The Sea Monster of Hook Island

In 1964, Le Serrec and family with Henk de Jong, his Australian friend spend three months on one of the Whitsunday Islands called Hook Island, off the coast of the Australian state of Queensland. On December 12th 1964, when they were all crossing Stonehaven Bay, Le Serrec’s wife spotted a mysterious object on the lagoon floor. It proved to be a gigantic tadpole-like creature, estimated at about 30 feet long. They took several still photos, gradually moving closer. Then Le Serrec and de Jong plucked up the courage to approach it underwater in order to film it. Apparently, it's larger than their thought, with its estimated length around 75-80 feet. At first they thought it might be dead because it doesn’t move, but just as Le Serrec began the filming, the creature opened its mouth and made movements toward them. They returned to the boat, and by this time the creature had moved off.

Hook Island Sea Monster

They also noticed a large pale region interpreted as a wound was visible on the right side of the tail, and it was suggested that this (maybe caused by a ship’s propeller) had caused the animal to take rest and refuge in the shallow bay. The eyes, located on the top of the head and well away from the front of the snout, were pale and possessed slit-shaped pupils. Mostly black in colour, the animal had brown transverse stripes and its skin was smooth in texture. It possessed no fins nor spines of any kind and they didn’t see teeth inside the white mouth.

However, few years later according to Heuvelmans report in 1968, he said that Le Serrec was an untrustworthy man, even Ivan Sanderson (a biologist and an expert in cryptozoology) had been contacted about the story in February 1965 (Le Serrec had initially approached the American media in order to get the best price for the images) and had concluded that the object might be either a plastic bag used by the US Navy ‘for experiments in towing petrol’. He later suggested that the creature might be a giant synbranchid, or swamp eel.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_Island;
http://coolinterestingstuff.com/unexplained-pictures-the-hook-island-sea-monster;
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/07/07/hook-island-monster-tadpole/;
http://forgetomori.com/2010/fortean/le-serrecs-sea-serpent-photos/

Pic Source:
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/wp-content/blogs.dir/471/files/2012/04/i-26d4cee222a5f9a2bd06ec28c0a5e654-le%20serrec%20variant.jpg