Nessie’s Kin?

The first documented sighting of such a creature was in 1876, when local fishermen reported seeing it. Sporadic claims of sightings have taken place since then, but probably the most convincing is the account from teacher-turned-author Sheila Bird.

According to the Daily Mail, Sheila was walking with her brother, an eminent scientist, along the cliffs of the Cornish coast at Germans Bay in 1985. Her brother suddenly asked ‘What’s that?’, and pointed to a giant sea creature which had a long neck and a small head.

‘As it came nearer’, Sheila said, ‘we could see a huge hump. At the end of the trunk there was a wide, flat area, and an enormous long tail which could have been as long as its body. It must have measured 40 feet in all.’

Other walkers watched the creature through binoculars with Sheila and her brother, until it submerged vertically ‘like a submarine’.

Sheila consulted two palaeontologists, who said that from her descriptions the creature seemed to be a descendant of the supposedly extinct Plesiosaurus.

‘The ocean is the last unchartered wilderness’, Sheila said. ‘If the experts can prove what this creature is, then science must be rewritten.’

Addendum

We do not vouch for the veracity of the claimed sighting—we are merely reporting it out of interest.

Other reports of strange marine creatures have come from various areas over the years. In June this year, 16 people claimed to have watched for five minutes a mysterious object move swiftly across Loch Ness, which they thought must have been the Loch Ness Monster.2In Japan, a creature named Issie has been reported living in Lake Ikeda on the southern island of Kyushu,3 and the remains of a three-metre juvenile Cadborosaurus have been reportedly found in the stomach of a whale.4