In ancient times, there were always legends about sea monsters among the seafarers who were in coastal areas and often sailed to sea. For example, in the 18th century, there was a huge monster in the sea in Norway, also known as the "North Sea Monster" or "Norwegian Sea Monster", which was first considered to be a monster that looked like a crab, and later in people's mouths was shaped into the shape of an octopus, with many tentacles and an island-like body.
Is it the corpse of a "sea monster"?
On April 25, 1977, it was actually a very ordinary day, and the "Miyo Maru", a Japanese fishing company specializing in fishing, was as always intended to fish in the Japanese named "ずいうまる".
The boat's location is about 50 kilometres east of the city of Clastetch, New Zealand, and it's the best time to fish, and they've always had a good harvest, and this time is no exception.
As the crew dragged the net upwards 300 metres below the surface, they had already discovered that the rope was taut under the pull of the machine, and they thought that this time they might be able to get more sea cargo than ever before. But the crew was not happy for long, and as the nets gradually appeared on the surface of the sea, the "harvest" in the nets also appeared in front of the people.
It turned out that there were not too many fish in the fishing net, and the reason why it weighed so much was because there was a strange creature carcass in the fishing net, it was very huge, and the whole body supported the fishing net, and even the old crew who had experienced countless trips to the sea could not identify the identity of this creature.
The monster's body is relatively well preserved, but it has begun to decay slowly, from the appearance, it does not look like any fish, nor like an octopus, turtles, etc., the crew can see that the monster's head is very small, connected to a very long neck, the stomach is very large, but the inside of the stomach is basically nothing, as if it was eaten by other fish.
At that time, people were curious to measure the monster's corpse, and found that its head was already 45 centimeters long, the head and neck added up to about 2 meters, higher than most humans, and the monster's skeleton was even 10 meters long, which belonged to cartilage, adding up to about 2 tons.
It also has four long fin-like limbs and a 2-meter-long tail, the tip of the tail is only about 3 centimeters thick, but it is 12 centimeters at all, and in addition to the tail, the monster's body is also about 6.05 meters.
Sketch of the skeleton of a sea monster corpse
Due to the low degree of decay, it is thought that the monster may have only been dead for about a month, but according to later research, it may have been dead for half a year to 1 year. At first, people just thought it was a rotting whale carcass.
As early as that era, because there was no official whale ban in the world, fishing boats often went to the ocean to kill whales, coupled with the limited technology and cost of people at that time, these whaling boats often only cut off most of the subcutaneous fat after catching whales, and then threw the bodies back into the ocean. As a result, early distant-water fishing vessels often caught strange decaying corpses, which was a common occurrence in the eyes of the crew.
However, in general, the whale carcasses that people have caught in the past are actually the main structures without heads and other distinguishing species, and it is impossible to distinguish the identity because of the lack of reasons, but this time the corpses caught by the Japanese "Ruiyang Maru" have distinct body organs, there is a small head, a long neck, and a long tail, it is not "missing", but it still does not have the skeletal characteristics that whales have.
Therefore, we can conclude that this monster is not a whale carcass, so what is it, and what creatures in the ocean will be more in line with this monster?
Some crew members said that this is likely to be a sea monster - the Loch Ness monster, but the "Miyo Maru" ocean fishing vessel to help the production manager - Yano Michihiko believes that this may also be a creature unknown to the scientific community, with great scientific research value.
So he immediately made a rough survey of the monster's corpse, took pictures with camera equipment that wasn't sensitive at the time, and even removed some fibers from the corpse.
It was also at this time that the captain who heard the news rushed over, and he saw that the crew was not working around this huge monster, and at the same time, this monster was constantly emitting a foul odor due to decay, and it was flowing with disgusting grease, and he could not help but be angry.
In order to prevent the monster from affecting the sea cargo harvested inside the ship, the angry captain asked the crew to throw the monster back into the sea, and even Yano's strong persuasion and advice could not change the captain's decision.
Is it a plesiosaur?
The captain's act of discarding the monster's corpse further obscures the truth about the monster, and later people can only rely on Yano Michihiko's previous three clues - 4 color photos, a sketch of the monster depicted on the scene, and a fiber-like whisker taken off by Yano Michihiko.
Monster sketches
After the incident was transmitted to Japan, it caused a sensation in the country, and scientists have studied and analyzed these three clues, and believe that the monster may be a plesiosaur, which means that the ancient creatures that were originally thought to have been extinct are still hidden in the invisible places of human beings.
But these can only be guessed, because the captain has thrown the original body back into the ocean, and even when scientists learned the news, it was July 20 of the same year, three months after the fishing boat caught the monster, and people have completely lost the opportunity to salvage it again.
The monster has a long neck, and scientists believe that only a plesiosaur that was extinct seventy million years ago could meet the conditions of this monster, so it is most likely a descendant of plesiosaur.
Scientists even compared the skeletal sketches depicted by Michihiko Yano with the fossils of plesiosaurs and found that the skeletal structure of the two was almost very similar, with fin-like limbs, a long tail and neck, and plesiosaurs happened to be reptiles living in the ocean for a while.
In fact, plesiosaurs have lived on Earth since the late Triassic period, and disappeared into the world until the Cretaceous Period, once becoming the top predators in the ocean, ruling the ancient oceans of the Mesozoic period together with another marine life.
People have always thought that the plesiosaur did disappear into the world, but in the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, according to the descriptions of those "witnesses", most of the "water monsters" they saw were the appearance of plesiosaurs, and it is very likely that plesiosaurs have actually been living in Loch Ness, but they have not been found.
In the course of the study, scientists found that the body tissue composition of the monster taken by Michihiko Yano had great similarities with the shark's fins, so some scientists thought that the monster might be a shark that had never been seen before.
They believe that the reason why the shark takes on the appearance of a plesiosaur is actually because the shark itself is a cartilaginous fish, and when it dies, the body tissue begins to decay, and the first to decay is its head and gills.
Therefore, when the crew found the body, the shark's head and gills had fallen out of the ocean, which looked like a long neck and was considered to be the head of the monster. But some scientists have refuted this, arguing that shark meat is white, but monster meat is not white, but red.
At the same time, even the old captain of the crew on the "Ray Projectile" ship did not identify the specific species of the corpse, this is because the shark itself does not have a urinal, but through the osmotic pressure of the sea water to talk about the urine in the body is excreted, so the shark has a unique odor, but all experienced crew members can find out whether it is a shark through the taste. The crew said they didn't smell the shark at all, and the monster wasn't a shark.
In addition, we have mentioned before that sharks are cartilaginous animals, and their bones cannot support the shark to show a relatively intact form in the period of half a year to a year or so after death, and may completely collapse after being hung up, unable to let people hang up to appreciate the analysis.
Therefore, scientists' speculation about this monster has shifted from "shark" to reptile, plesiosaur. Until now, there is still no accurate conclusion in the world about the identity of the monster of the fishing boat "Rui Projectile", whether it is the last plesiosaur of the ball, or a shark, no one can know for the time being.