Wednesday 27 May 2020

The Fortune Bay Sea Serpent 1997


Fortune Bay  is a natural bay located in the Gulf of  Newfoundland, Canada . The bay extends in a northeast direction for 105 kilometres ending at Terrenceville.
Over the years there have been lots of sea serpent sightings in the area dating from 1500s  to the present day.
As recently as May 4th1997, a sea serpent  sighting was reported by two men in a fishing boat in Fortune Bay off Newfoundland. They  saw what they thought were garbage bags floating on the ocean's surface and went to investigate. Here is the newspaper article of the time.

5/6/1997  The Evening Telegram
LITTLE BAY EAST-FORTUNE BAY (Correspondent) Charles Bungay has no doubt about what he saw rear up out of the water after him on Sunday. The creature was long with gray, scaly skin and dark eyes that looked right at him, the Fortune Bay fisherman said. It was frightening.I shook for about five or six hours afterwards, he said. I’ve never witnessed anything like it in my life.
Jon Lien, a Memorial University marine biologist, was reluctant Monday to speculate on exactly what Bungay and a companion might have seen but he ruled out a humpback whale, large basking shark or a giant squid.Lien, a whale researcher, said after receiving a full description he’s more inclined to think along the lines of a similar creature called Cadborosaurus reportedly sighted on numerous occasions off the coast of British Columbia.
There have been hundreds of sightings of this, whatever it is, on the west coast, but no one has ever found a carcass, said Lien.Maybe we have just discovered the east coast version of that so-called sea monster, I don’t know.
Bungay said it was about noon on Sunday when he and a companion spotted what they thought were floating garbage bags.They decided to haul them on board but when they got within 50 or 60 feet, something else reared its head.It eyeballed us right away. It turned its head and looked right at us, said Bungay.All we could see was a neck about six feet long, a head like a horse, but his dark eyes were on the front of its face like a human.The overall length he estimated at about 30 to 40 feet. He said it had ears or horns six or eight inches long. He knows what its mouth looked like but he couldn’t remember it being open, it all happened so fast.He just looked at us and slid under the water and disappeared.
Another Bay L’Argent fishermen says he had a similar experience four or five years ago.It was the year the ice floes came further south then we’ve ever witnessed and flowed up into Fortune Bay, said John Hardiman, 66.It was exactly the same as them fellows described it.But I never seen its head that was beneath the water. I did see its big long tail, more like those dinosaurs you see on TV. That’s what it looked like to me.

Such incidents may be more common than most people may think. One U.S. report of 600 sightings concluded over half weren’t obvious hoaxes or mistaken identity. Some say what the men saw was a giant squid .Giant squid rarely come to the surface and don’t look horselike.So what do think the men saw? It certainly shook up two seasoned fishermen.

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