Mystery Giant Turtle Photos!
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 15th, 2007
Details are sketchy on these photographs of what is being labeld a Mystery Giant Marine Turtle (or is it a decomposing whale), thusfar, other than they are a record of a body from a recent Pacific Ocean beaching. Look for updates, but, for now, I wanted to rush these photos here, for your attention.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
All I know is the smell must be horrendous! I can’t even imagine how bad it must be.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention. My Dad and I seen a Sea Turtle that same size back in 1989 about 10 miles off the coast of Washington State. We were headed back into port after deep sea bass fishing and this huge thing ahead of our charter boat was slowly bobbing up and down moving towards the shore. Everyone was yelling “Whale! Whale!” Then when the captain came along side the creature everyone was shocked to see it was a gigantic Sea Turtle! I could not believe my eyes, it was every bit as big as the charter boat we were on. I kid you not, this thing looked like a damn dinosaur in the water. This happened right outside the town of Westport Washington.
I can’t believe that such a distinguished group of scientists as yourselves could possibly be so blinded by your own preconceived prejudices as to completely lose your scientific objectivity in this matter!
If you closely examine the burning, cracking and peeling of the outer layer, it should be obvious to everyone that it has been caused by the burning death ray that Godzilla always used when he fought Gamera, the giant flying turtle!
Curse you Godzilla!
Hey Robsquatch…any chance that someone on-board brought a camera and took a picture? I’d love to hear more…I’m trying to imagine what sort of indications were there that you were seeing a giant turtle and not just the back of a whale or who knows what…a steller sea cow.
You know, darn-it. I wish we had a camera too. It was unbelievable! It’s possible the captain took a picture. I can’t remember if I seen anyone on board take one. We were on a Charter Boat through my Dad’s Company on their annual fishing trip. I was a Sophomore in Highschool at the time.
What indications were there was the Captain pulled along side it about 15 feet away, and you could see this Giant Sea Turtle head come up and down open its beaked mouth and gasp for air. I remember the color of its face clearly. The top of its head was a blueish/green, and the sides and bottom of its face was yellow. It had the classical big black baby cute eyes of a Sea Turtle. You could see all 4 flippers paddling hard towards shore, and the shell was as wide and as long as the Charter Boat itself. The head was as big as a Hippo’s head.
Everyone, I mean EVERYONE was just shocked at what we were seeing. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Years ago I lived in Puerto Penasc, Mexico which is located on the Sea of Cortez. I’ve seen many beached whales (decomposing) and that is exactly what this looks like. Any marine biologists called in to look at this thing. I’m SURE this is a whale.
it looks a fried whale
crispy! lol
but it looks creepy nyaaaaaaaaaa!
so creepy! O.o
Maine Crypto is right! I study whales for a living. This is 100%, without any doubt, and absolutely a decomposing humpback whale. The longitudinal lines running down the carcass in the first picture are the ventral grooves or pleates on the throat of the humpback. The humpback has on average 28 and this allows them to balloon their throat out when feeding, as they are a species that gulp huge mouthfuls of small fish and krill when feeding, then strain the small prey from the water using their ballen. The last picture shows a perfect humpback flipper – with a humpy/bumpy apperance or sometimes described as knobby. The flippers are shaped this way as it hydrodynamically reduces drag better than, for example, the straight edge of a plane’s wing. The average length of the humpback whale’s pectoral flippers is 9 to 13 feet, the record length is 16 feet for each flipper. It is not uncommon for a dead humpback to have it’s head hang down in the water column while its bloated belly remains above water. Therefore making the head more available to sharks. At death whales often sink to the bottom, but as their bodies decompose their stomach will fill with gas and carry the whale to the surface like a hot air balloon. It is during this time that they may float hundreds of miles and come ashore. This is not by any stretch of the imagination a turtle. This is a humpback whale. Case closed.
I’m a little late on this, but better late than never. ROBSQUATCH, I find it difficult to believe that guys on a corporate fishing trip didn’t bring cameras. Think the sea got to you. As for these photos, from the fin alone it’s obviously the remains of a Humpback whale. People have some common sense and try to ground in reality.
Someone posting here speculated that there could be unknown giant turtles living in the seas. I very much doubt it, and here’s why: All turtles lay their eggs on land, including the giant leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), which at over a ton is the largest known turtle in the world. If there were any true giant turtles left in the sea such as an Archelon descendant it would have seen by now crawling up a very wide beach to lay its eggs.
And yet, let us not forget that there have indeed been reports of very large turtles spotted at sea. Could they perhaps be exceptionally large (And therefore likely old) representatives of known species, perhaps having grown so large that they are now unable to crawl ashore? Or perhaps only the males attain huge sizes, and the females have thus far gone unnoticed, mistaken for known species?
As much as I’d love to believe that such behemoths are still out there, I have my doubts too, largely for the simple fact that every known species of sea turtle is endangered (Except the Loggerhead, which is considered threatened). The most critically endangered of them appears to be the largest, the Leatherback, for the simple reason that such a large animal needs a large amount of food. When an ecosystem is disrupted, food supplies become unreliable or limited, and time and again the first to fall are either those organisms that have specialized in one food source (Say, Red Knots feeding off of Horseshoe Crab eggs in the Delaware Bay, which probably have less than 5 years before they become extinct because of the Horseshoe Crab harvest) or those that require the most food (Like said Leatherbacks). The Leatherbacks saving grace seems to be their natural wanderlust, moving from Atlantic to Pacific in search of whatever it can find. Can you imagine the food requirements for a 40-foot-long sea turtle, such as the one sighted off of Newfoundland in 1883?
Here’s the sighting, as reported by Scientific American, 48:292,1883.
“Captain Augustus G. Hall and the crew of the schooner Annie L. Hall vouch for the following:
On March 30, while on the Grand Bank, in latitude 40 10′, longitude 33, they discovered an immense live trunk turtle, which was at first thought to be a vessel bottom up. The schooner passed within twenty-five feet of the monster, and those on board had ample opportunity to estimate its dimensions by a comparison with the length of the schooner. The turtle was at least 40 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 30 feet from the apex of the back to the bottom of the under shell. The flippers were 20 feet long. It was not deemed advisable to attempt its capture. ”
So, like I said, sightings have occurred (Some more recent, too), but as much as I’d love to see one, the food requirements of such a beast suggest that if any did exist, they are either extinct, or those of existing species are no longer able to attain such a size. I would very much like to be proven wrong, though.
looks to me like a giant slug or a whale
if they found an eye somewhere i would believe ‘giant turtle’ but until then not gonna happen
(p.s. I wasnt serious about giant slug)
It actually does look very much like a Giant Soft-Shelled turtle, also known as Cantor’s giant turtle. They are known for having dark blubbery skin (no shell), fin-like “flippers” and a tan underbelly, much like what is seen above. Native to Vietnam and Thailand, the last confirmed sighting was in Cambodia in 2003.
That being said, Cantor’s turtles are thought to grow to a maximum of about 6 feet in length, the thing above is giant.
Read more here.