Darren Naish´s review of a new book on cryptozoology, "A Natural History of Sea Serpents" by Adrian Shine. It turns out that Shine is the guy who looks like Charles Darwin featured in a relatively recent skeptical Loch Ness documentary! "Monster: The Mystery of Loch Ness", to be exact. In his book, Shine makes a global sweep, questioning essentially all reports of sea serpents as he goes (or sails) along.
Two themes are prominent, if not in the book then at least in Naish´s review of it. The first is misidentification. Many people simply don´t know how animals appear in the wild - certainly not at sea - so the idea that somebody can just identify, say, an oarfish is naïve at best.
Another equally large problem is misreporting. Many "classical" reports (including the illustrations) turn out to be sensationalized if the original eyewitness accounts are still available (compare the Mothman saga). This in turn primes future observers to "see" the monsters as depicted in the media - not as they actually appeared to the earliest eyewitnesses. Shine apparently manages to convincingly propose known animals as explanations to many seemingly unsolvable cases.
No surprises here, in other words. I admit that I´m more skeptical to cryptozoology (again) than I was, say, ten years ago. Maybe the real romance of natural history are the billions of critters already known...
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