Online UFO and alien hunters claim to have spotted the legendary Kraken — the mythical sailors’ sea monster from Nordic mythology — on Google Earth. The claim that a massive sea monster had been spotted on Google Earth, breaking to the surface and causing “a massive disturbance” as it splashed in the cold waters of the Antarctic Ocean, first emerged online in April this year.
Images of the alleged sea monster spotted causing a disturbance in Antarctic waters at Google coordinates 63° 2’56.73″S 60°57’32.38″W, were first uploaded to YouTube on April 29, 2016, by user Wowforreeel, under the title, “Massive Unknown creature near Antarctica?”
“No idea what this is but it’s circulating in a few places right now,” the YouTuber user Wowforreeel wrote at the time. “[But] it made me think of a Plesiosaur fin.”
“That’s one massive disturbance in the ocean down there and who knows what really caused it.”
“Maybe now we know the source of The Bloop!” he concluded.
The alleged discovery attracted attention in UFO, alien and paranormal circles. It sparked speculative discussion, with enthusiasts putting forward diverse suggestions, ranging from the fantastic, such as the mythical sea monster Cthulhu and Godzilla’s tail, to more mundane possibilities, such as a gigantic squid and a bubbling underwater volcano.
A few suggested it could have been a remnant of the ancient dinosaurs, such as the Plesiosaur, a predatory marine dinosaur that lived in the oceans more than 200 million years ago.
Some believe that the Loch Ness monster could be a Plesiosaur.
A few debaters appeared certain that the alleged mystery sea creature responsible for the mysterious underwater ultra-low frequency sound — The Bloop — first heard on hydrophones across the Pacific by marine experts in 1997, may have been found.
But the debate petered out in April without a consensus being reached.
UFO blogger Scott Waring reignited the controversy in a June 15 post to his UFO Sightings Daily blog. The UFO and alien hunter, world-famous for his outlandish conspiracy theories, suggested that the mythical sea monster Kraken had been discovered on Google Earth in Antarctic waters off the coast of Deception Island, part of the South Shetland Islands archipelago, at coordinates 63° 2’56.73″S 60°57’32.38″W.
Using Google ruler, Waring estimated the length of the monster at about 30 meters (100 feet) “from head to end.” But he pointed out that the visible “end” of the monster — which he compared to a giant squid — appeared to be actually its mid-area. Thus, the entire length of the sea monster, including the length of the tentacles, could be greater than 60 meters, he argued.
“I used Google ruler and it says this is 30 meters… but the end looks like just the mid area of a giant squid, which means it could be 60+ meters long with tentacles.”
“That sounds like a Kraken to me,” Waring wrote. “Maybe the stories about the giant monster of the deep are all true. A lot of stories are based on truths.”
“I think we found the Kraken,” he concluded controversially.
The Kraken is a gigantic mythical North Sea monster which — according to Norwegian legends — attacked ocean-going vessels and dragged them to the bottom of the ocean. But modern scholars have suggested that the Kraken myth may have originated from sightings of rare giant squids (see YouTube below) that grow up to 15 meters (50 feet) in length.
However, critics of the theory that the Kraken myth originated from occasional sightings of the rare giant squid have pointed out that the old legends did not suggest that Kraken had tentacles; rather, the earliest descriptions suggested it looked like a whale or a crab.
Regardless, Waring’s identification of the “monster” spotted on Google Earth as Kraken, sparked discussion in online forums.
Many ruled out the suggestion that it was a giant squid, noting that studies indicate that giant squids grow to only about 14-20 meters long.
Waring had estimated the length of the “monster” he spotted on Google Earth at about 60 meters.
But some suggested that the apparent massive size of the mystery object could be due to a whale splashing in water after being caught in the tentacles of a giant squid.
A UFO and conspiracy theory blog, UFO Sightings Hotspot, suggested it could be an underwater alien UFO — also known as an underwater submerged object or USO — or a man-made submarine surfacing.
“It looks like an artificially made object, an underwater UFO coming out of the ocean.”
The latest sighting comes after the alleged discovery on Google Earth of a mysterious sea creature off the east coast of Australia in 2013 (see YouTube above). It was speculated at the time that the creature could be an ancestral shark species and thus “a living fossil.”
Earlier in 2012, conspiracy theorists also claimed to have spotted (see YouTube above) a mysterious “14 mile long ‘Thing’ buried in Antarctica.”
[Image via Shutterstock]