Before the world there was the Waugal, the giant Rainbow Serpent of the Noongar people.
As it slithered across the land it carved the rivers and waterways of Perth.
Where it rested, the Waugal’s gigantic body formed the Manjaree today known as Bather’s
Bay in the Port of Fremantle.
Nearly all of the world’s cultures speak of sea monsters, but before they lived in
our imagination they inhabited the oceans, and some of them are still there.
In Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia there is a fascinating account of a real-life
sea monster which he called the polypus, which means many-legged.
Apparently, it used its numerous appendages to gorge itself on salted fish left near the
shore.
Eventually the locals grew irritated and were drawn into battle with the beast, and “it
is only with the greatest difficulty that it could be dispatched with the aid of a considerable
number of three-pronged fish spears”.
What is unique in this story is that the workers then present the body to their boss Lucullus
who gives a detailed description of a 300-kilogram [700 lb] creature, with 10-metre-long [30ft] tentacles and
a head shaped like a wine amphora.
This turns out to be an excellent description of the giant squid, bodies of which do occasionally
wash to shore on beaches around the world.
It took us until 2004 to get our first photographs of a living giant squid at a depth of 900
metres [3000 ft].
It would be rare to see a living specimen in the shallow waters described by Pliny and
even more unusual for it to come onto land and beat up some fishermen.
So, what we think actually happened is that the workers just happened to find a body washed
ashore and then made up a story to get a bonus from their boss and some free drinks.
We think that many stories of sea monsters may begin this way.
This is Whalers Tunnel, excavated to facilitate the transport of whale oil between Bather’s
Beach and the town of Fremantle.
Obviously, whales exist, although stories about mistaking them for islands and living
inside their bellies are highly exaggerated.
Sea serpents like the Norse Jörmungandr and Hebrew leviathan may be based on sightings
of the giant oarfish.
In 1996 we actually found a specimen accidentally washed ashore and this team of US Navy SEALs
managed to hold it up, looking very impressed with their catch.
Theirs was seven metres [23 ft] long , pretty enormous but not even close to the 17 metre [56 ft] limit.
Their unique crest, long dorsal fin, and habit of swimming with their heads high above the
water makes them a likely candidate for the sea serpent legend.
In 2011 we spotted a healthy living specimen at a depth of 500 metres [1640 ft].
We think that they only ever go to the surface when in great distress, which accounts for
the infrequency of sightings despite being a pretty common species.
It’s by no accident that as we descend, we find larger and more monstrous sea creatures.
To live in the abyss, it is basically mandatory.
The deep sea has very limited resources, which counterintuitively gives larger individuals
a competitive advantage.
By evolving from something similar to a woodlouse into literally the stuff of nightmares, Giant
Isopods are able to travel further in search of food, have improved energy efficiency,
and can go for years in-between meals.
In April 2020, an Australian team of researchers found this Giant Siphonophore Apolemia in
the Deep-Sea Abyssal waters off of Ningaloo.
We think it was spotted in a hunting configuration, looking like an alien UFO with a 15-metre [50 ft]
diameter.
It’s all curled-up so making measurements was difficult, but we think if it were unwound
it could stretch for 120 metres [390 ft].
That’s the same distance as from here to the Old Fremantle Hotel, 120 metres [390 ft] away.
For context, that is four times longer than the Blue Whale, making this Siphonophore the
longest animal on Earth.
Although, technically it's not really a single animal, but instead thousands of genetically
identical individuals which work together to form the gelatinous colony.
With such a diverse array of life you may be wondering just how much is left to discover.
By using something known as a collector's curve we can make an educated guess.
Collector’s curves are often used in ecology since they allow us to estimate the total
number of different species living in a habitat without needing to count every single individual.
You can imagine it like having a bag of different coloured marbles and then drawing them out
one after the other.
At the beginning we have a new colour pretty much every time but soon we start to get more
and more repeats until our curve levels off and eventually becomes horizontal once we
have found all of the different colours.
What’s great about this technique is that we don’t need to empty the entire bag to
work out how many colours there are.
Instead once the curve starts to level we can just extrapolate forward.
In order to create a collector's curve for sea monsters we first need to define what
a sea monster actually is.
Unfortunately there’s no eldritch horror gene which you can look for with a DNA swab
and subjective methods are also a bit flawed.
I personally feel that dolphins are pretty cool and not at all monstrous but the heraldic
dolphins on old family crests suggests that our ancestors must have thought otherwise.
However, I think we can all agree that swimming with something significantly larger than yourself
is pretty terrifying so I’m going to be defining sea monster as anything two metres
and above.
By consulting scientific literature all the way back to Carl Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae,
Oxford University researcher Charles Paxton was able to begin work on such a curve, plotting
discoveries from 1829 to 1995.
I’ve since built upon his work, incorporating some new data as well as fitting an improved
function, giving us the most accurate collectors curve of sea monsters ever devised.
As of the end of 2020 there were 223 large species of known marine creatures that we
know in the oceans.
And according to my curve there are six remaining, somewhere undiscovered out-there.
As to what those missing six could be?
Well, we’ve got no idea, although it does have to fit within our understanding of the
Earth’s oceans.
Megalodon, the giant prehistoric shark, definitely doesn’t exist anymore.
Those were wide-roaming super apex predators which we would have spotted by now.
Although The Meg was a pretty-fun movie, we know that they can’t be hiding out in deep-sea
canyons since sharks aren’t able to survive below 1500 metres [4900 ft] due to some biochemical
limitations.
Based on recent discoveries, we expect that most of the missing species are going to be
some forms of deep-sea squid as well as toothed whales, however there is room for a few wildcards.
In 1976, we accidentally discovered the megamouth shark, the sole survivor of the Megachasmidae
family.
These alien-looking species are about the size of a great white but with a giant mouth
used for scooping up krill.
We actually found a specimen not too far from here which today is being held in the WA Maritime
Museum.
Given the relatively recent discovery of this discovery we expect that at least one or two
of our missing sea monsters is going to be something equally unique.
As we explore the world’s oceans we find that many of our sea monsters are based more
on fact than on fiction.
However, as we descend deeper, not even our legends can fully prepare us for what we might
find.
This has been James Dingley from the Atomic Frontier.
Keep Looking Up.