California “Sea-Ape”?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 8th, 2007
A California Mermaid – The account of the voyage of Hernando Grijalva to the Gulf coast of Lower California, (1823,) describes a mermaid which Grijalva professed to have seen. The object[,] when seen near by, resembled nothing more than a monkey. It leaped out of the water and jumped back again, with its hands moving very quickly, and then looked us in the face; floating in the water as in an attude [sic] of sitting, until a bird disturbed it, when it dived down again and came up on a short distance from us; we saw it for more than an hour. Its lively appearance and strange manner almost made us believe we had seen an apparition of the Blessed Virgin, (Our Lady,) for we saw it on all sides. At this place we also saw in the water great numbers of live snakes of bright colors, and looking like rattlesnakes.
The fish we describe is of the resemblance of the figure: with a dog’s head and eyes, arms like a man, breast and body like a woman, with a long tail like a fish and divided at the end like a swallow’s tail; but we could not make out whether it had scales or not, though it appeared to be covered with scales on its lower part. Its color was like that of the porpoise. The arms and hands it showed well when we saw it jump into the air out of the sea. Grijalva gives three outline figures of this animal in his voyage, of which the compiler of this collection of documents says: “That the figure of this impression we have faithfully copied, and reduced to one-third of the original.” It must have been of the size of a sea otter when seen in the otter, so we judge.
This account may seem to doubters a sea yarn; but it is confirmed by Padre Clavijero, in his 1790 history of Lower California, and on the Gulf. Such an animal would be a prize to any museum in Europe or America. It seems, however, that it is a rare animal even in Lower California.The Columbia [Pennsylvania] Spy, March 7, 1863
For more on reports of historical “Sea Apes,” see pages xi, 37, and 64-65, in The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (NY: Anomalist Books, 2006).
Thanks for this historical item from Jerome Clark.
Thank you all for a good 2007 initial release of MA7. It still needs your purchases to keep this going. Appreciation.
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.
I think the whole aquatic ape theory is a pretty sound one, it would certainly explain ancient tales of ‘mermaids’ (for want of a better word) better than many of the modern day proposed species. I don’t care how long someone had been at sea, some of the animals that have been offered as an explanation simply cannot be associated with the descriptions and would take some severely ill people to think of them as ‘sirens of the deep’.
Yea, I always hate when people say that those who saw ‘mermaids’ probably were actually seeing a manatee.
No matter how drunk or seasick someone is- I cannot see a manatee (which, IMO, is an unattractive, blobbish looking animal lol) being mistaken as humanoid and beautiful.
Every body loves sea-monkeys. I have to admit, I have always been a little skeptical about “aquatic apes”. This account gives the creature in question the face of a “dog” not human. I have often wondered if the sightings of “frog-men” (pugwis, thetis lake creatures, green eye, etc..) are actually some form of surviving dinosaurs. We have very littlle idea about the actual appearance of most dinosaurs and may not have scratched the surface when it comes to differing species.
hey loren very informative new article about a california sea ape very interesting. updates as they occur. thanks bill 🙂
CrimsonFox79 said:
“No matter how drunk or seasick someone is- I cannot see a manatee (which, IMO, is an unattractive, blobbish looking animal lol) being mistaken as humanoid and beautiful.”
I agree that a manatee is rather rotund and unattractive to today’s eyes, but who nowadays thinks the Mona Lisa is the most beautiful woman in the world? Or even just a beautiful woman, period? She’s not exactly Jessica Alba or Halle Berry. The standard of beauty changes over time. Also, I can’t say for how long the person who witnessed the creature had been at sea, but when men are distanced from women for unnaturally long stretches of time, other men start to look good (so I’ve been told). Maybe this guy was just lovesick.
I’ve always been skeptical about the “sea ape”. I try to keep an open mind, but every time I read a story like this I keep thinking that the next thing that happened was someone saying. “Okay, let’s have another pint of rum and you tell me a story.”
Thanks for that. I don’t think I heard this one before. It is, of course is very reminiscent of Georg Steller’s 1741 sighting in Alaskan waters. The thought of a southern population analogous to the relationship of Steller Sea Lions and California Sea Lions is intriguing.
“Size of a sea-otter”;
“lively”;
like a “monkey”
….Hmmm….
Sounds just like an otter to me, minus the “breast and body like a woman” part.
Okay…first…I was wondering about Stellar’s Sea cow, but obviously size is not appropriate…still, the dog’s head and eyes makes me think it must have been mammal…maybe some sort of seal kind of thing…except the part about seeing the arms and hands well…and the part about it having scales on the lower half…
Like I said in an earlier post…past evolutions of Atlantis…
On a more serious note, man has spread across every environment on the planet…it is possible (albeit a long shot) that something weird has evolved along…
I have always been fascinated with the mermaid accounts, but just have never been able to quite get my mind around it to accept the possibility…I am a land lubber, and have not had nearly enough experience with the sea…on the other hand, this year alone we have had video footage and catch-age of a giant squid…and on underwatertimes.com, some diver got footage of a weird 7-10 long worm along the bottom of the sea…so I can’t say one hundred percent that there is no way there is a mermaid thing out there.
And I too am tired of the drunken sailor motif…for the record…most alcohols (trust me, I know) do not cause you to hallucinate…they skew vision, clarity, etc. but unless most of our sailors in history were drinking mezcal or some other oddball hallucinagenic drinks, just getting plowed isn’t going to make you see mermaids and sea serpents and krakens…
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me…
I’ve seen something similar about maybe 300 feet off the coast of Newport Beach,Ca.
A lot of historians and others have interpreted Georg Steller’s sighting as a sea otter, though this is almost as hard to believe as the existence of a sea-ape. Steller described the creature in great detail and he was a sober and observant naturalist long before scientific descriptions of natural history was widespread.
The description of the creatures face reads like a description of a fur-seal with its long “fu-man-chu” whiskers.
If these “sea apes” were creatures of the kelp and sea grasses and relatively near to shore, it would explain the scarcity of sightings back during the days of sail since sailors, contrary to common notions, did not creep along the coastlines within safe sight of land. Wind-sailors know that it is when one is close to shore inshallow waters that one is in potentially deep trouble from being caught in the lea of the land, without steering, in strange currents and close to reefs, shoals, islands and other obstructions.
Kamoeba- Comparing a manatee to Mona Lisa? Pushing it a bit, don’t you think? :)I would say that no matter what era you are talking about or how long someone had been at sea, by any human concept of beauty, the manatee would not be seen to be an attractive creature that would capture the heart of sailors. As for alcohol, well, I think it can’t cause hallucinations but it can definately skew perceptions of what one is seeing. It can certainly make a manatee seem more attractive, I guess. Works for humans. 🙂 I can definately see giant squid truning into Kraken, or other mundane animals turning into something else under the alcohol influenced observations of a sailor. Also, alcohol may not have caused old sailors to hallucinate, but rather concoct some oddball drunken stories. I do not underestimate the power of hard drinking to alter perception of what one is seeing or cause one to fabricate tales.
Or then again, maybe there just really are sea serpents annd mermaids out there and their numbers have somewhat reduced in modern times. Some of them may have become extinct before having ever been discovered for all we know.
Mystery Man…I’d tend to agree with your last point. A lot, and I mean a whole LOT, of species were exterpated prior to their being documented by naturalists with anything like a modern understanding of biology. Take into consideration what an activity like hunting was for people, whether in Pennsylvania or Mongolia. It was rarely a guy alone with a bow and arrow. It was tribes of men, women and children with noisemakers and weapons surrounding as large a valley as they could surround and killing everything insides. The carnage on the oceans was less observable but just as devestating and maybe more so.
Dogu4- Yes, and it’s not even the affects of fishing that causes havoc to ocean ecosystems. Marine ecosystems and aquatic habitats tend to be sensitive to the affects of pollution, destruction of coral, and other man made threats. I do not believe the full effects of our pollution, global warming, and overfishing have been seen yet and sometimes the results can be unforseen and unpredictable. I doubt it was known just how profoundly ocean warming would decimate coral species, or how chemicals in the water of some lakes could cause blooms in the population of invasive species. Who would have thought that the limiting of river run off into the Salton Sea of California would have caused such dramatic spikes in salinity which would in turn wipe out the population of fish such as the corvina (a type of sport fish) ?
I have no doubt that there is every possibility that a plethora of ocean going and aquatic species undocumented by science have dissappeared since the effects of these destructive factors travel faster and farther than any scientific expedition. I am sure that even very large species such as the proposed mermaid and sea serpents could have met their demise. All it takes is for one species to dissappear in order to have a negative effect upon the entire ecosystem.
Hey Mystery Man; Always appreciate your informed and well considered input.
Salton Sea, of course, is a tale of environmental devastation that goes well beyond its mis-management for wildlife. Its very existence is a landmark in questionable decision-making ability and engineering’s inability to completely anticipate the impacts of its attempt to improve on nature and is a loud siren calling whenever and wherever new “water making the desert bloom” development schemes are brought up by visionaries who seem unable to see beyond the “bottom line”.
Oh, and I might have mentioned it before but to really get a feel of what an unbroken wilderness such as North America’s prior to the introduction of European’s exploitation, you really should pick up a copy of Farley Mowat’s “Sea of Slaughter”. What we see as wild nature these days on postage stamp sized chunks of land no developer wanted is a poor representation of what was here…or so we think since so much information has already been lost.
FYI, TED Conference has just endowed EOWilson’s Encyclopedia of Life…which any bio type must find interesting.
Dogu4- Your input is always appreciated as well. The ironic thing about the Salton Sea is that although its very creation was essentially an accident caused by the collapse of a levy on the Colorado River, it has become the surrogate stopover for hundreds of thousands of migrating birds on the Pacific Flyway who have lost their original marshland habitats. So in a way, the creation of the Salton sea was a godsend for these birds and created a new habitat even as the old ones were destroyed.
Most of the Salton Sea’s problems nowadays stem from pollution and the diverging of rivers for irrigation purposes, which restricts freshwater input and that has caused increased salinity levels in the inland sea to the point where it is 25 percent saltier than the ocean nowadays. It has also caused the sea to shrink. This salinity has caused the disappearance of fish such as the corvina, the sargo, and the croaker. As a result, the fish eating birds that stop there such as the brown pelican may stop coming there. If that happens, the birds will have nowhere else to go, which will affect the whole area since one of the main tourist draws is bird watching.
There is a bit of hope, though. The state resources agency is apparently drawing up a plan to try and save the sea. This will apparently entail creating a less salty sea one sixth of its current size with ponds for habitat restoration and 70 miles of canals and barriers. Price tag- $6 billion. Small price to pay for maintaining this remarkable man made habitat, if you ask me. I definately think that some of the mismanagement of these areas has its root in people not being able to see beyong the bottom line and not predicting the consequences of certain actions. Hopefully, the disaster awaiting the Salton Sea can be averted.
I haven’t read “Sea of Slaughter”, but it sounds intriguing. If I can find a copy over here in Japan, I will pick it up. It is interesting that you mention the Encyclopedia of Life, as it is one project that I am very excited about. Looks set to outdo the Mexican Conabio compilation of 700,000 species by a long shot. It is an amazing undertaking, 1.8 million species, with pics, videos, and maps to boot! I’m geeking about it already. 🙂 The fact that so many respectable institutions are collaborating on it is incredible enough, not to mention the fact that it will be free for all to peruse. It will be an amazing leap in how science is done and how information will be accessed and shared, and increase the flow of information between different fields of science. A good quote I read about it described it as improving the democracy of science. To bad it will take 10 years to compile.
kamoeba, like Mystery_man said, I doubt that whatever era you live in- nor what your personal perception of a beautiful human being is- a grayish, bald, blobby, flippered manatee does not resemble a human being in any way.
The Mona Lisa, while she wouldn’t make today’s ‘plastic-surgery’ magazine covers, she still is obviously a human woman no matter what your tastes are.
Manatees have absolutely no resemblance to humans or anything humanoid at all. Maybe if your vision is impaired enough from alcohol you can mistake a manatee as a hybrid of a fish and a bulldog or pug. But not a human.
Also, no matter what era you are in, tastes in what is attractive and not vary from person to person.
Me and my female friends each have totally different tastes in what we find attractive in a guy. And my male friends all have different views on what a beautiful woman is. So there is never a worldwide agreement on beauty.
But there will always be a pretty consistent agreement on what looks like a human or not 🙂
Hey, I’m saying if a guy is at sea long enough, even the least attractive creature looks like it could be a fun partner for romance (even other guys). I also always wondered how men at sea could mistake something we think of as ugly for something we think of as pretty. I think if you look at people in the past, they weren’t up to our standards of who or what is pretty. I used the Mona Lisa as an example because I’ve never heard one person say that she’s attractive, but I’ve heard plenty of guys comment on how homely she is. Just look at anyone’s grandparents’ wedding photos sometime and you’ll wonder just how any of us ever got spawned.
If you have been at sea for quite sometime and are deprived of female company even an ugly walrus would look good.
Granted, loneliness can alter one’s perceptions of beauty, with other humans perhaps. No matter what the standard of beauty, at least Mona Lisa and so on were clearly human, so we can compare human beauty but this is different than talking about a manatee. I can see being at sea causing someone to fancy other guys or a woman someone would not normally find attractive, but I don’t know about people starting to fancy animals or large non human looking manatees swimming around in the ocean. My guess is they would turn to their crewmates first before lusting after a manatee. I also don’t buy that they would be lonely enough for romantic companionship that they would start to think they saw humans were there weren’t any. Is this sort of thing documented by modern day sailors? Do they look over the side of the boat and think “That sea lion is hot.”? The old tales tell of beautiful mermaids that could seduce sailors, and mermaids are always represented as being gorgeous in artistic representations. I find it hard to believe that any amount of alcohol and being out at sea could turn a manatee into that nor could it turn someone to thinking that an obviously non human creature is in fact a beautiful human looking maiden.
I also haven’t seen any paintings or photos of anyone from any era where they looked even vaguely like a manatee so I don’t think the “manatee look” was ever in! 🙂
Personally, I’d like a more up to date sighting or even a fuzzy picture to pop up before I start putting credit into the mermaid theory. History has taught us many times that often times a person’s knowledge of the world will affect how that person rationalizes an oddity or unknown entity. If it was indeed a mer-thingie or aquatic ape, then why havn’t there been more credible sightings recently? They sure sound playful enough to pop in and say hello every once in a while 😛 The ecological disaster scenario could rationalize the lack of recent publicized sightings, but I’d imagine we’d be able to at least find skeletal remains of some simian-fish hybrid or whatever since this documented sighting only occured less than 200 years ago.