Shore is strange…at least sometimes, and usually after a storm. Beachcombers often can’t believe their eyes (or noses) when encountering some of Neptune’s more notable washed-up castoffs and even scientists can be befuddled on first impression. Like most UFO’s, there’s always an explanation for the apparently unexplainable…it’s up to you, however, if you choose to believe it.
1. Quit While You’re a Head
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Not much happens in Temuka, a town of just over 4,000 located on the eastern coast of New Zealand’s South Island, but all that changed on October 28th, 2009 when the aliens landed…according to Rose Fraser, who came across it while walking along Temuka Beach. “I must admit, I thought: ‘Heck, this is an alien’. It looks like it’s got big ribs coming out of it, but it looks like they could be tentacles, so I don’t know.” Scientific analysis soon proved her conjecture a might ambitious, identifying the “mysterious blob” instead as the top of a Sperm Whale’s head. “It is not yet known what will happen to the blob of whale,” concludes the Fairfax NZ News, and frankly we would rather not know either.
2. Storm Sturgeon
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Something was fishy about the so-called “nightmarish Lovecraftian sea monster” that washed ashore on South Carolina’s [USA] Folly Beach in March of 2012, or maybe that was just the aroma carried by the sea breeze. It certainly wasn’t the look of this thing, which appeared to have time-travelled from the age of the dinosaurs. A local vet identified the scaly, scute-covered corpse to be a wayward Atlantic Sturgeon, a fish that can grow up to 15 feet long, weigh as much as 800 pounds, and hasn’t really changed much since the species originated around 100 million years ago. Great Old Ones indeed!
3. The Kivalina Strain
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The remote native community of Kivalina on the Chukchi Sea shore in northwestern Alaska isn’t the first place one might expect an alien invasion but on August 3rd, 2011, that’s exactly what happened. Rolling onto the beach for miles around, the first wave was NOT made of little green men, but little orange spores…billions of them.
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The tiny orange spheres turned out to be fungal spores of a type of plant rust, to be exact. Who knew plants can rust? Anyway, it’s a good thing those who assumed the bloom was made up of crab eggs or some other form of sea life waited for scientists to determine the precise nature of the “orange goo” before slathering it on their sushi. Wait a minute, wasn’t the lethal pathogen from the novel and film The Andromeda Strain a type of fungal spore?
4. Lost Your Head?
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“I’ve lived here all my life and never seen anything like it,” said Basil Park of McIvers, on the shore of Newfoundland’s Bay of Islands. “There’s fishermen around here who fished all their lives and they couldn’t tell you.” That’s saying something, even if the subject is a headless creature 15 feet long, 10 feet of which form a tapering tail. Officials of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans haven’t disclosed the nature of the creature that washed ashore in February of 2010. While they’re waiting for the head to turn up (in New Zealand, perhaps?), we suggest they pass the time reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
5. Montauk Monster
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No list of washed-up creatures would be complete without mention of the first (of at least three) Montauk Monster. Reports of the ferocious-looking carcass originated from far-eastern Long Island, New York, in July of 2008 and exploded onto the Internet shortly thereafter. Though DOA [dead on arrival] when it hit the popular Ditch Plains beach, the creature lives on in pop culture and has even been a subject of a beautiful yet disturbing painting by Dan Lacey.
Four years after its discovery, speculation still abounds over the creature’s origin, identity (it may be the decomposed remains of a raccoon) and even its whereabouts, as according to the Wikipedia entry on the Montauk Monster “It is unknown what happened to the carcass.” Well it didn’t just walk away, did it? DID IT??
6. Opah Is The Devil
That’s “Opah”, not Oprah, and although this big beached beauty may look somewhat satanic, the lower reaches it hails from aren’t hellish in the least. Known variously as Sunfish, Moonfish, or Kingfish, these deep-ocean fish are rarely seen even when biologists and anglers are looking for them.
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It “looked like it was from another planet,” stated Scott Williams, a local surfer who discovered the massive fish being battered by waves one morning in October of 2010, just off the coast of San Diego [USA]. It’s estimated the manhole-sized, 100-lb Opah would bring $12 per pound if sold at market prices but being that it was a fish out of water, literally, eating it might not be advisable.
7. Violets Are Blew
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Purple Storm Snails (Janthina janthina) are rarely seen anywhere BUT washed up on a beach. These exquisitely beautiful gastropods have paper-thin shells and blow “bubble rafts” of transparent chitin to keep them afloat on the ocean’s surface. They acquired their colloquial name from their propensity to being blown onto beaches by strong storm winds.
8. From Russia With Ugh
I see your Montauk Monster and raise you a Moscow Monster! This seriously decomposed…something…was found by soldiers stationed on Russia’s far-eastern island territory of Sakhalin in 2006. Sakhalin, by the way, is about 5,000 miles east of Moscow…just saying.
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Once the story broke, Russian Special Service personnel quickly removed the remains from the beach “for in-depth studies”, though over five years later not a peep has been heard from them. Independent observers working from photos taken and transmitted before the FSS (the KGB’s successor) put a bear hug on further reporting, noted similarities between the washed-up creature’s skull and skeleton to those of Orca and Beluga Whales, the later of which are rather populous in the waters off Sakhalin.
9. Bigfoot, Meet Bigtooth
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…it IS safe in the water, just stay off the beach! OK, the only danger posed by the toothy creation above is potentially stubbing one’s toe on it. And by “creation”, we don’t mean it in the biblical sense. Tampa Bay artist Juan Cabana conceived, composed and posed the purported Sea Monster as one of his “Seamystery” series of mythical creatures, monsters, mermaids and aliens. The ferocious fish-beast above was auctioned off at eBay by Cabana in June 2006 and any image seen on the Internet is derived from the photos Cabana included in the auction description.
10. Six, er, Fourteen Feet Under
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The thrill of victory and the agony of the feet, the latter of which were washing ashore along the Canadian and American Pacific northwest coast, so often authorities were wondering what in the wide world of sports was going on! Just whose feet were they - and where were the rest of the bodies? The so-called “Salish Sea Human Foot Discoveries” date from August of 2007 and as of early 2012 fourteen beached feet had been recovered…plus a “hoax foot” consisting of an animal paw stuffed into a shoe. Nice.
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To date, less than half of “The Feet on the Beach” have been identified, though the case offers some tantalizing clues. One commonality revolves around the shoes holding the remains: most were made and sold before 2004, prompting some to wonder if victims (of parts thereof) of the 2004 Asian Tsunami were directed to the Salish Sea islands by ocean currents.
So, are you up for a nice, peaceful walk on the beach or does the possibility of stumbling across something unexpected make you want to wave it off? One thing you should know: from whales to snails and fish to feet, things washed up on the shore have all seen better days, so stowaway your fears and enjoy nature’s bounty!
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