Giant octopus or whale blubber? You decide

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) -- Chilean scientists were baffled on Tuesday by a huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on the southern Pacific coast and were seeking international help identifying the mystery specimen.

The dead creature was mistaken for a beached whale when first reported about a week ago, but experts who went to see it said the 40-foot-long (12-meter) mass of decomposing lumpy grey flesh apparently was an invertebrate.

Full Story: www.cnn.com...

I wonder if it's washing up on the shore has anything to do with all the seismic activity that's going on in the World Seismic event thread??

Sounds like a massive jellyfish....ala The Abyss....

Agghhh...why do cnn and BBC insist on running stories with no pictures.
It looked like...I hate reading it looked like, don't these people know a picture is worth a thousand words.

Does sound very interesting though.

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Be Cool
K_OS

Thats interesting, there was a picture of it this morning. Good thing I saved it!



I am going out on a limb here and saying I think this thing could very well be the elusive giant octopus, not to be confused with the common kind.

[Edited on 7-2-2003 by William One Sac]

WOAH!!! freaky...

Hey One Sac, was that picture on CNN earlier today?
If so, sounds like a coverup..

Just a thought, Tassadar.

Wow thats an amazing...thing!

Something like this happened about 50 years ago, I cant remember. Some big mass that wa mistakend for a humpback washed on shore and they did'nt know what it was. I read about in this book about Sea Monsters I had about 2 years ago.

Good call WOS!! That is very interesting. I wonder how many different types of creatures live under the ocean that we have no idea about.

That creature is wild, and the pic is back on CNN.

[Edited on 2-7-2003 by jetsetter]

They put a different picture on, that sux...
Lower resolution and bad angle...

WOS got a good pic,

Tassadar

Yes, thats the picture that was on CNN earlier today. This new picture looks like they deflated the thing or something!








[Edited on 7-2-2003 by William One Sac]

[Edited on 7-2-2003 by William One Sac]

if u read the comments about it in the link it states that it was found w/ another mass which turned out to be a dead humpback whale which is what the original, better picture looks like but then maybe its a cover up

Just a thought

Neo

I think your right Neo! That was a bit misleading of them I will say. I found a good pic of it on the bbc. JediMaster, if you do a search on globsters, you will find some interesting results, similar things have been washing up for a while now. In fact, do a search with these key words "DeWitt Giant Octopus" and you will find an intriguing find in St. Augusting Florida in 1898, where there was a similar carcass that washed up. There has been some controversy about results of the tissue samples from 1892, however most agree that the creature was a newly discovered Collosal Octopus.

The St. Augustine Carcass



The thing that washed up in Chile. From this shot, it really does look like a jelly fish.

Very interesting... what do you guys think?

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Scientists said on Wednesday a huge mass of slimy flesh that washed up on a Chilean beach last week may be a rare type of giant octopus or just discarded whale blubber.


European zoologists contacted by the Chileans to help identify the 40-foot-long (12-meter) piece of gelatinous tissue said it closely resembled descriptions of a bizarre specimen found in Florida in 1896 that was named "octopus giganteus" and has confounded experts ever since.


Other informal sightings of similar deep-sea creatures by fishermen and divers from the Bahamas to Tasmania are the stuff of folklore on the "Bermuda Blob" as well as academic study.


"We've been in touch with zoologists from different countries. We've had responses from France and Italy from people who say, based on the preliminary data we sent them, it could be a gigantic octopus," said Elsa Cabrera, director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago.

news.yahoo.com.../nm/20030702/sc_nm/chile_creature_dc&printer=1

Personally and just my opinion.......I would go out on a limb and say its a form of "deep sea squid" that is obviously one of the largest specimen's that we, man, has seen to date. I have seen a picture of this, as William One Sac has shown and it reminds me of this but on a larger scale:


As to the object floating beside it, that was spotted by the Chilean Navy, it was found to be a dead carcass of a humpback, but this remained unid'd.

regards
seekerof

Personally, I think that it is just a carcass of a Giants Octopus. If you look at the picture carefully you can almost make out little tentacles of some kind... or maybe these are just kind of an illusion from all the blubber. Also... I think it's an octopus from the large pile of blubber closer to the water... but my guess is as good as anybody else's.

based on the pics and the story... I don't see any tentacles, or anything even resembling them here...

Looks like the placenta from a sea giant!

I'll go with jelly fish aswell,
thier are some species of jelly fish that grow in excess of 60 feet
www.mbayaq.org...
Deep

Slide Show

And from what I can dig up they are speculating either whale carcass or giant octopus.