Tales of something strange lurking in Monterey Bay have been around since at least the 1900s, when sailors and fisherman in the area began to make sightings of what would eventually be called “Bobo,” or “The Old Man of the Sea,” which is most often described as a massive seal-like creature with a strikingly simian or human looking face. The Monster of Monterey is likely to be a species of plesiosaur. Plesiosaurs are marine reptiles with long necks, four powerful flippers, and short tails. They were believed to have gone extinct 65 million years ago, but the carcassses found in 1925 and 1977 resemble the long lost species. Plesiosaurs were believed to be fish eaters, but often lurked just beneath the surface waiting for prey.
One of the earliest accounts of this creature or something like it was made in 1922 by a fisherman named Sal Colletto, who was aboard a 45-foot sardine fishing rig, the Dante Alighieri, near Monterey Bay some distance off a place called Moss Landing when he noticed something odd bobbing about out in the water that he at first took to be a piece of debris or possibly even a man floating in the ocean. As he approached to investigate, Colletto claimed that he could see that it was no hunk of floating garbage or man, but rather a mysterious marine creature with a head the size of a “50-gallon barrel,” a duck bill, and a bulging forehead.
In 1925 at Moore's Beach just north of Santa Cuz a strange creature washed up on the rocks, a creature washed ashore unlike any seen before. Newspaper accounts of the day say the decreased monster was 34 feet long. It's neck alone was 12 feet from top to bottom. Witness said the creature appeared to have been made out of spare parts, with elephant-like legs (complete with ivory toenails), a whale-like tail and a head like a duck.
In 1977, a Japanese trawler hooks the rotting carcass of a bizzare animal. Tests on the carcass couldn't identify the beast. Many believe it is a Plesiosaur in Monterey Bay, but no evidence has ever been found.
There have been many possible explanations for what The Old man of the Sea could have been, such as an elephant seal, an oversized salmon, a rare deep-sea oarfish, which also happens to have a red mane reminiscent of some of the reports, some out of place sea animal, or even just a piece of misidentified garbage, but none of them really perfectly match up to what any of the reports describe.
A team of scientists from the California Academy of Sciences did its own investigation and theorized that the monster's hideous features were the natural result of decomposition. They claimed that the monster of Moore's Beach was a specimen of Berardius bairdi, Baird's beaked whale. The Bairds are the largest of the family of beaked whales. They inhabit the northern range of the Pacific Rim and are known to be among the deepest-diving whales.
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