A Most Compelling 'Sea Serpent' Case: The Alvin Submersible Encounter

It has been 8 years since the publication of this article, yet it recently reemerged on my radar in the comments of a Twitter post about the most notable of the entertaining, classic stories about mysterious creatures of depths below. My initial response was panic. This article expresses outdated views I no longer hold (I was 16, in high school). I am now pursuing a career in Conservation Biology, and do not wish to be discredited by a childhood belief in literal marine reptile survivors. In this article, I regrettably gave credence to distortions of plesiosaur paleobiology here. I no longer support a literalist interpretation of ‘relict pleiosaur’ sightings. I have retained the enthusing story of the Alvin sighting but entrenched in a critical explanation of sea serpent claims, not rampant speculation that stretches a basis in legitimate paleobiology or geology.

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While submerged near the Tongue of the Ocean in the Bahamas around July of 1965, Alvin submersible pilot Marvin McCamis allegedly observed an animal which could only be described as reminiscent of the classic 'long necked sea serpent'.¹ Accompanied by Captain Bill Rainnie, the two had entered these depths in order to survey the Naval underwater listening array Artemis.¹ After descending nearly one mile deep into a crevasse, the pilots allegedly noticed movement and spotted an object which they took to be a utility pole.¹ When their position allowed a better view of the object, they realized that it was an animal which possessed a thick body propelled by flippers, a long neck, and a rather snake-like head.¹ Before the submersible's cameras could reach the correct angle and activate, the animal quickly ascended and swam off.¹ The observation was entered into their logbook, although the two remained hesitant to speak further about it for fear of ridicule.¹ While this may sound to be a rather spectacular course of events, those alleged to have been involved in the sighting were all very real. The Alvin, the Naval Deep Submergence Vehicle from which this 'sea serpent' was allegedly viewed, was first commissioned in 1964 from which it made more than 4,600 dives.² Captain McCamis himself, who passed away in 2004, was assigned as the chief engineer and pilot for the Alvin project after joining the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1963.³ In 1966, McCamis received a Meritorious Service Award from the Secretary of the Navy for his assistance in the recovery of a lost hydrogen bomb using the Alvin.³ Bill Rainnie, who passed away in 1985, received multiple commendation citations and Navy meritorious service awards for his leadership and undertakings with deep submergence.⁴

Sketch of McCamis' 'sea serpent' from Without a Trace; the date of 1969 has been proven erroneous by Scott Mardis' 1997 correspondence with Captain McCamis

The Alvin sighting is generally considered to be reliable among 'sea serpent' proponents, as two submersible captains so experienced as McCamis and Rainnie were likely to be competent observers. Still, even such proficient individuals are not infallible to zoological misidentification or eyewitness bias. Could this have been a case of the classic plesiosaurian 'sea monster' motif filling in the gaps of an ambiguous observation? Considering the multiplicity of global reports describing unidentified marine animals which exhibit long necks stretching from bulky flippered bodies, a non-zoological explanation may not be necessary.⁵ While not all such sightings should necessarily be taken as literal encounters with a radically new animal species, the point as brilliantly stated in Discovering Cadborosaurus remains that:

To dismiss all eyewitness reports as merely anecdotal would be just foolish. In the absence of sufficient material evidence, one can either dogmatically deny even the possibility of undiscovered animals, or look for clues that might help resolve the mystery. ... There are some who would dismiss all such anecdotal evidence, an attitude which smack of dogmatic denial, especially when there is no physical or biological reason for a priori rejection of the possibility of the existence of  marine creatures still unknown to science.⁶

Scott Mardis has since told me that he sent McCamis a variety of papers which included the Robert Rines photographs, photographs of the Zuiyo-Maru carcass (plesiosaur-like but a decomposed basking shark by all biological accounts), and illustrations based off of plesiosaur reconstructions. The former submarine pilot told Scott that they resembled the animal which he observed.  Although the diligent 'sea serpent' researcher Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans held strongly to the idea of unidentified marine animals being mammalian in identity, he admitted that many reported features do have precedence in reptiles.⁵ Others contend that the points are little more than special-pleading or improbable picking and choosing of morphological traits. Paleozoologist Dr. Darren Naish has argued that it would be implausible for plesiosaurs, which maintained a conservatively similar body plan throughout nearly 160-million years, to have suddenly evolved neomorphs such as the hairy manes, dorsal crests, fatty humps, and horn-like protruberances reported by alleged long-necked 'sea serpent' eyewitnesses.⁷  There is also the critical problem faced by all such hypotheses within the Prehistoric Survivor Paradigm: an abnormally large gap in the fossil record remains. Another issue with the relict plesiosaur hypothesis is that the articulation of the zygapophyses in the cervical vertebrae of most plesiosaurs would have prevented much vertical flexure.⁷ Interestingly, a juvenile specimen of Leptocleidus from Australian Cretaceous deposits was preserved with steeply angled cervical zygapophyses which would likely have allowed it to exhibit vertical neck flexure unprecedented by other recorded plesiosaur specimens.¹¹ As pointed out by biologist Cameron McCormick, this was probably a juvenile condition owing to the degree of cartilage present. 

 Captain McCamis and Rainnie's observation stands as one of the most compelling cases in 'sea serpent' literature, a report not easily relegated to the status of a hoax or misidentification. I recommend Dr. Darren Naish's article on the 'Plesiosaur Effect,' which provides a much more reasonable explanation for reports of long-necked sea serpents, that being that eyewitnesses experienced a sociocultural phenomenon where cultural awareness of the ongoing discovery of fossil plesiosaurs filled in the gaps of poor sightings of known marine fauna, debris, etc. Dr. Darren Naish and others have good work discussing 1) why the idea of relict plesiosaurs is absolutely baseless speculation in light of knowledge and inferences of actual plesiosaur life appearances and behavior, not to mention fossil preservation (see video of pertinent lecture below), and 2) why ‘sea serpent sightings’ likely reflect a sociocultural rather than actually zoological phenomena (also see video of pertinent lecture below). There is no substantial data building a body of evidence for prehistoric survivors or radically unprecedented marine vertebrates. I do think that a skeptical, sociocultural lens holds value for understanding concepts of nature and ‘wilderness.’ Cryptozoological belief may reflect Western optimism in the thick of the Anthropocene that large fauna must have escaped extractive exploration. I’m writing on this soon, and hope that it supersedes my outdated views.

References:

1. Drinnon, Dale A. "The Alvin Plesiosaur." Frontiers of Zoology. N.p., 20 Apr. 2013. Web. 21 Apr. 2013. http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-alvin-plesiosaur.html.
2. "Human Occupied Vehicle Alvin." : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2013. http://www.whoi.edu/main/hov-alvin/.
3. "In Memoriam: Marvin McCamis." Marvin McCamis : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2013. http://www.whoi.edu/main/obituaries/archive?tid=3622&cid=2939.
4. "MC-60: William O. Rainnie Papers." WHOI Data Library and Archives. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2013. http://dla.whoi.edu/manuscripts/node/196764.
5. Heuvelmans, Bernard, Richard Garnett, and Alika Watteau. In the Wake of the Sea-serpents. New York: Hill and Wang, 1968. Print.
6. LeBlond, P. H., John Kirk, Christopher L. Murphy, and Jason Walton. Discovering Cadborosaurus. N.p.: Hancock House, 2014. Print.
7. Naish, Darren. "Sea Monsters and the 'Prehistoric Survivor Paradigm." Weird Weekend 2011. Lecture.
8. "Warm-blooded Marine Reptiles at the Time of the Dinosaurs." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100614093341.htm.
9. Liebe, Lene, and Jørn Harald Hurum. "Preliminary Results on Liquid Petroleum Occurring Asfluid Inclusions in Intracellular Mineral Precipitates In the Vertebrae of Pliosaurus Funkei." NORWEGIAN JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY (2012): n. pag. Web.
10. Liebe, Lene, and Jørn Harald Hurum. "Gross Internal Structure and Microstructure of Plesiosaur Limb Bones from the Late Jurassic, Central Spitsbergen." NORWEGIAN JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY (2012): n. pag. Web.
11. "The Lord Geekington: The Flexibility of Plesiosaur Necks." The Lord Geekington: The Flexibility of Plesiosaur Necks. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. http://cameronmccormick.blogspot.com/2008/09/flexibility-of-plesiosaur-necks.html.
12. Naish, Darren. "Plesiosaur Peril — the Lifestyles and Behaviours of Ancient Marine Reptiles | Tetrapod Zoology, Scientific American Blog Network." Tetrapod Zoology. Scientific American, 3 Mar. 2014. Web. 10 Jan. 2015. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2014/03/03/plesiosaur-peril-and-plesiosaur-lifestyle-and-behaviour/