Velvet Beds.

I know there are more but that's all I can think of for a moment.
 
I recall a reported incident from long ago - perhaps as far back as the 1970's.

One of the very early robot submersibles was being used to inspect oil drilling equipment on the sea floor (I want to say in the Gulf of Mexico). The robot was taking pictures of the installation, either as a series of stills or maybe slow-scan video (it wasn't continuous motion video).

Something long and gnarly entered the field of view and moved horizontally across. It was long like a tentacle or a thin body structure, and it had a slight spiral-ish or corkscrew-ish form. Along the length of it were widely-spaced ovoid structures or components - far more widely spaced than an octopus' 'suckers'.

The submersible operators estimated it was several meters long. Owing to the non-continuous nature of the recording, they didn't capture an image of either end.

A fuzzy excerpted photo was published along with the report.

That's all I remember.
 
Also there's the unknown cephalopod that attacked the radar ball under the American frigate in the Med, as covered by Arthur C Clarke.
 
gncxx said:
There's that photo of Nessie's fin from (I think) the 1970s, taken underwater if that helps. Not sure of the tale behind it, though.



I seem to remember that photo has been debunked? i will search a bit more when i have the time.
 
I think it's the Rhines' photographs that you mean all of which can be seen here;

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/rines-obit/

There were three that were often reproduced one which was known as the gargoyle photograph which was speculated to show Nessie's head, and was, I think, pretty much dismissed when an old tree stump which looked very similar was found in the area the boat was moored at the time it was taken, another supposedly showed a long elasmosaur like neck and body. Lastly there was the 'flipper' photo, which led to WWF co founder Peter Scott giving the creature the name of 'Nessiteras rhombopteryx' which turned out to be an anagram of' monster hoax by Sir Peter S'. The photos were subsequently discovered to have been touched up by airbrush.

Regarding the question in the OP does being on a raft count? if so there's the apparently officially confirmed account of WWII British sailors sunk mid Atlantic, who were attacked with loss of life by Giant Squid.
 
That sounds fascinating, i'm surprised giant squid can manage to take out a human, there's not really a lot to them, although i guess it's only got to grab a person and pull them under for long enough.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
That sounds fascinating, i'm surprised giant squid can manage to take out a human, there's not really a lot to them, although i guess it's only got to grab a person and pull them under for long enough.

Well, the really big ones have large beaks and huge rotating claws on their arms.
And Humboldt squid are particularly aggressive - they attack humans and go straight for the scuba equipment, as if they know what it's for. :shock:
 
Squid are certainly capable of killing a human. The smaller Humbolt squid are definitely known to attack people, there are also reports of fatalities. Fishermen in the Sea of Cortez are particularly wary of these creatures which are reported to on occasion reach sizes of 12 foot.

I can’t remember the name of the programme but a film crew did get pictures of a squid which was speculated to be a giant Humbolt. Supporting the possibility of this in ‘Man Eaters’ by Micheal Bright (http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/authors/michael-bright) there is a report of an example being caught which measured 45’.

The giant squid attacking the survivors is also mentioned in ‘Man Eaters’ as well as in ‘Invitation to Oceanography’ (huge url but can be found on Google books), Bright writes;

the British troopship Bitannia was sunk by the German surface raider the Santa Cruz in mid Atlantic. Ashe was about 1,200 miles west of Freetown. Some men survived and clung to floating spars and life-rafts. Lieutenant
R.E.G. Cox and eleven other men were supported by a very small raft; only their heads and shoulders were above water. Sharks were the number one fear, but one night something far more sinister came up from the depths. A giant squid surfaced and wrapped a tentacle around one sailor and pulled him under. A little later Cox was seized by the leg, but the beast let go. Cox recalls incredible pain as the suckers were pulled off. The next day he noticed large ulcers had appeared where the suckers had gripped, and when rescued the medical orderlies were constantly treating the wounds.


Later it says; Professor John Cloudesly Thompson at Birkbeck College University of London was allowed to examine them. He was able to confirm that they were sucker scars likely from an attack by a giant squid.

The story does seem to stand up, here;
http://www.cmbower.co.uk/Articles/Other ... annia.html
this first had account from a survivor of the sinking makes no mention of squid, but looking at the appendix of survivors this man is shown to have been on a life boat, whereas Cox is listed as being recovered from a raft as in the account, though the number of his fellow survivors is given as two not eleven. Finally further down the appendix section this note appears;

Lt R E Grinan-Cox I.A. (survivor of raft - lived in Fareham and whose harrowing story was reported in papers).

Plenty more about killer molluscs in Bright’s book and also another underwater cryptid encounter;

Neil Daniel, writing in Oceans in 1989, mentions ‘rumors of commercial divers having spotted one (giant octopus) hulking monster some 50ft in diameter in deep water off the coast of Japan’.

Also there are reference to illustrations in an 19C Japanese book called ‘Land and Sea Products’ of giant octopus being fished and their limbs for sale in markets. The fishing print can be seen here; http://www.myjapanesehanga.com/home/art ... -1842-1894

There is also an account of a giant octopus overturning a catamaran of the Philippines in 1989.

Regarding the man being eaten by a car-sized grouper, it seems they might have been a lot bigger in the old days:

That is fascinating, I’ve got a long term interest in Roman art and can recall a fresco which shows two men in a small boat surrounded by giant or at least disproportionately large fish, I just thought at the time that proportions weren’t important in what they were trying to convey. I’m still not convinced this isn’t the case as the greater sizes shown weren’t restricted to groupers.
 
I'm fairly convinced that fish in ancient times could grow to much larger sizes than they do today. Increased fishing over the last 2-3 millennia has probably reduced the probability of certain types of fish growing to a huge size. The Chinese have certainly fished for Grouper on a large scale.
 
Certainly the sizes of most animals has reduced over the last 10,000 or so.
 
Well, the really big ones have large beaks and huge rotating claws on their arms.
And Humboldt squid are particularly aggressive - they attack humans and go straight for the scuba equipment, as if they know what it's for. Shocked

Colossal squid or something we haven't seen before i don;t particularly have a problem believing that they could take out a person.

Humbolt are only about half the weight of a person, not that i'd want to tangle with one but you'd think troops would be up to sticking it with something, although i guess if they were freezing. tired and attacked by surprise in the dark, maybe there wasn't time.
 
The problem with Humboldt squid is that there tend to be a lot of them. No individual one is likely to kill you (although it might do some damage), but the huge schools in which they congregate tend to attack all at once.
 
After seeing film of Humboldts merely investigating divers, I have no doubt one less than a meter long could "take out" anybody. In the documentary I saw, they rocketed in from the darkness in a split second, latched onto a diver like an oversized leech -- with all their suckers, I doubt human strength could have removed them -- then rocketed away into invisibility before anyone could react. Back on the surface, the diver being filmed was informed that the squid were just tasting him, and that his rubber suit must have tasted bad! :shock:

If they thought you tasted good, I don't think you'd last more than a few seconds. They could give pirahna lessons!

I just remembered: The documentary I saw was an extra on Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Go figure.
 
I had found this in an article by cryptozoologist Jean-Jacques Barloy in an old magazine, Histoires de la mer issue 26, April 1982 :

On a number of occasions big unknown fishes were spotted. John Isaacs, from the Scripps Institution of Geography in California, could photograph with the help of a complex device an unknown animal of seven meters long, at a depth of three thousand and six hundred meters off Baja California. The same oceanographer, in the vicinity of Hawai, at a depth of one thousand and eight hundred and fifty meters, photographed six other examples, one of them exceeding nine meters.
Former deputy director of the oceanographical deparment of the UNESCO in Paris, Dr Eugène Laffond was conducting research in 1966 off San Diego, in a kind of diving saucer called "Deepstar 4000".
One day, he is looking through a porthole, when the pilot sudenly asks him loudly : "Look ! Look !"
A fish, ten meters long , is going in front of the porthole. Its shape is of a sea bass. The two men can see its caudal fin moving. Its eyes are "as big as plates".
 
By coincidence, just a few days ago I was reading about Loch Treig in Scotland - now a reservoir and considerably larger than the original loch. The dam was constructed in the 30's and there are stories about divers working on the project being disturbed by nameless things in the water and refusing to work, or requesting transfer to other jobs.

The disturbed diver (or divers) who refuses to discuss what they have seen is maybe a bit of a meme, and I think that's maybe going to cause difficulties when trying to pin down half remembered tales.

I say a meme - but if there's one place that I think it's totally justifiable to get a big fat dose of the horrors, even for someone extremely familiar with the environment, it's got to be underwater; I doubt, as an environment, deep space is any more potentially terrifying than deep standing water. And if the woo really is out there, and really is real, I can't think of a better place for it.
 
The dam was constructed in the 30's and there are stories about divers working on the project being disturbed by nameless things in the water and refusing to work, or requesting transfer to other jobs.
Nameless and... unspeakable? Unutterable, even?
 
there are stories about divers working on the project being disturbed by nameless things in the water and refusing to work, or requesting transfer to other jobs.

Gawd, those are fantastic stories and some of my favorites. I need to start a new Askreddit thread about those soon. I don't suppose you have any links already?
 
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...I don't suppose you have any links already?

There are certainly references to the Loch Treig story online, but I'm pretty sure my original inspiration for looking into it came from a book - which turned out to be the more informative source. It's barely a few weeks ago, but I am going to have to do a bit of thinking as to the publication in question (unfortunately, to quote Robert Burton: I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of good method).

While looking into the Loch Treig story I also found tales of a 'gnome garden' laid out in the depths of Wastwater in England's Lake District, navigated to by a rope fixed to the lake bed. Although, if real, you'd assume that it was some sort of joke/challenge put together by divers, there are implications of diving fatalities associated with the place.

It may well be a diving UL, but I absolutely guarantee, without the least shadow of a doubt, that stumbling across a 'gnome garden' in the murky depths of some water filled abyss would cause me to fill my breeches much more readily than being goosed by a giant conger eel - or even an errant plesiosaur, for that matter.

Edit: Incidentally, I have walked by Loch Treig several times - and like all reservoirs, I find the atmosphere slightly odd, and occasionally unsettling. (I started a thread on reservoirs once - not sure if it's still around.)
 
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By coincidence, just a few days ago I was reading about Loch Treig in Scotland - now a reservoir and considerably larger than the original loch. The dam was constructed in the 30's and there are stories about divers working on the project being disturbed by nameless things in the water and refusing to work, or requesting transfer to other jobs.

The disturbed diver (or divers) who refuses to discuss what they have seen is maybe a bit of a meme, and I think that's maybe going to cause difficulties when trying to pin down half remembered tales.

I say a meme - but if there's one place that I think it's totally justifiable to get a big fat dose of the horrors, even for someone extremely familiar with the environment, it's got to be underwater; I doubt, as an environment, deep space is any more potentially terrifying than deep standing water. And if the woo really is out there, and really is real, I can't think of a better place for it.

Loch diver stories:

https://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-divers-encounter-with-monster.html

http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2012/01/classic-sightings-robert-badger.html

http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-rediscovered-divers-tale.html

maximus otter
 
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Just as an addendum to my last post.

Although I've definitely checked this out in a paper print source, I'm trying to recall the path that got me there, and I'm now wondering if the inspiration might have been something mentioned in one of the most excellent Talking Till Dawn podcasts - the early ones were on the Loch Ness Monster. (Talking Till Dawn reviewed by me at #178 here.)

Edit: Yep - I was right.

The Loch Treig story gets covered starting at 00:24:45 in Talking Till Dawn's first ever podcast: Nessie & The Loch Monsters of Scotland (Part 1).

I'd forgotten that 'Loch Treig' apparently translates as 'Loch of Death' or 'The Forsaken Loch'; I've wild camped around there (years ago now) - if I'd known that then, I might have bivvied even further from the waters than I did.
 
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I had found this in an article by cryptozoologist Jean-Jacques Barloy in an old magazine, Histoires de la mer issue 26, April 1982 :

More on the 'Deepstar 4000 Fish' here:

The Deepstar 4000 fish was a cryptid giant deep sea fish seen once, off southern California in the Pacific Ocean, by the crew of the Deepstar 4000 submersible during a 1966 dive. It was estimated to have measured 30–40 ft (9–12 m) in length, equal to some of the largest known living fish, and far larger than any known bony fish.

This fish was allegedly observed by pilot Joe Thompson (1930 – 2003) and possibly marine biologist Gene LaFond (1909 – 2002), during a June 1966 research dive in the San Diego Trough alongside instrumentation engineer Dale Good. They had taken the Deepstar 4000 down to around 4,000 ft (1,219 m) to lay hydrographical instruments on the seafloor, and when Thompson happened to look through the window, he found himself staring into the eye of a giant fish which had swam briefly into view. It moved past quickly, bringing up silt from the seabed, before disappearing. The sighting had only lasted for around 8 seconds.

Thompson and LaFond initially kept quiet, assuming they would not be believed, but eventually described the fish to journalists Paul J. Tzimoulis and Louis Schafer, and cryptozoologist and marine writer Gardner Soule, to whom Thompson also described a much smaller giant grenadier. Furthermore, according to Soule, the live reactions of the two men were recorded on the submersible's audio log. Thompson asserted that LaFond had not been able to see the fish for himself, but LaFond independently stated that he had seen it.

Thompson and LaFond were most impressed by the allegedly enormous size of the fish they reported, which somewhat resembled a sea bass in body form. It was far larger than the 18 ft (5 m) Deepstar 4000, and was judged to be some 30–40 ft (9–12 m) in length, similar in size to some whale sharks (Rhincodon typus), but only 5–6 ft (1.5–1.8 m) across. As well as the submersible itself, the pair were able to judge the fish's length using the hydrological instruments which had been recently placed on the seafloor at set intervals. It possessed gill plates, "huge pectoral fins" 2 ft (60 cm) in length, a rounded grouper-like tail fin which seemed to be 4–5 ft (1.2–1.5 m) in height and "serrated": Thompson was quite struck by this unusual tail, which he described in more detail as "very strange looking, with ragged caudals jutting off its end on a 30 degree angle ... not the tail of a sea bass or shark ... t reminded me of an illustration of a coelacanth's tail." Its eyes, one of which was the first thing Thompson saw, were "as big as dinner plates." The skin was dark and mottled "gray-black" or "brown with grayish white tipping on the fin scales and tail," and Thompson was certain that it was also covered in scales, with those towards the anterior portion of the body being the largest, around the size of coffee cups.

THEORIES & SOURCES AT LINK:
https://cryptidarchives.fandom.com/wiki/Deepstar_4000_fish


Also:​

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