In 194l, a South American filmmaker attempted to track down a strange half man / half fish some Amazon Indians claimed to have seen. They described the creature as human in shape, but with scaly fish-like skin and webbed hands and feet. An expedition went looking for the creature, but never returned. Cameras belonging to the expedition were recovered and developed film revealed a gruesome looking seven-foot man-fish walking erect. How long it took the film to reach the US is unclear, but after viewing it producer William Alland---with encouragement from Orson Welles---went to work on a project that eventually became Universal Pictures' horror classic, "Creature From the Black Lagoon."

Hard to believe? The Amazon is home to 30-foot snakes, rats as big as sheep, and anteaters as strong as bears. Stone-age Indian tribes live there. And since '94, there have been sightings of a strange creature described as reptilian, but with enormous eyes, three-fingered claws, and strong hind legs enabling it to walk erect. Scientists say no such creature exists, but eyewitnesses claim the thing has killed and eaten many animals.

In Indonesia, an expedition into an isolated jungle turned up dozens of new species of frogs, honey-eating birds, butterflies, and flowers.  Large mammals that had been hunted to near extinction were found, including golden kangaroos and long-beaked egg-laying creatures. . .

 

. . . and this baby!


Now would you like to read a story that could give you nightmares?

You wouldn't?   Well, I'll tell it anyway:

It happened to a scuba diver off the coast of Tasmania and to three off Augusta, Sicily:  A monstrous shark raised up out of the ocean and swallowed them.

In the waters off South Australia, Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, encountered a shark as big as a bus.

Could our fear of sharks that big be the reason we have seen less than five per-cent of our planet's oceans and actually visited less than five per-cent of that five per-cent?

The first law of sharks, Benchley said, is to forget all the laws about sharks.  If we know so little about our oceans, it follows that we know little about creatures that are difficult to track and impossible to count.

We know this:  Great whites tend to stay in deep water.  The more aggressive tiger sharks and bull sharks move closer to our shores.

Bull sharks, like those found off the Gulf Coast of Florida, have been known to attack swimmers in two feet of water.
 

                So I'll not man your boats again
               Though you drown me in the sea
           For I tell you, sir, those fish can think
                      As good as you or me.

                          --- Ken Graydon

 

 

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