Saturday Sea Serpent from Scotland

There have been stories of sea serpents seen off the British Isles for many years, quite a few off the coasts of Scotland . The first one below is from 1898:

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=NOT18981221.2.5&l=mi&e=-------10--1----0-all

It tells of a serpent seen off Stonehaven near Aberdeen . The skipper of the fishing boat said it was longer than his boat which was 34feet long and had fins twenty feet apart .
As a seasoned fisherman you would expect him to know an anomaly if he saw one.
The next is 1958:

A sea serpent was reported to have been seen on Saturday night in the Tay. The report was made to Fife police by Mr Ronald Avery, bus driver, 3, Milton Crescent, Anstruther and was confirmed by the conductress Miss Betty Kay, Cellardyke. Yesterday Mr Avery said "The bus was standing at the Newport-on-Tay terminus. We were waiting for the starting time and I was standing on the step of the bus looking over the water. It was misty, but about five minutes to eight I was distinctly, about a mile out from Newport Pier, a strange creature moving in the water. Three humps were visible and although it was difficult to tell their colouring I thought they were dark. They were movinh towards the Tay Bridge. They disappeared, and then came to the surface again in exactly the same manner a short distance forward. I drew the attention of Betty Kay and together we watched the creature moving towards the Tay Bridge. We must have seen it disappear and surface eighty or nine times, it made a circle towards some boats near the opposite bank. Then it was time for us to move, but I was so impressed that I reported it to the police. I would say it was a sea snake or serpent, about 15 to 20 feet in length. I don't think the object I saw was porpoises or seals. I've seen sharks and whales in the Indian Ocean but this was the strangest thing I have ever seen in the water.

Various sea monsters have been reported as being seen off the shores of the Scottish Isle of Lewis over the years, including a sighting reported in 1882 by a German ship off the Butt of Lewis. The ship, 15 kilometres off the coast, reported a sea serpent around 40 metres in length, several bumps protruding from the water, along its back. Sea serpents have also been reported at the southern side of the island.

So is Scotland, the home of Nessie, a haven for sea serpents? This is just a small historical sample, there are many more. Keep your eyes peeled if you go fishing off the shores of Scotland,who knows what you might hook!

what happened to this sea beastie?

This was from 2008 .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/7595620.stm

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Fresh clues have been found to help a scientist in her efforts to identify a mystery creature found on Orkney. Geneticist Dr Yvonne Simpson has researched the Stronsay Beast and will reveal her latest discoveries at the Orkney International Science Festival. The creature's carcass, which some said was that of a basking shark, was found off Stronsay in 1808. Dr Simpson has said the descriptions of its long neck were along the lines of those of the Loch Ness Monster. Festival director Howie Firth said few tissue samples had survived, but through her studies the geneticist had found several other items recovered from the remains.

The festival opens on Thursday and Dr Simpson will give her talk on 12 September - the 200th anniversary year of the day the creature was found. Last year, she gave a joint talk with Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine during the Highlands Science Festival. The Stronsay Beast was first sighted in September 1808 on rocks at Rothiesholm Head, on the south east of the island, by a local fisherman. Various others saw the carcass and fragments of it are preserved at the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Some people suggested it was a basking shark or a large unidentified shark. Orcadian Dr Simpson, who has a degree in evolutionary, environmental and biomedical genetics from the University of St Andrews and a PhD in the field of DNA damage repair from Edinburgh's pathology department, is fascinated by the stories. Of her research comparing the two "monsters", she told the BBC Scotland news website last year: "Based on an analysis of eye-witness descriptions, Nessie and the Stronsay Beast are both massive aquatic creatures. "The drawings of the Stronsay Beast carcass are strikingly similar in shape and size to the popular image of Nessie." During her studies of the Orkney creature, Dr Simpson was impressed by the wealth of eye witness accounts and sworn testimonies given to justices of the peace.

I have not heard anymore about this, I wonder how the talk went down and if any conclusions were drawn?

Ice Age big cats UK

Supersize' lions roamed Britain

By Natalie Hancock BBC News, Oxford

Giant lions were roaming around Britain, Europe and North America up to 13,000 years ago, scientists from Oxford University have found.

Remains of giant cats previously discovered were thought to be a species of jaguar or tiger but after DNA analysis they were proved to be lions. They were 25% bigger than the species of African lion living today, and had longer legs to chase their prey.hey would have lived in icy tundra with mammoth and sabre tooth tigers. It is thought these animals would hunt over longer distances, and their longer legs would help them chase down their prey as opposed to the modern-day species which tends to ambush its victims. The Oxford team analysed DNA from fossils and other remains gathered from Germany to Siberia, and Alaska to Wyoming.

Dr Ross Barnett, who conducted the research at Oxford University's department of Zoology, said: "These ancient lions were like a super-sized version of today's lions and, in the Americas, with longer legs adapted for endurance running. "What our genetic evidence shows is that these ancient extinct lions and the lions of today were very closely related.

"Cave art also suggests that they formed prides, although the males in the pictures would not have had manes and they are depicted very realistically." Lions appear to have been very important to early man with many depictions of them in their cave paintings, as in seen in the pre-historic cave complex at Chauvet in France. Other archaeological finds in Germany include figurines which are half man, half lion, leading to the theory that lions may even have been worshipped by ancient humans. The team found that these remains from the Pleistocene Epoch (1.8 million years ago to 10,000 years ago) could be divided into two groups: the American Lion which lived in North America, and the Cave Lion which lived in northern Europe, Russia, Alaska and the Yukon. These ancient cats would have lived in an environment that was more like an icy tundra and would have shared their habitat with herds of other large animals such as mammoth, woolly rhino, sabre tooth tigers and giant deer. About 13,000 years ago these species died out in a mass extinction. Figuring out the reason behind this, Dr Barnett said, was one of the last great scientific mysteries. He said: "There are a couple of different schools of thought. It could have been climate change or something to do with humans. Humans could have been killing off their prey or killing the lions themselves.

FRom : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7974948.stm

A look at Chessie

In the absence of any news today from the cryptozoological world I thought I would take a peek at Chessie.Chessie is the equivalent of Nessie and resides in Chesapeake Bay which is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Virginia and Maryland and its surface and major tributaries cover more than 4,479 square miles In places it is said to be 175 feet deep.

Over the years there have been many alleged sightings of a serpent-like creature with flippers as part of its body.

According to Matt Lake in Weird Maryland, two perch fishermen, Francis Klarrman and Edward J. Ward, in 1943 spotted something in the water near Baltimore.“This thing was about 75 yards away, at right angles from our boat. At first it looked like something floating on the water. It was black and the part of it that was out of the water seemed about 12 feet long. It has a head about as big as a football and shaped somewhat like a horse’s head. It turned its head around several times—almost all the way around.”
One sighting by Aditya Baliga reads as follows:"It came out of the water. It raised its head out of the water. It had fins and it seemed like it had hard scales on its body. It raised so high that its head could even been seen by the person in the crow's nest. It then quickly dove back into the water and turned back and started swimming. The way it turned back you could see its tail was fanned." (The Legendary Sea Monster of the Chesapeake Bay, The Book of Thoth)

In 1982 Robert and Karen Frew supposedly videotaped Chessie near Kent Island. Their video does show a brownish “something” moving side to side like an aquatic snake. Most sighting reports of this sea monster describe it as a long, serpent creature. The reported length of the monster varies from 25 to 40 feet long. It is said to swim using its body as a sine curve moving through the water.

In the early summer of 2003, Wallace Cartwright was headed out to sea to check his lobster traps. The native of Alder Point, Cape Breton County, saw what he thought was a big log in the water. The "log" had a head similar to a sea turtle with a brown, snake-like body. It was approximately eight metres long, brown with smooth skin. The creature submerged and surfaced again two minutes later.Cartwright and his assistant observed the animal for 45 minutes as it surfaced several more times. Mr. Cartwright, who has been a fisherman for 30 years, stated that what he had seen was like nothing he had seen before.

So Chessie a sea serpent or a large eel or a long necked pinniped or something new altogether? Like Nessie it has been seen by many people, some experienced fishermen or native to the area ,so not easily fooled.On April Fool's day -Think is this a hoax ot not?