Researchers Uncover Mystery of the Mariana Trench

http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/10934_monster.html

Stories about sea giants told by fishermen are never taken seriously.Two thirds of the Earth is covered with water. This is a huge area suitable for living which is at the same time inaccessible for people. It is not ruled out that time may come and the sea will expose itself as an aquarium to scientists. If it happens we will be able to see that sea grottos are harboring something of what we have read in fantastic books only. But for the time being, we can only make conjectures of the real ocean life on the basis of the few fragments that the ocean reveals from time to time to us.

Last April, a 15-meter-long squid was cast ashore in Canada; a trailer was used to transport the giant mollusc further. It was delivered to a research center where experts measured its feelers and arrived at a conclusion that it was a new kind of mollusc unknown to science.

Scientists spend millions of dollars to catch or at least to photograph huge deep-water molluscs deep in the ocean. However, no result has been achieved yet as a result of these expensive expeditions. None of the researchers has seen a live cephalopoda giant, only dead individuals washed ashore.

Fishermen several times claimed that they saw live giant squids. As a rule, these stories are received as fables of drunken fishermen. People know that fishermen tell incredible stories not only about huge molluscs.

In 1955, a Canadian newspaper published a mysterious story learnt from fishermen. A vessel in which the fishermen navigated the sea bumped into something strange. As the people could discern from far away, the object seemed to be either a decayed whale or a giant jellyfish floating on the water surface. When the vessel approached the object sailor John Squires leaned over the board to hook the strange thing.

But as soon as an iron hook went into the jelly-like mass a huge feeler came up from the mass. Squires started back in horror and fell down on the deck. John had nervous tremor, his face was white. Two members of the crew had to help him get to the cabin where he stayed until the schooner reached the port. The story occurred not far from the places where the huge bulk of a mollusc was cast ashore last spring. The shock of the sailor was so great that John Squires never put to sea since that time.

What does mankind know about these cephalopoda monsters? Almost nothing; and if someone does these are just crumbs. Huge cephalopoda live at a depth of about 2,000 meters; they spend the whole of their lives they swim and constantly keep in motion. We can guess the size of huge cephalopoda by the size of an eye of a huge squid that is kept in an American museum now. The eye of this squid is 40 centimeters in diameter which is almost the size of a basketball. The eye was taken out of the stomach of a cachalot killed by whalers. Squids are favorite meal of cachalots; they usually eat rather small squids of 4-6 kilograms and gulp them in schools. When a cachalot comes across a giant squid a violent fighting breaks out between them. The sea giants thus show their strength. In majority of cases, scientists say, a whale is the winner and eats up his enemy.

Here is one more mystery. Recently, Japanese researchers have conducted an interesting experiment in the Suruga Bay, not far from the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the World Ocean. The researchers put a container with some smelly bait on the bay bottom. A special video camera was attached to the wall of the container. The researchers peered into monitors to see what is to happen with the container and the bait.

The smell of the bait attracted a shoal of deep-water sharks. But then the researchers saw something incredible that left them speechless. Suddenly the sharks scattered in all directions and researchers saw an incredibly huge monster on the screens of their monitors. The giant slowly soared before the video camera at a depth of about 1.5 kilometers. The length of the sea Goliath was over 60 meters. It was not clear what the giant was in fact. Researchers failed to answer the question, just made conjectures what the creature may be. They said that might be a sleeping shark, the biggest shark. Even now people know just few facts about these sharks. They have been hiding in the dark ocean deeps for millions of years. People have never seen live sleeping sharks as well as giant squids. Only once, in 1964, a bulk of a dead sleeping shark was cast ashore in Indonesia; it was just a very young shark judging by its size of 26 meters.

Let's now go to Scotland to the Loch Lake, the home of one more mysterious monster that people call Nessy. There is a great number of reports saying that many people have come across the mysterious monster. Every year the press reports much evidence of witnesses who came across local people. Enterprising Scotchmen use the chance to make much money from this strange gift of the nature. Small shops close to the lake are piled with souvenirs, booklets and other handmade items with the image of Nessy. Local stalkers charge very reasonable fee to take you along the route where other people claimed to came across the mysterious monster.

There are still some sceptics who argue that the lake monster is just fancy. They ask to demonstrate specimen of the lake monster and demand that they wish to touch at least its dead bulk, only then they agree to believe the phenomenon does exist.

Let's leave the sceptics alone. In 1966, pilots of the Royal Air Force confirmed the statements that the lake monster existed. They filmed an episode in which one of the mysterious creatures crosses the Loch Lake.

When experts studied the film they arrived at a conclusion that it was a living creature. As the monster crossed the lake; its movement caused a wake in the form of the letter "v". Even though sceptics insisted that it was just a log, which was obviously not. Logs don't drift at this speed.

It is supposed that the Loch Lake monster is a live plesiosaurus. It is not ruled out that a group of plesiosaura is living in the lake and bother tourists from time to time (or may be tourists bother the creatures?) Is it possible that a prehistoric creature could survive within millions of years? This may be so because turtles, crocodiles and sharks lived in the same epoch with plesiosaurus and still survived till today.

9.3 Answer the following questions:

· What stories do fishermen tell about giant creatures in the sea? Why aren’t these stories about giant marine creatures taken seriously?

· What is happening near the coast of Canada, according to these stories?

· Do we know much about giant cephalopoda?

· What were the results of the experiment in the Suruga Bay?

· What is the Loch famous for? Do you believe in Nessy? Why do you think the story got so popular?

· Have you heard any other legends about monsters?