It’s that time again, ladies and gentlemen: another mysterious sea creature, or part of one, has washed up somewhere and thoughts as to what it could be are cascading across the Web. Before even seeing the footage or photographs, we had already bet that it’s a decaying humpback whale because, well, it always is. So what’s the story this time around?
First reported by First Coast News, the new unidentified mass was found on a beach within the Wolf Island National Wildlife Refuge, in southern Georgia. It’s reported that a man out on a boat with his son “found his own version of the Loch Ness Monster”, something that famously hasn’t been found and definitely doesn’t exist.
The network notes that the comparison stems from the tales of a local legendary creature named Altamaha-ha. Named after the river in which it is said to live, artwork of it seems to suggest it resembles a plesiosaur of some sort, one of an order of large carnivorous marine reptiles that lived during the reign of the dinosaurs.
This new blob definitely isn’t Altamaha-ha, because his/her ilk died out during the asteroid-driven coup de grace that brought the dinosaurian monarchs crashing down. Incidentally, it’s not clear that any plesiosaurs occupied rivers, and instead were exclusively marine marauders.
In fact, at first, the boating pair of humans suspected it might be a dead seal, one that was being furiously pecked at by a sizeable heron – but judging by the footage, it looks like a really rubbish model of a ludicrously tiny plesiosaur.
Considering that Altamaha-ha, or “Alty/Altie” as it is affectionately known by the locals, is often used to attract people to the area, there’s a good chance that this is a hoax. That’s certainly better than a dead local legend or a pungent, rotting seal corpse, anyway.
Apparently, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is looking into it, but in the meantime, the former US Fish and Wildlife Service director, Daniel Ashe, told one outlet that it could be a decomposing basking shark.
We’ll let you know if any more updates come in or the mystery is solved, but don’t expect to have your mind blown.
