Illustration of an 1857 “Sea-Serpent” Sighting Re-Interpreted as an Early Depiction of Cetacean Entanglement in Maritime Debris (2018)
As many sightings of purported sea-serpents are now recognized to have been misidentified cetaceans, this anecdotal literature can provide a valuable resource for extending inferences about whale biology backward in time. For example, a re-interpretation of the 1857 sighting of a “sea-serpent” seen off Cape Town suggests that the unidentified marine object was probably an animal, likely a cetacean, observed entangled in fishing gear or other maritime debris. This is one of the earliest cases of pre-plastic entanglement, and suggests the problem has a much longer environmental history than what is commonly believed.
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