Real Sea Monsters

[Vorput]

...I'm never going swimming again!

 

[Kunimatyu]

The ones at the bottom of the page he couldn't identify:

Goblin shark
Anglerfish sp.
"Dumbo" octopus
Anglerfish sp.

 

[frankthedm]

What does this thing's form remind me of?

The frilled shark looks like a Hybrid of shark and snake, heavy on the venom glands.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

...I'm never going swimming again!

Don't be such a baby. It's just a prehistoric beast. It just looks fearsome, it's probably gentle as a baby kitten. Besides, they're quite rare - there are no records of any human who told anyone about being attacked by one thing, and no half-eaten corpses have been identified as victims of that thing. That means they're either quite rare, or don't leave survivors and eath humans whole.

 

[Beowolf]

thanks for finding the hagfish Aeolius, i saw this link posted on another site and a wondered why they didn't have that one. i just wanted to see one again cause back in the 90's my brother was working on a fishing vessel and they brought up one. back then they were still considered long extinct or at least dying out. i guess they still are though.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Wow thats cool. and that pic is great I can just imagine that swimming towards me in a nightmare! (I love living fossils)
So is it missing a dorsal fin or doesn't it have one?

Oh a good to see you're back Aeolius, we've been missing your fishy contributions

Not a fair example though - that specimen is blind, crippled, and dying - the film is not of a frilled shark swimming, but a crippled frilled shark swimming. It was dragged up from a depth of between 50M and 1500M - with each 10M being a full atmosphere of pressure. The poor thing is ruptured inside and out.

Sea creatures can include the angelic as well -

This is a sea slug.

There are some amazing looking jellyfish out there as well.

As for hagfish... I used to have a recipe for using hagfish slime as a replacement for egg whites. I never built up any urge to try it though.

*EDIT* Found the slime/eggs recipe. and added a link. Bon appetit!

The Auld Grump

 

[RavinRay]

Here's a favorite of mine, being a paleontologist: BBC's Sea Monsters.

Elasmosaurus is in Monster Manual, Megalodon is in Monster Manual II, Archelon and Mosasaurus are in Stormwrack, Cymbospondylus is a primitive ichthyosaur but is different than the one in Stormwrack, Basilosaurus is in Frostburn.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

A healthier, happier picture of a frilled shark -

The Auld Grump

 

[Aeolius]

It was dragged up from a depth of between 50M and 1500M - with each 10M being a full atmosphere of pressure. The poor thing is ruptured inside and out.

It seemed unclear, from the article, whether they encountered it in the shallows or not. Perhaps it was simply dying; heading into the shallows to do so.

A healthier, happier picture of a frilled shark

Except that it has apparently been targeted by the Terminator.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, being an arachnophobe, I feel compelled to add Sea Spiders to the long list of sea creatures that I don't want to ever encounter. And yeah, I know they're not actually arachnids. Close enough for me...

"They will often insert their proboscis, a long appendage used for digestion and sucking food into its gut, into a sea anemone and suck out nourishment. The sea anemone, large in comparison to its predator, almost always survives this ordeal."

Ick....