The ocean is a very dangerous place; certain rivers are quite treacherous, too. In an attempt to explain why so many shipwrecks occur in the same place time after time, sailors have often created legends of mythical creatures that lure men to their death. And since sailors were mostly men, and rather lonely men at that, it is not surprising that they described these creatures as beautiful, singing maidens called sirens. Legends of sirens are fairly common. For example, in Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses has to resist a siren. In Germany, there is a common legend about a siren named Lorelei who haunts the Rhine River.
Unfortunately, not all sea creatures are as lovely as the sirens. Sailors also tell of huge sea serpents and unidentifiable beasts. The most famous of such creatures is the Loch Ness Monster, nicknamed Nessie, although Nessie actually lives in a lake in Scotland and not the ocean.
It is not surprising that sailors were unable to identify various sea creatures. Even in modern times, scientists have a lot of unanswered questions concerning marine life. The ocean covers two-thirds of the Earth’s surface and is incredibly deep; the Marina Trench near the Philippines, for examples, is 35,838 feet deep. Exploring the ocean is not an easy task.
According to the report “Oceans: the Lifeline of our Planet Anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: 20 Years of Law and Order on the Oceans and Seas (1982-2002),” scientists estimate that there are between 10 million and 100 million marine species. This estimate indicates that not only are there a lot of marine species out there, but the majority of them are probably still unknown. New species are constantly being discovered, and some of them are quite large. So, if you define monster as “big, scary thing I don’t recognize,” then sailors actually did see monsters.
Sailors may also have seen shark and whale carcasses or large masses of inanimate matter – seaweed, logs, ship debris, for instance – and mistook them for large, living creatures. Dr. Paxton of the University of St. Andrews has proposed another interesting explanation for some sea serpent sightings: sailors may have been seeing whale penises. Some whales, including North Atlantic right whale and the Pacific grey whale, have long penises that can resemble snakes. Perhaps we are better off think of them as serpents.