Schwärmerei

 

Well, probably not...

Possible ecologies

 

I actually assumed that marine cryptids are almost as implausible as terrestrial ones, but ChatGPT disagrees and thinks that at least in principle they are more likely. 

Explain why marine cryptids are more plausible than terrestrial ones.

Marine cryptids are more plausible than terrestrial ones not because the ocean is magical, but because physics, ecology, and sampling bias work very differently in water than on land. When scientists say this, they’re making a sober inference about where ignorance can realistically persist.

Here’s the reasoning, step by step.

---

1. The ocean is genuinely under-sampled

This is the single biggest factor.

• ~71% of Earth’s surface is ocean

• >80% of the ocean is unexplored at fine resolution

• Most of the deep sea has:

  • Never been directly observed

  • Never been biologically sampled

  • Never been filmed continuously

By contrast:

• Virtually all terrestrial biomes have been repeatedly surveyed

• Large land animals are constantly encountered

Ignorance is plausible where observation is sparse.

---

2. Water hides bodies better than land

On land:

• Bodies persist as bones and teeth

• Scavengers scatter remains slowly

• Skeletons are often found decades later

In the ocean:

• Bodies sink

• Pressure, scavengers, and microbes destroy remains rapidly

• Bones dissolve faster in deep, cold, acidic water

• Carcasses are consumed within days to weeks

This means:

A large marine animal can die without leaving recoverable remains.

That alone changes the evidential calculus.

---

3. Marine food webs can support large, sparse animals

The ocean supports:

• Enormous biomass at lower trophic levels

• Wide-ranging predators with very low population densities

• Long-distance migratory behavior

Examples:

• Blue whales: global range, rarely seen

• Giant squid: known almost entirely from fragments until recently

• Beaked whales: multiple species discovered in the last few decades

On land:

• Large mammals require:

  • Dense, localized populations

  • Stable territories

  • Predictable feeding zones

Which are easy to detect.

---

4. Size scales differently in water

Water fundamentally changes biomechanics:

• Buoyancy supports mass

• No need for load-bearing limbs

• Gigantism is energetically cheaper

This is why:

• The largest animals in Earth’s history are marine

• Many deep-sea species are much larger than their shallow-water relatives

A “giant unknown thing” is biomechanically plausible in water, not on land.

---

5. Detection technology is limited and selective

Marine detection relies on:

• Sonar (low resolution for biology)

• Trawls (sparse, destructive, biased)

• Remote cameras (tiny windows of time)

Most ocean animals:

• Are never caught

• Are never photographed

• Are known from indirect traces

Terrestrial detection:

• Trail cams

• Roads

• Satellites

• Human density

• Hunters

If a large land animal exists, we will get a clear photo or body.

---

6. History favors marine surprises

Real examples once considered “cryptids”:

• Giant squid (Architeuthis): known from myths → beaks → carcasses → video

• Megamouth shark (1976): large, slow, near surface

• Living coelacanth (1938)

• Beaked whales: new species discovered via bones/DNA

These follow a consistent pattern:

physical evidence first, live observation later.

Marine cryptids sometimes meet this standard. Terrestrial ones don’t.

---

7. What kinds of marine cryptids are actually plausible

More plausible

• Deep-sea invertebrates

• Rare sharks or rays

• Elusive cetaceans

• Large gelatinous organisms

• Deep pelagic animals with wide ranges

Much less plausible

• Humanoid sea beings

• Intelligent, tool-using marine species hiding from humanity

• Enormous surface-dwelling animals near coasts

Plausibility ≠ license for fantasy.

---

8. Why “lake monsters” mostly fail

Even water has limits.

Lakes:

• Are small

• Have limited biomass

• Are heavily monitored

This is why:

• Loch Ness monster fails ecological tests

• Lake cryptids are generally implausible

The open ocean is the real ignorance zone.

---

Bottom line

Marine cryptids are more plausible because the ocean erases evidence, limits observation, supports sparse large animals, and has a proven history of surprises.

Terrestrial ecosystems do not.

This doesn’t mean famous cryptids are real — it means where uncertainty legitimately remains.

---

If you want, I can:

• Rank famous cryptids by ecological plausibility

• Explain why humanoid cryptids are almost certainly mythic

• Compare cryptids to legitimate “unknown unknowns” in biology

• Tie this into philosophy of scientific ignorance (what kinds of unknowns are allowed)

Just say the direction.

Questing Beast

A review of "MonsterQuest: Giant Squid Found", an episode of the extremely boring TV series "MonsterQuest".

Another episode of “MonsterQuest”. This time Doug Hajicek and his roundtable are trying to find a squid the size of a school bus. A veritable kraken! They believe they have succeeded. The sceptics have remained sceptical. Could be interesting for squid aficionados, marine buffs or Bigfooters tired of monsters on dry land, but personally, I'm not a very big fan of this slow-paced, somewhat boring series. Only two stars. And yes, I may be subjective.

It even smells old

This is probably the most bizarre book I've ever seen or handled. "The Cephalopoda of the Plankton Expedition" by Georg Johann Pfeffer is a 1993 English translation of a 1912 German monograph, based on the findings of the 1889 Plankton expedition.

I admit that I never heard of this particular expedition before, but apparently it was quite important for its day (and no, I'm not being flippant). Many prominent German zoologists studied the specimens from this research exploration of the world's oceans. Pfeffer himself was a kind of Over-authority on pretty much every branch of the animal kingdom, but he is mostly associated with work on mollusks.

Pfeffer's most famous monograph dealt with the oegopsid cephalopods caught by the Plankton expedition. In plain English, the man had a scientific crush on squids. For some reason, this mammoth work - previously only available in German - has been translated to English through grants made available by the National Science Foundation. I admit that I found the book fascinating. This is the kind of very old fashioned book that you could still find in Swedish libraries (including school libraries) about 30 years ago. The text is incredibly detailed, the few pictures are black-and-white photos, and the book exhumes a really strange smell. Weirdly, this modern edition from 1992 also smells "old", like a book from...well, 1912 perhaps? I even had to wash my hands after handling it. I'm either going insane, or...the book is deliberately printed on a special kind of paper to give it an old "feel".

Obviously, this isn't a book for the layman or general reader, and even squid enthusiasts would be hard-pressed to read it from cover to cover. The squids on the photo plates do look bizarre and somewhat scary even in black-and-white, but that's about it. "The Cephalopoda of the Plankton Expedition" is a reference work for those aspiring to become like Pfeffer. Incidentally, the book is called "volume 2", although no volume 1 seems to exist in English. Presumably, the original work was even larger! Like an Architheutis, perhaps?

Now, I have to go and wash my hands again. Squid ink?

Only for royalists?

A review of "Cephalopods from the Scientific Expeditions of Prince Albert I of Monaco" 

I admit that I only glanced through this obscure book very quickly. It's another Smithsonian institution special. The book is a translation of a part of a more extensive work, written by Albert I, the prince of Monaco. Apparently, the prince was a keen supporter of scientific endeavors and something of a scientist himself. This particular work deals with cephalopods (squids) caught during several scientific expeditions. It only contains a few plates, and the text seems to deal mostly with the caught specimens, rather than the species to which they belong. Sometimes, the poor squids were caught without a head or tentacles! This work is obviously of interest only to very specialized researchers, although a crazy royalist admirer of the autocratic prince Albert might perhaps also find it interesting as a collectors' item.