Ethnobiology and Shifting Baselines: An Example Reinterpreting the British Isles’ Most Detailed Account of a Sea Serpent Sighting as Early Evidence for Pre-Plastic Entanglement of Basking Sharks

Abstract

Recognizing shifts in baseline conditions is necessary for understanding longterm changes in populations as a prelude to implementing presentday management actions and setting future restoration goals for anthropogenicallyaltered marine ecosystems. Examining historical information contained within anecdotal accounts from nontraditional sources has previously proven useful in this regard. Herein, I scrutinize eyewitness accounts and accompanying illustrations published in nineteenthcentury natural history journals which together comprise the most detailed description of sighting a purported sea serpent in the British Isles. I then reinterpret this anecdote (as well as complementary evidence offered by cryptozooloogists in its support obtained from other published journal articles of similarly described unidentified marine objects), suggesting it to provide one of the earliest reports of the nonlethal entanglement of an animal-in this case what I believe to have been a basking shark-in European waters. The present work suggests that the entanglement of sharks in fishing gear or hunting equipment has a much longer environmental history than is commonly believed, and provides another example of how ethnozoological studies can contribute toward recognizing past fishingrelated pressures and baseline shifts in affected populations. Sharks, it seems, have been subjected to the impacts of not just direct fishery exploitation but also through becoming bycatch, long before the advent and widespread use of plastic in the middle of the twentieth century.

Early entanglement of Nova Scotian marine animals in pre-plastic fishing gear or maritime debris: indirect evidence from historic ‘sea serpent’ sightings

“…Descriptions of strange creatures that look like Island of Doctor Moreau hybrids are frequently entangled sea turtles (France 2016c(France , 2017. In other cases, and for reasons mentioned earlier, basking sharks are also candidates (France 2019b).…”

“…Indeed, their Latin taxonomic name, Cetorhinus maximus, means 'pointy-nosed monster.' As a result they are likely candidates for being misidentified as sea monsters (Speedie 2017, France 2019b. It is therefore no coincidence that sea serpent sightings peak when basking sharks are abundant (Magin 1996), and this is also contemporaneous to when ruined fishing nets abound (Wallace & Gisborne 2006).…”

“…The "horny textured…shell-like" head of the UMO in Anecdote 8 also reads like the body of a leatherback turtle, as does the notable presence of "rows of glistening teeth" to that animal's papillae. However, the buccal description also fits for the rows gill-rakers inside the long, pointy-snout of a basking shark (Heuvelmans 1968), animals that were often misidentified as sea serpents (Speedie 2017, France 2019b.…”

The media paradox: influence on human shark perceptions and potential conservation impacts

“…Two derivatives of ethnobiology used on the present work are ethnozoology and ethnoichthyology, in which both of them integrates elements of social and natural sciences (Alves and Souto 2015). Besides that, ethnozoology and ethnoichthyology can help by improving and understanding the symbolic study of fauna (France 2019), also contributing for meaningful conservation actions with help from the general public (Barbosa-Filho et al 2020), as can be seen in some present studies (Marques et al 2019).…”

Historical anecdotes of fishing pressure: Misconstrued “sea serpent” sightings provide evidence for antecedent entanglement of marine biota in the British Isles

“…Most frequently, however, it was the undulations or apparent coils of the body that were observed, two or three of them being occasionally visible at the same F I G U R E 3 Unidentified marine objects seen in the British Isles and interpreted as either being the "many-humped"/"stringof-buoys" typology of sea serpent or actual strings of fishing floats pulled behind entangled animals. From top to bottom: 1882 sighting from Orme's Head, Wales (Anecdote 50; Heuvelmans, 1968); 1931 sighting from Thorpeness, Suffolk (Anecdote 2; Dinsdale, 1966); and 1872 and 1882 sightings from the Leda (two views) and the Kätie in the Scottish Hebrides (France, 2019b) time. The foils [i.e., structures in the shape of curved arches used in gothic tracery] had all the appearance … of the coils or folds of a serpent, the sea and black masses being distinctly separated.…”