Humongous sea serpent dances for the camera

An oarfish, the animal thought to be the inspiration to sea serpent tales, has been seen alive in rare footage.

|
University of Kansas
The oarfish, rendered like a mythical serpent, is seen in an 1860 drawing.

A kite-like animal slips through the water, almost iridescent as it performs what looks to be some underwater choreography: a glide backward, a slow twirl.

This dancer at the lonely bottom of our miles-deep oceans is the Regalecus glesne – or the oarfish, a name that does not quite do justice to its etherealness. And this particular serpent-like fish, caught dancing 200 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, is one of the first of its kind to ever be seen alive.

In the past, the oarfish has turned up as a carcass on beaches or as a dying version of itself bobbing on the ocean surface. No wonder early sailors, weaned on tales of those dead monsters seen floating out at sea, imagined a sea serpent behind every bump and bounce in their ships.

In 1996, US Navy sailors found a 23-foot oarfish beached on the Pacific coast, near San Diego. Like firemen hoisting a hose, they proudly posed with the dead, grey thing. 

This serpent seen glowing near the Thunder Horse oil platform, was filmed from an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) in five videos. The researchers, part of the SERPENT Project, a collaboration between Britain's National Oceanography Centre and the oil and gas industry, released the videos along with their paper, which is published in the current issue of the Journal of Fish Biology.

The collaboration allows marine researchers to use the industry’s ROVs to dip down into the most unknown parts our world to canvas the area for the often alien-looking marine life that ghost the ocean bottom.

At first, scientists watching the footage mistook the animal for an oil pipe being lowered into the water, glittering metallically in the blue-filtered light. But then it started to swim – vertically and backward.

"What was interesting about the fish was its swimming behaviour," said Mark Benfield, in a press release. "It moved by undulating its dorsal fin in waves that propelled it backwards at quite a good speed."

Oarfish are huge – mythical serpent-sized – and estimates put the glittery fish captured in their latest video at between 17 and 22 feet in length, the press release said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Humongous sea serpent dances for the camera
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0611/Humongous-sea-serpent-dances-for-the-camera
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe