Sea Monsters: From Myth to Reality

The idea of one-eyed monsters is as old as – if not older than – Greek mythology. The famous cyclopeans who played havoc with Olympian heroes and gods are legendary, of course, and actually survive in modern teen-lit. One of my favorite characters in Rick Riordan’s charming Percy Jackson and the Olympians series of books is Percy’s half-brother Tyson the Cyclops.


All that fictiony goodness aside, National Geographic online has confirmed that a shark fetus caught while still inside its mother in the Gulf of California is a bona fide Cyclops. This article indicates that the baby dusky shark, one of a litter of ten otherwise normal fetuses, was indeed an example of a rare, congenital condition known as cyclopia. Also known as synophthalmia, the disorder is documented in 1 in about 15,000 live births in animals and a surprisingly high 1 in 250 embryos. The animals in question include humans although live births of cyclopiad babies are undocumented to date.

Once scientists from the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine Science in La Paz, Mexico, determined that the shark fetus was the real deal, they proceeded to request to “borrow” it from fisherman Enrique Lucero Leon. Leon had posted pictures of the odd little fellow on Facebook, which drew interest from the researchers.

Jim Gelsleichter, a shark biologist from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, points out in the article that though Cyclops sharks have been documented previously they are a rare occurrence. According to Gelsleichter, none have yet been caught “outside the womb” making it reasonable to suspect that they cannot survive long once they are born. A quote from Gelsleichter winds up the article quite nicely:

It’s a humbling experience to realize you ain’t seen it all yet.

Isn’t it just?

Header: Cyclops shark fetus via NatGeo online (more pictures can be seen with the article)

Sea Monsters: Sea Water Snake

After what must have been a tremendous storm in the fall of 1808, farmer John Peace of the Shetland island of Stronsay noticed a dead animal. It was caught on off shore rocks and the farmer, who was in the process of cleaning up his property after the storm, eventually rowed out to get a closer look.

Farmer Peace at first imagined he had a dead whale to contend with. Once he got to the already decomposing carcass, however, he thought differently. As he later described it, the creature had a long neck with an unusually small head atop it. It had a thin tail like an eel and two matching fins on either side of it's body. A measurement showed the creature to be over 50 feet in length.

Unfortunately the animal could not be moved but it was closely examined and a drawing was made by a local artist. Notes and the drawing soon came to the attention of noted naturalist Patrick Neill. He poured over the facts he had and in November of 1808 he read his paper on the animal to the Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh. Neill concluded that, in his own words:

...no doubt could be entertained that this is the kind of animal described by Johann Remus, Egede and Pontoppidan, but which scientific and systematic naturalists have hitherto rejected as spurious...

In other words the creature was a rare "sea snake" and Neill took it upon himself to name the "new" species Halsydrus or sea water snake. So it stood in naturalist circles for almost one hundred and fifty years.

After World War II another native of Scotland, writer and scientist Gavin Maxwell, took up the case of Halsydrus. Maxwell was a big fan of the basking shark (shown above) and he had a hunch. The basking shark, it seems, is one of the largest proper fish in the world with modern specimens recorded up to 40 feet long. They strain their plankton food through a long set of gill arches and they are ridiculously common in the cold waters around Scotland and the Shetlands.

Maxwell finally came to the conclusion that Neill's Halsydrus was in fact a basking shark in the advanced stages of decomposition. The picture drawn from life did not show a head but a skull, and the gill arches give the erroneous appearance of an elongated neck. The cartilage that replaces bone in a shark's body would collapse quickly, giving the tail a more sinuous, eel-like look but the thick fins would remain in tact for some time. Essentially, Maxwell busted Neill's Halsydrus myth.

In a way it's sad, despite the strictly scientific correctness of it. I like imagining unknown animals beneath the sea foam. Fortunately neither naturalist Neill nor farmer Peace ever found out they were wrong.