One of the things that has always captivated me is the the swirling legends of sea serpents. Those elusive, monstrous beings said to rise from the deep with eyes like lanterns and bodies long enough to wrap around ships. As a child, this made my own eyes light up like lanterns at the thought of finding these beasts in the wild, yet I could not find any proof of them when I looked in the usual sources. I pored over a number of books and maps, such as the Carta Marina, with its fantastical depictions of krakens, leviathans, and scaled beasts lurking off every jagged coastline (even if Great Britain and Ireland are somewhat missing). It wasn’t just the creatures themselves that stirred my imagination, but the idea that once, the edges of the known world were drawn with equal parts geography and myth. I had missed that golden age of discovery, and the opportunity to discover a new landmass or some gargantuan-sized animal that usually lurked in the depths.
As someone that studied zoology and now works as a lecturer and researcher in that field, it may make you wonder why I became so fascinated with these tales of sea creatures that struck terror into the hearts and minds of sailors. Whilst creatures such as bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster are almost certainly the result of multiple fakes, hysteria and hoaxes, some actual animals started life as ‘cryptids’. These include the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), red kangaroo (Osphranter rufus), okapi (Okapia johnstoni), and giant squid (Architeuthis dux). We have learnt so much about the natural world since Magnus’ time that these species are now well known to most, but before the world became the globalised and industrialised world it is today, things would have been very different.
Adrian Shine, author of A Natural History of Sea Serpents is widely regarded as the foremost authority on the aforementioned Loch Ness Monster. You may not have realised it but if like me, you’ve watched countless hours of documentaries on the phenomenon or read a book on the topic, you may have come across Shine’s work previously. This was a fact that I only put together recently, like the combining on puzzle pieces in my mind. Suddenly, everything started to make sense. Now we enter dangerous waters (see what I did there?), whereby we need to answer the question of whether cryptozoology qualifies as a science, and whether those engaged in scientific investigation can be considered cryptozoologists. This is a debate that could last forever and my personal feeling is that many reports of ‘monsters’ may be highly sensationalised and exaggerated. What Shine seems to be extremely good at is determining the credibility of eyewitness testimony and establishing how we can test their observations, in order to determine if what the think they saw was truly what they observed.
With that out of the way, let’s return back to the book! Across eight main chapters, Shine takes readers on a journey through both time and our understanding of sea serpents, exploring a range of reports. It is clear that these observations have taken place around the world, and aren’t just limited to a single location or stretch of ocean, with examples including multi-humped creatures linked with New England, to how the Zoological Society of London held an event in 1906 to discuss the 1905 Valhalla sightings. There simply is a something for everyone, with a number of additional cases I wasn’t aware of that Shine explores in detail.
A thorough evaluation of sea monster accounts requires that researchers possess substantial field experience and a well-developed understanding of how known marine animals appear and behave in their natural environments. Historically, investigators have not consistently applied a sufficiently broad or systematic approach when considering possible identities for reported creatures. This underscores the importance of comprehensive field observation when attempting to interpret ambiguous or extraordinary sightings – as well as atypical colouration and behaviour in the potential organisms that have been observed. Throughout, Shine demonstrates how a number of the sea serpents reported could have been people unfamiliar with marine turtles, seals, cetaceans or other species misinterpreting them as something else. There are of course a few examples where Shine also points out that certain events did indeed never happen, and have unfortunately been parroted by people that should have known better.
In my mind it is very likely that sailors of old may have mistaken cetaceans and other marine animals for sea serpents due to a combination of limited biological knowledge, rough sea conditions, and the mysterious behaviour of these animals, combined with the consequences of being at sea for extended periods of time. Creatures like whales and the giant oarfish can exhibit features such as long, sinuous bodies, sudden appearances, or dramatic surfacing behaviours that, when seen partially or in poor visibility, could resemble the mythical sea serpent. Blowholes expelling mist, undulating movements through waves, and glimpses of fins or tails might have further fuelled misinterpretations. Add to that the natural human tendency to mythologise the unknown, mixed with the potential psychological impacts of being confined at sea for months on end, and it’s easy to see how marine mammals became entangled in tales of monstrous, serpentine beasts of the deep.
If you would like to read more on the topic, may I suggest the following titles as additional sources of information on sea monsters and sea serpents, relevant to the book discussed within: In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents (1968) by Bernard Heuvelmans, The Case for the Sea Serpent (1930) by Rupert Gould (to which this book is dedicated), There Are Giants in the Sea (1988) by Michael Bright, Monsters of the Sea (2006) by Richard Ellis, Disentangled (2014) by Robert France, and Hunting Monsters (2016) by Darren Naish.
A Natural History of Sea Serpents is not a book for those seeking dramatic revelations or definitive proof of unknown creatures. Rather, it is a calm, reasoned, and often elegant reflection on how and why people report sea monsters, and what those reports can tell us, not just about potential unknown species, but about the limits of perception, the nature of eyewitness evidence, and the interface between science and folklore. If readers would like to purchase a copy of A Natural History of Sea Serpents for £18.99, please do let me know how you find it. I would be extremely interested to know! One final thing to add is that it is extremely well illustrated with photographs, illustrations (thank to Shine’s wife Maralyn) and diagrams which help to consolidate all of the ideas shared in the text. Thank you to Whittles Publishing for sending me a review copy, it is very much appreciated.
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