British Royal Navy Clarifies Position On Sea Monsters
Posted by Justin on June 4th, 2010
There is no official folder sitting in a dusty basement file room marked “Sea Monsters: CLASSIFIED” containing a hundred years worth of reports from parchment to dot matrix print outs about krakens, giants squid and God knows what else lurks under the waves.
At least that’s the official story after a freedom of information request was filed asking the British Royal Navy about a central record database for sea monster sightings.
A marine biologist inquired whether the Ministry of Defence held records about “abnormally large or dangerous sea monsters hundreds of metres under the sea” that had not been revealed to the public.
In reply an official wrote: ”The RN (Royal Navy), and MoD in general, does not maintain any form of central repository of information purely devoted to sea monsters.
“Personnel might be inclined to record unusual sightings in ship’s logs but there is, as far as we know, no actual requirement for them to do so, and it would be beyond the resource constraints of an FOI request to check every line of every RN log book for any such references since 2005.
“However, the RN does invite people to report sightings of marine mammals, and it’s possible this could include unusual sightings.
“These are forwarded to the UK Hydrographic Office at Taunton.”
Tales of insane sea creatures have been around as long as boats, seems like a real missed opportunity.
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June 5th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Interesting post. I have stumbled and twittered this for my friends. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.