SEALING THE IDENTITY OF AN ALLEGED STELLER'S SEA-COW SKIN

Steller's sea-cows with Kotick the white seal – an 1895 engraving for 'The White Seal', from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (public domain)

"By the Great Combers of Magellan!" he said, beneath his moustache. "Who in the Deep Sea are these people?"

They were like no walrus, sea-lion, seal, bear, whale, shark, fish, squid, or scallop that Kotick [the white seal] had ever seen before. They were between twenty and thirty feet long, and they had no hind flippers, but a shovel-like tail that looked as if it had been whittled out of wet leather. Their heads were the most foolish-looking things you ever saw, and they balanced on the ends of their tails in deep water when they weren't grazing, bowing solemnly to each other and waving their front flippers as a fat man waves his arm.

"Ahem!" said Kotick. "Good sport, gentlemen?" The big things answered by bowing and waving their flippers like the Frog-Footman [from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland]. When they began feeding again Kotick saw that their upper lip was split into two pieces that they could twitch apart about a foot and bring together again with a whole bushel of seaweed between the splits. They tucked the stuff into their mouths and chumped solemnly…

"Well!" said Kotick. "You're the only people I've ever met uglier than Sea Vitch – and with worse manners."

Then he remembered in a flash what the Burgomaster gull had screamed to him when he was a little yearling at Walrus Islet, and he tumbled backward in the water, for he knew that he had found Sea Cow at last.

   Rudyard Kipling – 'The White Seal', from The Jungle Book

Back in the 1800s, naturalists were much more open to zoological anomalies, mysteries, and curiosities, including those of the cryptozoological kind, than they are today. Never was this openness more readily visible, however, than in the pages of a fascinating British monthly periodical entitled The Zoologist (published 1843-1916), which was packed throughout with contributions from amateur wildlife enthusiasts and eminent biologists alike on every conceivable (and inconceivable!) aspect of natural and, especially, unnatural history.

Today, conversely, such oddities that cannot be readily pigeon-holed into 'acceptable', mainstream zoological categories rarely receive widespread hard-copy coverage outside of newspapers and Fortean publications – which is why Flying Snake, a periodical founded, published, edited, and lovingly compiled every 4-6 months by the indefatigable, inestimable cryptozoological and animal anomalies researcher Richard Muirhead is such an absolute delight, a veritable diamond among so much modern-day dross, especially online.

Steller's sea-cow, depicted on a local postage stamp issued for Russia's Commander (=Komandorski) Islands, a 17-strong group situated in the Bering Sea (east of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East), and around which this huge sea mammal once lived (public domain)

A natural, very worthy successor to The Zoologist, this wonderful little journal contains so much extraordinary, non-conventional Nature, the kind that cannot be readily found in any other present-day publication, that whenever I receive the latest issue I know full well that once I have opened it I shall find it impossible to put down until I have read it from cover to cover.

In the April 2014 issue (vol. 3, #7), however, Richard surpassed even his superlative ability to surprise me with his researches, by virtue of this issue's front cover-highlighted lead article. It consisted of an investigation conducted by Richard that quite simply took my breath away – by featuring the history and two vintage photographs (one of which appeared on the front cover) of what has seemingly long been claimed to be a bona fide torso skin (i.e. lacking the head, flippers, and tail) of Hydrodamalis [=Rhytina] gigas, the long-extinct Steller's sea-cow!

The front cover of Flying Snake, April 2014, showcasing one of the two vintage photographs uncovered by Richard that allegedly depict a preserved Steller's sea-cow skin (© Richard Muirhead/Flying Snake – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As I have documented in greater detail within an earlier ShukerNature article (click here to read it), at up to 30 ft long Steller's sea-cow was by far the largest modern-day species of sirenian ever to have existed, very significantly bigger than the dugong and any of the manatees that still survive today. It was discovered in shallow waters around the Commander (aka Komandorski) Islands in what was later dubbed the Bering Sea, separating Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula from Alaska, by Arctic explorer Dr Georg W. Steller in 1741, during Danish explorer Vitus Bering's Russian expeditions there. Tragically, however, the inoffensive, unafraid behaviour of this huge herbivorous marine mammal, coupled with the abundance and very tasty nature of its meat, swiftly proved to be its undoing, dooming it to a rapid extinction despite its great numbers. For it was mercilessly, relentlessly slaughtered by hungry mariners penetrating its icy, inhospitable domain.

By 1768, Steller's sea-cow was no more, exterminated from the Commander Islands' coastal waters that had been its home since time immemorial. Having said that, there have been infrequent subsequent reports from various remote Arctic outposts of extremely large, mystifying sea beasts that may – just may – be surviving sea-cows, but none has ever been confirmed.

Reconstruction of Dr Georg W. Steller measuring a Steller's sea cow on Bering Island, 12 July 1742 (public domain)

As for preserved physical remains of this veritable behemoth: a number of museums around the world have skeletons (complete, partial, or composite), skulls (ditto), or isolated bones (limb bones, vertebrae, ribs, etc) from Steller's sea-cows (click here to access an extensive listing of such specimens).

In addition, there are a few scraps of preserved skin on record that have been claimed to be from this lost species, but there are also counterclaims averring that they are actually from seals or cetaceans. According to the above listing of specimens, one such scrap is present in the Überseemuseum at Bremen, Germany (a photograph of it snapped on 29 January 2011 by Flickriver user MareCrisium can be viewed here). A second is (or was) held by Germany's Hamburg Zoological Museum (it may have been destroyed by bombing during World War II, and the above listing presumes that it is/was a misinterpreted whale skin anyway). And a third is held by the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, Russia (queried in the listing as a probable whale skin fragment again, and originally discovered in the Institute's collections by an A. Brandt). However, no museum or scientific institution anywhere in the world lays claim of any kind to possessing an entire torso skin from such a creature – which is why Richard's report and accompanying photographs were of such profound interest to me.

Skeleton of a Steller's sea-cow at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France (© FunkMonk/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

I strongly recommend everyone interested in this case to read Richard's original article, but in the meantime here is a summary of what he uncovered.

It all began with a local newspaper article. On 6 April 1956, the Kansas City Star in the U.S.A. published the photograph that appears on the above-reproduced front cover of Flying Snake for April 2014, together with the following details. The person holding the torso skin, and pictured with it in her East Tenth Street, Intercity District, Kansas home's living room, was Mrs Faye Keyton, who had inherited it jointly with her brother, W.L. Shafer, from their aunt, Miss Myrtle Shafer, who had died in May 1955. It was normally kept rolled up inside a long cardboard tube, was quite stiff, and according to Mrs Keyton it was an Alaskan Indian burial robe that had been made from the skin of a Steller's sea-cow. But how did she know this?

Vintage photograph from the late 1800s/very early 1900s depicting Prof. Willoughby with the burial robe (public domain)

Keyton revealed that her aunt had herself inherited it, from Jim Willoughby, a distant relative, who in turn had received it from his father, a certain Prof. Richard ('Dick') D. Willoughby (1832-1902), who had lived in Alaska for half a century, where he had been made an Indian chief and spoke their language. The robe was one of his possessions that he had acquired there during that period, and when he died in 1902 it was placed over him during his funeral as part of a native Alaskan Indian burial ceremony.

Reading this intriguing little history, I was immediately struck by the curious fact that there was no explanation as to why or how this robe was ever deemed to be the skin of a Steller's sea-cow. All that I can assume is that it had been labelled as such by Prof. Willoughby himself, with that identity having subsequently been accepted unquestioningly by, and duly passed on down through, the generations of the robe's inheritors. Unfortunately, however, this in turn leads to a major problem in accepting such an identification. For as revealed by Richard Muirhead in his Flying Snake article, Willoughby was a notorious practical joker and had a longstanding reputation as a teller of exceedingly tall tales. He was also known for attaching highly imaginative and often decidedly lurid back-stories to the many curios contained in his house that he had gathered from different parts of the Alaskan coast, many of which were of native Alaskan Indian origin. Taking all of this into account, it is by no means certain, therefore, that the robe really was a Steller's sea-cow skin – this could just as easily have been yet another fanciful yarn spun by Willoughby.

Steller's sea-cow model at London's Natural History Museum (© Emöke Dénes/Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

But that is not all. Based upon direct eyewitness descriptions and sketches of Steller's sea-cow by Steller himself and other maritime travellers during the all-too-brief period of time spanning this species' discovery and destruction, the robe doesn't look at all like the skin of this officially extinct species. For whereas the latter's skin was said to be rough and spotted, this robe is smooth and bears two very distinctive, highly conspicuous white rings upon it as well as an upper and a lower white band. True, the robe's leather may have been tanned, making it smooth, but those very large white rings and bands are unlike anything ever recorded for Steller's sea-cow. In addition, judging from the photographs and allowing for forced perspective (in both photos, the skin was closer to the camera than the person was, thereby making the former appear bigger than it actually was), the skin was far smaller than any but the youngest of juvenile sea-cows would have been.

One of Richard's correspondents, regular Flying Snake contributor Richard George, opined that he was certain that these distinctive markings had been painted on the skin. Bearing in mind that it was used as a ceremonial burial robe, adding such decorations to it as some form of symbolic representation would not be at all beyond the realms of possibility. If only the robe could be examined directly, however – this would soon determine whether they were a natural component of it or had been artificially added. Moreover, with today's advances in DNA analyses, a sample of tissue taken from it would readily reveal the true taxonomic nature of the species from which the skin had been obtained. But therein lies a fundamental problem – its current whereabouts are presently unknown.

Exquisite engraving from 1898 depicting mature and juvenile Steller's sea-cows (public domain)

After reading Richard's article, I did consider attempting to trace the robe, by pursuing the current whereabouts of Mrs Keyton, her brother, or any children that either of them may have had. However, as so often happens, other matters diverted my attention, and eventually I forgot about this mysterious object – until this week, that is.

After having read with my usual enthusiasm the latest, newly-published issue (#14, January 2019) of Flying Snake a few days ago, I was about to place it with the other 13 issues on their allotted shelf in my study's cryptozoological section when, while idly flicking through them, I noticed the front cover of the April 2014 issue once more, the first time that I'd looked at it in a very long while – but this time something suddenly clicked inside my mind. I know that ringed patterning on the robe! I've seen it somewhere before, somewhere else.

Steller's sea-cow (right) with a Steller's sea lion and a northern fur seal, from a map of the Commander Islands drawn by Sven Waxell in 1891 (public domain)

Sitting there in thought, I recalled the above-linked listing of Steller's sea-cow material held by various museums around the world, and in particular I remembered those controversial fragments of skin that a few of the museums possessed, claimed by some to be genuine Steller's sea-cow relics but by others to be derived from whales or seals.

And then, without warning, an image flashed into my mind – an image of an extremely distinctive species of sea mammal, one that, uniquely, possessed exactly the same ringed pelage as was so visibly present on the Alaskan burial robe, but a species that unlike Steller's sea-cow was still very much alive today. Suddenly, I knew exactly what the Alaskan burial robe had been obtained from – and it most definitely was not a Steller's sea-cow!

The ribbon or banded seal – an absolutely unmistakeable species (public domain)

Instead, it was from an exceptionally beautiful, exquisitely marked species of phocid (earless) seal – namely, Histriophoca fasciata, the ribbon or banded seal. Up to 5 ft long, it is native to the Arctic and subarctic regions of the northern Pacific Ocean, but especially the Bering Sea…separating Russia from Alaska! Moreover, it is immediately distinguished from all other seal species (and all other species of any kind of mammal, for that matter) by virtue of the two very large white circles on its body (one on each side) and also the two wide white bands encircling its neck and tail respectively that collectively decorate very strikingly its otherwise uniformly dark-brown or black pelage.

All that I needed to do now in order to be absolutely certain was to uncover if I could a photograph of a torso skin of a ribbon seal to compare it directly with the Alaskan burial robe, and once I was on the trail it didn't take me long to find an excellent example. Comparing the two side by side, they were virtually identical, as shown below. Consequently, there could be absolutely no doubt whatsoever – just like so many other examples of his yarns on record, Willoughby's Steller's sea-cow skin was nothing but a tall tale. It was in reality the skin of a ribbon seal. Case closed.

Comparing Willoughby's Alaskan burial skin (left) with the skin of a ribbon seal (right) (© Kansas  City Star, reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only / public domain)

I am delighted that Richard Muirhead brought this fascinating but hitherto little-publicised case to cryptozoological attention with his customary investigative zeal via his Flying Snake article, and that I in turn have been able to provide the solution to the longstanding riddle that its subject posed.

For anyone seeking more information concerning Flying Snake, a publication that I thoroughly recommend to everyone interested in the more unusual, unexpected facets of natural history, please click here.

Finally: although the following flying snake illustration has nothing to do whatsoever either with Richard's periodical or with Steller's sea-cow, its fictional subject is nonetheless cryptozoological in nature and is such an extraordinary image in its own right that it deserves to be included here, especially as at least to my knowledge it has never before been featured in any cryptozoological article. So here it is, from the front cover of an issue of an American men's magazine entitled Man's Conquest:

Front cover of the March 1967 issue of Man's Conquest, depicting an attack of flying snakes, the subject of a fiction short story contained inside (© Man's Conquest – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

STELLER'S SECRET FAUNA – GARGANTUAN SEA-COWS, INACCESSIBLE SEA-RAVENS, AND BEWHISKERED SEA-MONKEYS

Steller's sea-cows (© William Rebsamen)

Dr Georg Wilhelm Steller was a German physician and naturalist participating during the early 1740s in the last of Danish explorer Vitus Bering's Russian expeditions to the Arctic waters (now called the Bering Sea) separating Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula from Alaska. During this expedition, Steller documented many new species of animal, including four very contentious forms that continue to arouse cryptozoological curiosity even today. I have already documented one of these, Steller's sea-bear, on ShukerNature (click here), so here now are the other three.

SURVIVING SEA-COWS?

Distantly related to elephants, the manatees and dugongs are herbivorous aquatic mammals known as sirenians, with fish-like tails, no hind limbs, and flippers for forelimbs. Nowadays, the largest living sirenian is the Caribbean manatee Trichechus manatus, which is up to 15 ft long, but there was once a much bigger species, called Steller's sea-cow Hydrodamalis gigas (=Rhytina stelleri). Measuring up to 30 ft long and weighing several tons, this gigantic sea mammal was discovered in 1741 in the shallow waters around Copper Island and nearby Bering Island - named after Vitus Bering, whose expedition was virtually wrecked here that year. While marooned on this island, Steller studied the sea-cows (the only scientist ever to do so), which existed in great numbers, but the other sailors slaughtered them for food.

Georg Steller's own drawing of the giant sea-cow species named after him

When he returned to Kamchatka with news of this enormous but inoffensive species, it became such a greatly-desired source of meat for future sea travellers that by 1768 - just 27 years after Steller had first discovered it - every single sea-cow appeared to have been killed. Not one could be found alive, and since then science has classified this species as extinct. Every so often, however, sailors and other maritime voyagers journeying through the icy waters formerly frequented by Steller's sea-cow have spied extremely large, unidentified creatures closely resembling this officially vanished, giant sirenian.

In 1879, while exploring the polar waters traversed more than a century earlier by Steller, Swedish naturalist Baron Erik Nordenskjöld visited Bering Island in his vessel, Vega. He was startled to learn from one islander, Pitr Vasilijef Burdukovskij, that for the first 2-3 years after his father had settled here from mainland Russia in 1777, sea-cows were still being seen - and were still being killed, to use their tough hides for making baydars (native boats).

Local postage stamp depicting a Steller's sea-cow, issued by the Commander Islands

Even more intriguing was the testimony of two other islanders, Feodor Mertchenin and Nicanor Stepnoff, who claimed that as recently as 1854, they had encountered on the eastern side of Bering Island a very large sea mammal wholly unfamiliar to them - which had brown skin, no dorsal fin, small forefeet, and a very thick forebody that tapered further back. It blew out air, but through its large mouth instead of through blow-holes like a whale, and about 15 ft of its body's length rose above the water surface as it moved.

Nordenskjöld was sure that they had seen a Steller's sea-cow, because their description contained details of sea-cow morphology given in Steller's documented account, which they had never seen. However, when Stepnoff was later interviewed by American researcher Leonhard Stejneger, he concluded that the creature encountered by them had actually been a female narwhal Monodon monoceros (that famous species of toothed whale whose males characteristically possess a single long spiralled tusk, once believed to be the unicorn's horn). Stejneger also felt that Nordenskjöld had misunderstood Burdukovskij's statement regarding when his father had settled on Bering Island, and considered that the correct date was 1774, not 1777.

Model of a Steller's sea-cow prepared by Markus Bühler (© Markus Bühler)

In 1911-1913, a fisherman claimed to have seen a dead Steller's sea-cow, brought in by the sea current towards the Cape of Chaplin on Siberia's easternmost tip, close to the Bering Strait. Frustratingly, this potentially sensational discovery was never investigated.

Perhaps the most compelling sighting occurred in July 1962 near Cape Navarin, south of the Gulf of Anadyr, lying northeast of Kamchatka's coast. Six strange animals were spied in shallow water by the crew of the whaling ship Buran about 300 ft away. They were said to be 20-26 ft long, with dark skin, an upper lip split into two sections, a relatively small head clearly delineated from its body, and a sharply-fringed tail. Scientists postulated that these animals must have been female narwhals. However, the description provided by the Buran whalers fits Steller's sea-cow more closely than a female narwhal, and it seems unlikely that experienced whalers would fail to recognise such a familiar creature.

Engraving of a Steller's sea-cow from 1886

In summer 1976, some salmon factory workers at Anapkinskaya Bay, just south of Cape Navarin, reported seeing, and actually touching, the carcase of a stranded sea-cow. One of them, Ivan Nikiforovich Chechulin, was interviewed by Vladimir Malukovich from the Kamchatka Museum of Local Lore, and stated that the mysterious animal had very dark skin, flippers, and a forked tail. Reaching out to touch this creature, they had noticed that it also had a prominent snout. When Malukovich showed Chechulin various pictures of sea creatures to assist him in identifying what he and his colleagues had seen, the creature whose picture he selected as corresponding with their mystery beast was Steller's sea-cow.

In the late 1970s, British explorer Derek Hutchinson launched an expedition to search for sea-cows off the Aleutian Islands, as did Soviet physicist Dr Anatoly Shkunkov in the early 1980s off Kamchatka. Neither met with success. Even so, as speculated by cryptozoologists such as Professor Roy P. Mackal in his book Searching For Hidden Animals (1980), and Michel Raynal (INFO Journal, February 1987), some sea-cows may have avoided annihilation by moving away from their former haunts, into more remote regions - of which the freezing waters and bleak coastlines around Kamchatka, the Aleutians, and elsewhere in this daunting polar wilderness are plentifully supplied yet extremely difficult to explore satisfactorily.

STELLER'S SEA-RAVEN – UNMASKED BUT UNRECOGNISED?

Whereas Steller's sea-cow, even if indeed extinct today, has been extensively documented and is physically represented in museums by skeletal material, we still have next to nothing on file (let alone in the flesh) concerning Steller's most cryptic avian discovery.

While shipwrecked on Bering Island during 1741-42, Steller briefly referred in his journal to a mystifying species that he called a "white sea-raven" - a rare bird "...not seen in the Siberian coast...[and which is] impossible to reach because it only alights singly on the cliffs facing the sea". However, this species has never been formally identified; nor does it appear to have been reported again by anyone else. So what could it be?

Surfbird (© Marlin Harms/Wikipedia)

Seeking an answer to this baffling riddle, I communicated in June 1998 with cryptozoological enthusiast Chris Orrick, who has made a special study of Steller's own publications and other Steller-related works. Chris speculated that Steller's white sea-raven may actually be some species that is known to science today, but was unknown at least to Europeans back in the early 1740s - possibly a species native to the Aleutians but rarely if ever seen around Kamchatka. One candidate offered by Chris was the surfbird Aphriza virgata, a white-plumaged wader from Alaska and America's western Pacific that may not have been familiar to Steller.

Danish cryptozoologist Lars Thomas from Copenhagen's Zoological Museum was also intrigued by the mystery of the white sea-raven's identity, and he has offered me his own opinion regarding it. Steller was German, and Lars pointed out that cormorants are referred to in German as sea-ravens. Indeed, a hitherto unknown species of cormorant, the now-extinct spectacled cormorant Phalacrocorax perspicillatus, discovered by Steller during this same expedition, was referred to by him as a sea-raven.

Spectacled cormorant, painted in 1869 by Joseph Wolf

Consequently, Lars argued that Steller's mention of a white sea-raven may in reality refer to a white cormorant (either an albino or a young specimen, as some juveniles are much paler than their dark-plumed adults).

Alternatively, it may be a bird that superficially resembles a white cormorant, such as the pigeon guillemot Cepphus columba in winter plumage, or possibly even a vagrant gannet or booby.

Pigeon guillemot (© Yathin S. Krishnappa/Wikipedia)

During our communications, Chris revealed that in a letter to the Russian Academy, dated 16 November 1742, Steller announced that he had prepared and sent two scientific papers - one dealing with North American birds and fishes, the other with Bering Island's birds and fishes. In view of Steller's meticulous manner of documentation, it is likely that the latter paper would have contained a detailed description of the white sea-raven. Unfortunately, however, neither of these manuscripts is known today, but they may still exist, albeit possibly unrecognised, amid the Academy's vast archives in St Petersburg.

Unless these or other additional 18th Century documents on this incognito seabird are uncovered, however, its identity will probably never be exposed. Ironically, as Chris noted, we may already know what Steller's sea-raven is, but without realising that we know!

THE MANDARIN-WHISKERED SEA-MONKEYS OF STELLER AND SMEETON

None of the many creatures documented by Steller, however, is as curious, or controversial, as the bizarre animal observed by him for over 2 hours during the afternoon of 10 August 1741, at approximately 52.5°N latitude, 155°W longitude. He described it as follows:

It was about two Russian ells [about 5 ft] in length; the head was like a dog's, with pointed erect ears. From the upper and lower lips on both sides whiskers hung down which made it look almost like a Chinaman. The eyes were large; the body was longish round and thick, tapering gradually towards the tail. The skin seemed thickly covered with hair, of a gray color on the back, but reddish white on the belly; in the water, however, the whole animal appeared entirely reddish and cow-colored. The tail was divided into two fins, of which the upper, as in the case of sharks, was twice as large as the lower. Nothing struck me more surprising than the fact that neither forefeet as in the marine amphibians nor, in their stead, fins were to be seen...For over two hours it swam around our ship, looking, as with admiration, first at the one and then at the other of us. At times it came so near to the ship that it could have been touched with a pole, but as soon as anybody stirred it moved away a little further. It could raise itself one-third of its length out of the water exactly like a man, and sometimes it remained in this position for several minutes. After it had observed us for about half an hour, it shot like an arrow under our vessel and came up again on the other side; shortly after, it dived again and reappeared in the old place; and in this way it dived perhaps thirty times.

After watching this extraordinary creature frolicking comically in the water with a long strand of seaweed for a time, Steller, greatly desiring to procure their strange sea visitor in order to prepare a detailed description, loaded his gun and fired two shots at it. Happily, the animal was not harmed, and swam away, though they saw it (or another of its kind) on several subsequent occasions in different stretches of the sea.

Reconstruction of the possible appearance of Steller's sea-monkey (© Craig Gosling)

No known species corresponds with Steller's description of this peculiar beast, which became known as Steller's sea-monkey or sea-ape. Moreover, until fairly recently, no further sighting of such a creature had ever been reported either, leading scientists to speculate that whatever it had been, its species must surely now be extinct. On a clear afternoon in June 1965, however, eminent British yachtsman-adventurer Brigadier Miles Smeeton was sailing by the central Aleutian Islands aboard his 46-ft ketch Tzu Hang, with his wife, daughter, and a friend aboard, when he and the others sighted a remarkable sea-beast.

As since documented by explorer-journalist Miles Clark (BBC Wildlife, January 1987), lying in the water close off the port bow was what seemed to be a 5-ft-long animal with 4-5-in-long reddish-yellow hair, and a head more dog-like than seal-like, whose dark intelligent eyes were placed close together, rather than set laterally on the head like a seal's. Indeed, Henry Combe, the Smeetons' friend aboard their ketch, stated that it had a face rather like a Tibetan shih-tzu terrier "...with drooping Chinese whiskers". As the vessel drew nearer, this maritime mandarin "...made a slow undulating dive and disappeared beneath the ship". No-one spied any limbs or fins. Their observation of it had lasted 10-15 seconds, and they have remained convinced that it was not a seal. Although sea otters occur in these waters, this creature did not resemble any sea otter previously spied by them either.

An alternative reconstruction of Steller's sea-monkey (© Tim Morris)

Conversely, it closely corresponds with Steller's description over two centuries earlier of his mystifying sea-monkey, thereby giving cryptozoologists hope that its species still exists. As for its identity, however, there is still no satisfactory explanation. Its inquisitive, playful, intelligent, supremely agile behaviour are all characteristics of seals and otters, yet Smeeton and his fellow observers are convinced that their creature was neither of these, and it certainly does not bear any immediate resemblance to such animals - set apart by its apparent absence of forelimbs, its asymmetrical vertical tail, and its mandarin-style whiskers. Equally, it seems highly improbable that any wildlife observer as experienced and as meticulously accurate in chronicling his observations afterwards as Steller would fail to recognise it as a type of seal or otter if this is truly all that it was. In fact, Steller was so perplexed by the creature that he made no attempt whatsoever to classify it.

Via independent lines of research, Chris Orrick and Jay Ellis Ransom, formerly executive director of the Aleutian-Bering Sea Expeditions Research Library in Oregon, have both formulated theories that Steller's sea-monkey may have been a vagrant specimen of the Hawaiian monk seal Monachus schauinslandi - one that had wandered north far from its normal Hawaiian archipelago domain. Chris also suggests that it may have been undergoing its annual moult at the time, explaining its fur's appearance as documented by Steller. Nevertheless, it still requires an appreciable stretch of the imagination to convert the sea-monkeys described here into any form of seal, Hawaiian monk or otherwise.

Hawaiian monk seal resting vertically in the water (public domain)

Perhaps one day a zoologist voyaging in the Bering Sea will espy Steller's most enigmatic discovery, which seems still to survive in these frigid waters, and in so doing may finally resolve a fascinating zoological mystery that has persisted for more than 250 years.

This ShukerNature post is excerpted from my book Mysteries of Planet Earth.