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© St. Petersburg Times, published April 23, 2002
At one time, scientists thought denizens of the sea numbered about 200,000. But in recent years, that projection has been revised to more like 100-million.
The vast majority of those animals is tiny and of interest only to marine biologists. Yet from time to time, larger, more exciting species such as the giant squid or megamouth shark are captured and identified, reigniting the age-old search for real, live sea monsters.
"Who knows what could be living out there," said David Pawson, a senior research scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. "There are probably some very large animals that we have no idea about.
"It's a big ocean," he added. "But then again, I am one of those people who would like to believe in the Loch Ness Monster. It is a romantic dream, but I am a romantic at heart."
Some have speculated Nessie, and other large, lake-dwelling creatures (Lake Champlain has Champ and British Columbia's Lake Okanagan has Ogopogo) are plesiosaurs, leftovers from the Great Age of dinosaurs. Others have suggested these creatures could be something as easily explainable as a sturgeon, a primitive species that dates back 225-million years.
Last month, one of these armour-plated fish washed up in St. Petersburg, the first one found in local waters for more than a century. Scientists describe the specimen as a "living fossil," but it isn't the first time an animal thought to be extinct has been rediscovered by science.
"The coelacanth, once thought to be extinct, was truly an amazing find," said Melanie Stiassny, Research Curator of Icthyology for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "Here is an animal that was supposedly long gone. It just goes to show that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction."
In 1938, a strange creature was caught in a net by fishermen trawling near the mouth of the Chalumna River in South Africa. The specimen, 5 feet long and weighing 126 pounds, could not be classified by a curator of the East London Museum. The fish eventually was identified as a coelacanth, an animal believed to have died out some 80-million years ago.
"It was like finding a live dinosaur marching around the jungle," Pawson said. "Nobody ever expected one to be found alive."
It would be 14 years before another coelacanth was captured, but since then, more than 200 of these "living fossils" have been caught.
"There are 23,000 species of fish that we know about, but if you look at how many are being discovered, some 200 each year, the numbers are staggering," Stiassny said. "Many of them are small and in habitats that we have not looked at before -- tropical freshwaters and streams -- but when it comes to the aquatic realm, we have only begun to explore the surface."
In 1976, a Naval research vessel working in 15,000 feet of water off Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands caught a previously unknown animal when it retrieved one of the ship's large, parachute-type sea anchors. The 15-foot-long, 1,653-pound shark was dubbed "the megamouth" because of its large mouth.
The discovery of this animal prompted many who search for new species to speculate there may be more large, unknown species yet to be discovered in the ocean depths. The pursuit of previously undiscovered species even has a name -- cryptozoology -- which comes from the Greek word kryptos, meaning hidden.
The International Society of Cryptozoology has nearly 1,000 members, but mentioning the word to some scientists draws a cry of caution.
"It has a very poor resonance in the scientific community," said Stiassny of the Museum of Natural History. "Why talk about the make-believe when there are real, just as dramatic, discoveries made every day."
Still, search the Internet and you find numerous references to another species of shark known as Carcharodon megalodon, a fabled 50-footer -- about half the size of the great white of Jaws fame -- thought to have disappeared from the ocean about 1.5-million years ago.
If still alive, megalodon could swallow a cow in one bite. Much has been made of this extinct species of shark, thanks in part to an incident on the coast of Australia in 1918 when the crayfishermen of Port Stephens refused to go to sea for several days after a large, unidentified shark tore up their lobster pots.
"Does it exist? Probably not," Pawson said. "But the great white is very similar and that is scary enough."
Some have speculated that it actually might have been a great white shark that swallowed Jonah, of "Jonah and the Whale" fame. Monster of the Sea author Ellis, who also has written about whales and giant squid, said the shark is the archetypal villain of the sea.
"Peter Benchley had a stroke of genius when he wrote Jaws. Here was a monster story where the monster was real," he said. "Nobody expects to see King Kong showing up outside the Empire State Building, but when you go swimming, you know there is a creature known as the great white shark and that occasionally it bites people in half and eats them."
The word "shark" is derived from the German "scoundrel" or "villain." The more than 350 species of shark vary from 6-inches to 50-feet long. Once known as "dogfishes" or "sea dogs," a dozen or so dangerous species could be responsible for many of the sea monster myths that have been passed down from generation to generation.
But just as the leviathan of literature eventually would be called a whale, and the mermaid a manatee, the dreaded Kraken of mythology eventually would be found to be a real-life animal.
From the time of Virgil, humans have feared a multiarmed beast that preyed on men and ships. Jules Verne immortalized the beast in his book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. His account reportedly was based on an alleged encounter between a French naval ship and giant squid in 1861.
Scientists remained skeptical, but in the late 1800s pieces of what appeared to be giant squid began washing up on the beaches of Newfoundland. In the years that followed, additional specimens were found, particularly on the shores of New Zealand, which are close to the deep Pacific canyons where the 60-foot-long Architeuthis kirki is believed to live.
"The giant squid is probably the quintessential sea monster," Ellis said. "Nobody thought it was real until one actually washed ashore."
Through the years, other pieces of "sea monsters" have been found on deserted beaches. In 1896 a 22-foot-long "blob" of unidentifiable flesh was found at St. Augustine. Other "globsters," as they were known to be called, also were found in New Zealand and Australia.
"People speculated that they could be the remains of a giant octopus," Ellis said. "But recent scientific advances (DNA testing) have proven conclusively that they were the remains of whale carcasses."
At times, people misidentify unusual species of fish as sea monsters. A headline from the March 25, 1960 edition of the St. Petersburg Times heralds a Rare "Sea Serpent' Caught By Visitor. The 6-foot-long creature turned out to be an oarfish, which have red or coral-colored dorsal fins and can grow to lengths of 50 feet.
The history books, especially those of New England, are full of accounts of sea serpents. In 1817 the seafaring town of Gloucester, Mass., was stricken with sea-monster fever after a 60-foot sea serpent was spotted at the mouth of the bay every day for nearly a month.
"I think a lot of their descriptions were based in fact, but they were animals that they didn't recognize," Ellis said. "They saw something, but there were no devices available to record an image.
"All you could do was go back to the neighborhood saloon and say, "You wouldn't believe what I just saw.' "
Stiassny, whose Museum of Natural History until recently displayed an example of the mythical Kraken -- giant squid -- said the really scary thing isn't what's out there, but what's not.
"We are losing species every day," she said. "Some such as sturgeon, exploited for their roe, are disappearing because of pollution and development."
There once were so many sturgeon in the Hudson River that early settlers talked about them being a threat to small boats. Here in Tampa Bay, the gulf variety once were so plentiful there was a commercial fishery.
"It is a shame," Stiassny concluded.
"It is hard to know what we lost when we really don't know what was out there to start with."