Giant octopus or whale blubber? You decide

Why do they pop up so much recently
I cannot remember any catches or wash ups like this that happened two years ago, while I kept track of the news as much as I do now...
A few months/weeks ago they caught something in NZ, then on antarctica and now in Chile...

Since it was first spotted with a dead humpback whale...

I wonder if it attacked the whale and they both died in the process?

The whale should be examined for bite marks or chemical burns.

think its a squid,they can scar a whale during attacks

Hrrmm, supposedly it's a giant squid. Only the 2nd one to wash ashore, last one was over 100 years ago.

rednova.com...

That's pretty freakin' cool. Nasty looking critter, but still cool.
Wonder if he was hanging out with the inhabitants of Atlantis...

-B.

its a whale's condom

maybe its just a small shunk of something really large

There's no way tha's some friggin whale blubber. And it doesn't look whole, whatever it is. Idunno, but it must stink to high heavens by now

Latest on the 'remains' found in Chile'.:

coverupinfo.com...

regards
seekerof

Beached Blob Has Scientists Scratching Their Heads

[Edited on 7-9-2003 by William One Sac]

International labs get samples of Chilean beach blob, whale blubber is leading theory but giant octopus not ruled out

Great articles and information William One Sac.
Thanks.

Thats diffently a whole lot of blubber!? I'm mystified myself as to how such a large 'chunk' washed up. Is this 'part' of a larger carcass or the carcass? IF carcass, why no bones and such....really a mystery....lots of questions...

regards
seekerof

Thats diffently a whole lot of blubber!? I'm mystified myself as to how such a large 'chunk' washed up. Is this 'part' of a larger carcass or the carcass? IF carcass, why no bones and such....really a mystery....lots of questions...

If it is a dead jelly fish, thier would be no bones.
And jelly fish can grow to be very large.
Deep

The biomed central article said the results would arrive the 9th. where are my results??! I paid good money for that blob! OK, fine, I could search myself, but what am I going to enter as my query? "recent blob"?? I should research that Pirates player that hit the big sausage first. You work on the blob.

If Dr. Pierce doesn't have any luck extracting DNA from his blob sample, he says he will send it to Newfoundland to see whether Dr. Carr has any more success.

Dr. Pierce believes the Chilean blob will turn out to be whale remains � what most commonly washes up on beaches.

But Dr. Carr said there is a chance it is a giant octopus. He noted that in the pictures the researchers have sent, he can see what appears to be a large octopus-like eye.

It may still be difficult to determine what the Chilean beach blob really is because the genetic material � the DNA � from the sample may be too degraded to be easily identified. That was the case with a sample Dr. Carr examined from a blob that washed ashore in St. Augustine, Fla., in 1896, but was preserved in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington.

Researchers have been debating for years whether it was a whale or an octopus. And Dr. Carr was unable to provide any DNA evidence to resolve its identity

Full Story: LINK

[Edited on 7-11-2003 by William One Sac]

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Chilean scientists said on Friday their study of a huge blob of flesh found on a Pacific beach about three weeks ago concluded it was the carcass of a sperm whale, ending speculation of a giant octopus.

Full Story: LINK

Just read the same thing on Yahoo, thanks William One Sac.


regards
seekerof

And the winner is...




www.cnn.com...

You guys remember that post about article months ago about them dectecting a reeeeeeeeeally large creature off the atlantic?

It was the bloop monster!

I am pasting the whole article in case cnn takes it down...

LONDON, England --Scientists have revealed a mysterious recording that they say could be the sound of a giant beast lurking in the depths of the ocean.

Researchers have nicknamed the strange unidentified sound picked up by undersea microphones "Bloop."

While it bears the varying frequency hallmark of marine animals, it is far more powerful than the calls made by any creature known on Earth, Britain's New Scientist reported on Thursday.

It is too big for a whale and one theory is that it is a deep sea monster, possibly a many-tentacled giant squid.

In 1997, Bloop was detected by U.S. Navy "spy" sensors 3,000 miles apart that had been put there to detect the movement of Soviet submarines, the magazine reports.

The frequency of the sound meant it had to be much louder than any recognised animal noise, including that produced by the largest whales.

So is it a huge octopus? Although dead giant squid have been washed up on beaches, and tell-tale sucker marks have been seen on whales, there has never been a confirmed sighting of one of the elusive cephalopods in the wild.

The largest dead squid on record measured about 60ft including the length of its tentacles, but no one knows how big the creatures might grow.

For years sailors have told tales of monsters of the deep including the huge, many-tentacled kraken that could reach as high as a ship's mainmast and sink the biggest ships.

However Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at Boston University, Massachusetts, doubts that giant squid are the source of Bloop.

"Cephalopods have no gas-filled sac, so they have no way to make that type of noise," he said. "Though you can never rule anything out completely, I doubt it."

Nevertheless he agrees that the sound is most likely to be biological in origin.

The system picking up Bloop and other strange noises from the deep is a military relic of the Cold War.

In the 1960s the U.S. Navy set up an array of underwater microphones, or hydrophones, around the globe to track Soviet submarines. The network was known as SOSUS, short for Sound Surveillance System.

The listening stations lie hundreds of yards below the ocean surface, at a depth where sound waves become trapped in a layer of water known as the "deep sound channel".

Here temperature and pressure cause sound waves to keep travelling without being scattered by the ocean surface or bottom.

Most of the sounds detected obviously emanate from whales, ships or earthquakes, but some very low frequency noises have proved baffling.

Scientist Christopher Fox of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Acoustic Monitoring Project at Portland, Oregon, has given the signals names such as Train, Whistle, Slowdown, Upsweep and even Gregorian Chant.

He told New Scientist that most can be explained by ocean currents, volcanic activity -- Upsweep was tracked to an undersea South Pacific mountain that had not been identified as "live."

"The sound waves are almost like voice prints. You're able to look at the characteristics of the sound and say: 'There's a blue whale, there's a fin whale, there's a boat, there's a humpback whale and here comes and earchquake," he says.

But some sounds remain a mystery he says. Like Bloop -- monster of the deep?

www.cnn.com...#

I hope they find what it is. It'd be interesting to discover news species.

And MAN! That thing on the beach was HUGE!