Comments on: California “Sea-Ape”?

By: TrueAvatar

TrueAvatar — Sat, 19 May 2007 06:21:53 +0000

Personally, I’d like a more up to date sighting or even a fuzzy picture to pop up before I start putting credit into the mermaid theory. History has taught us many times that often times a person’s knowledge of the world will affect how that person rationalizes an oddity or unknown entity. If it was indeed a mer-thingie or aquatic ape, then why havn’t there been more credible sightings recently? They sure sound playful enough to pop in and say hello every once in a while The ecological disaster scenario could rationalize the lack of recent publicized sightings, but I’d imagine we’d be able to at least find skeletal remains of some simian-fish hybrid or whatever since this documented sighting only occured less than 200 years ago.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Fri, 11 May 2007 02:59:04 +0000

I also haven’t seen any paintings or photos of anyone from any era where they looked even vaguely like a manatee so I don’t think the “manatee look” was ever in!

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Fri, 11 May 2007 02:49:57 +0000

Granted, loneliness can alter one’s perceptions of beauty, with other humans perhaps. No matter what the standard of beauty, at least Mona Lisa and so on were clearly human, so we can compare human beauty but this is different than talking about a manatee. I can see being at sea causing someone to fancy other guys or a woman someone would not normally find attractive, but I don’t know about people starting to fancy animals or large non human looking manatees swimming around in the ocean. My guess is they would turn to their crewmates first before lusting after a manatee. I also don’t buy that they would be lonely enough for romantic companionship that they would start to think they saw humans were there weren’t any. Is this sort of thing documented by modern day sailors? Do they look over the side of the boat and think “That sea lion is hot.”? The old tales tell of beautiful mermaids that could seduce sailors, and mermaids are always represented as being gorgeous in artistic representations. I find it hard to believe that any amount of alcohol and being out at sea could turn a manatee into that nor could it turn someone to thinking that an obviously non human creature is in fact a beautiful human looking maiden.

By: Bob Michaels

Bob Michaels — Fri, 11 May 2007 01:53:52 +0000

If you have been at sea for quite sometime and are deprived of female company even an ugly walrus would look good.

By: kamoeba

kamoeba — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:14:11 +0000

Hey, I’m saying if a guy is at sea long enough, even the least attractive creature looks like it could be a fun partner for romance (even other guys). I also always wondered how men at sea could mistake something we think of as ugly for something we think of as pretty. I think if you look at people in the past, they weren’t up to our standards of who or what is pretty. I used the Mona Lisa as an example because I’ve never heard one person say that she’s attractive, but I’ve heard plenty of guys comment on how homely she is. Just look at anyone’s grandparents’ wedding photos sometime and you’ll wonder just how any of us ever got spawned.

By: CrimsonFox79

CrimsonFox79 — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:19:54 +0000

kamoeba, like Mystery_man said, I doubt that whatever era you live in- nor what your personal perception of a beautiful human being is- a grayish, bald, blobby, flippered manatee does not resemble a human being in any way.

The Mona Lisa, while she wouldn’t make today’s ‘plastic-surgery’ magazine covers, she still is obviously a human woman no matter what your tastes are.

Manatees have absolutely no resemblance to humans or anything humanoid at all. Maybe if your vision is impaired enough from alcohol you can mistake a manatee as a hybrid of a fish and a bulldog or pug. But not a human.

Also, no matter what era you are in, tastes in what is attractive and not vary from person to person.

Me and my female friends each have totally different tastes in what we find attractive in a guy. And my male friends all have different views on what a beautiful woman is. So there is never a worldwide agreement on beauty.

But there will always be a pretty consistent agreement on what looks like a human or not

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:00:10 +0000

Dogu4- Your input is always appreciated as well. The ironic thing about the Salton Sea is that although its very creation was essentially an accident caused by the collapse of a levy on the Colorado River, it has become the surrogate stopover for hundreds of thousands of migrating birds on the Pacific Flyway who have lost their original marshland habitats. So in a way, the creation of the Salton sea was a godsend for these birds and created a new habitat even as the old ones were destroyed.

Most of the Salton Sea’s problems nowadays stem from pollution and the diverging of rivers for irrigation purposes, which restricts freshwater input and that has caused increased salinity levels in the inland sea to the point where it is 25 percent saltier than the ocean nowadays. It has also caused the sea to shrink. This salinity has caused the disappearance of fish such as the corvina, the sargo, and the croaker. As a result, the fish eating birds that stop there such as the brown pelican may stop coming there. If that happens, the birds will have nowhere else to go, which will affect the whole area since one of the main tourist draws is bird watching.

There is a bit of hope, though. The state resources agency is apparently drawing up a plan to try and save the sea. This will apparently entail creating a less salty sea one sixth of its current size with ponds for habitat restoration and 70 miles of canals and barriers. Price tag- $6 billion. Small price to pay for maintaining this remarkable man made habitat, if you ask me. I definately think that some of the mismanagement of these areas has its root in people not being able to see beyong the bottom line and not predicting the consequences of certain actions. Hopefully, the disaster awaiting the Salton Sea can be averted.

I haven’t read “Sea of Slaughter”, but it sounds intriguing. If I can find a copy over here in Japan, I will pick it up. It is interesting that you mention the Encyclopedia of Life, as it is one project that I am very excited about. Looks set to outdo the Mexican Conabio compilation of 700,000 species by a long shot. It is an amazing undertaking, 1.8 million species, with pics, videos, and maps to boot! I’m geeking about it already. The fact that so many respectable institutions are collaborating on it is incredible enough, not to mention the fact that it will be free for all to peruse. It will be an amazing leap in how science is done and how information will be accessed and shared, and increase the flow of information between different fields of science. A good quote I read about it described it as improving the democracy of science. To bad it will take 10 years to compile.

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:09:38 +0000

Hey Mystery Man; Always appreciate your informed and well considered input.

Salton Sea, of course, is a tale of environmental devastation that goes well beyond its mis-management for wildlife. Its very existence is a landmark in questionable decision-making ability and engineering’s inability to completely anticipate the impacts of its attempt to improve on nature and is a loud siren calling whenever and wherever new “water making the desert bloom” development schemes are brought up by visionaries who seem unable to see beyond the “bottom line”.

Oh, and I might have mentioned it before but to really get a feel of what an unbroken wilderness such as North America’s prior to the introduction of European’s exploitation, you really should pick up a copy of Farley Mowat’s “Sea of Slaughter”. What we see as wild nature these days on postage stamp sized chunks of land no developer wanted is a poor representation of what was here…or so we think since so much information has already been lost.

FYI, TED Conference has just endowed EOWilson’s Encyclopedia of Life…which any bio type must find interesting.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Thu, 10 May 2007 02:59:12 +0000

Dogu4- Yes, and it’s not even the affects of fishing that causes havoc to ocean ecosystems. Marine ecosystems and aquatic habitats tend to be sensitive to the affects of pollution, destruction of coral, and other man made threats. I do not believe the full effects of our pollution, global warming, and overfishing have been seen yet and sometimes the results can be unforseen and unpredictable. I doubt it was known just how profoundly ocean warming would decimate coral species, or how chemicals in the water of some lakes could cause blooms in the population of invasive species. Who would have thought that the limiting of river run off into the Salton Sea of California would have caused such dramatic spikes in salinity which would in turn wipe out the population of fish such as the corvina (a type of sport fish) ?

I have no doubt that there is every possibility that a plethora of ocean going and aquatic species undocumented by science have dissappeared since the effects of these destructive factors travel faster and farther than any scientific expedition. I am sure that even very large species such as the proposed mermaid and sea serpents could have met their demise. All it takes is for one species to dissappear in order to have a negative effect upon the entire ecosystem.

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Wed, 09 May 2007 16:37:55 +0000

Mystery Man…I’d tend to agree with your last point. A lot, and I mean a whole LOT, of species were exterpated prior to their being documented by naturalists with anything like a modern understanding of biology. Take into consideration what an activity like hunting was for people, whether in Pennsylvania or Mongolia. It was rarely a guy alone with a bow and arrow. It was tribes of men, women and children with noisemakers and weapons surrounding as large a valley as they could surround and killing everything insides. The carnage on the oceans was less observable but just as devestating and maybe more so.