Comments on: First Live Sightings of Shepherd’s Ziphiid

By: corrick

corrick — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:14:05 +0000

Shepherd’s beaked whale, imho, aka Gambo.

By: dabode

dabode — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:47:00 +0000

Frankly I get more excited over discoveries in our oceans and seas than I do with land based or fresh-water based discoveries.
When I stumbled onto this site it was an interest in bigfoot, loch ness or since I’m in Manitoba, Canada…manipogo but I’ve soon tired of all the stuff I found on you-tube and the like.
But this site has sparked a interest in cryptozoology and I really get excited about discoveries in our oceans.
It is the most unexplored place on earth, the final frontier if you will.
Not only is there thousands of miles of surface area, there is thousands of feet of depth harboring many secrets and wonders.
Thanks Loren and the others for the opportunity to find out what cryptozoology is all about…

By: planettom

planettom — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:44:07 +0000

Wonderful! This is a great writeup and thanks for posting links to the scholarly publications. Tremendous!

By: red_pill_junkie

red_pill_junkie — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:06:21 +0000

This new findings certainly confirm the predictions you made in the Yahoo! interview Loren

By: DavidFredSneakers

DavidFredSneakers — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:23:20 +0000

Thanks for the heads up!

By: Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:48:37 +0000

Wunderbar! I want all the ziphiids above to leap off the page into everyone’s cup of morning tea!

It is great to share good cetacean news.

By: DavidFullam

DavidFullam — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:41:10 +0000

As a lover of cetaceans, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to wake up to all the whale news posted here.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:10:56 +0000

It’s funny how these new marine species get short shrift by the media and people in general but I think I have an idea why. It might be because the ocean is so vast and offers so many opportunities for new discoveries that when one is made, I think people just kind of expect it. It isn’t so Earth shattering to them because for them it’s like “hey, the ocean is HUGE! Of COURSE we are going to find new things there”. This maybe detracts a little from the unexpected appeal of finding a new type of monkey or deer. I think people are more attracted to the new discoveries in places where they would never have expected to find anything truly new, like in a landlocked lake or a forest. Despite the fact that the Pacific Northwest wilderness is in itself vast and I don’t think we have catalogued all of its species (Bigfoot maybe?), it still probably seems more accessible and less likely to harbor surprises to most people.

Another thought concerning new discoveries in general, while I think the discovery of a new whale is very exciting, to the common layperson it is sometimes just a new type of creature that we already know exists. It perhaps doesn’t seem like a very big deal. It just doesn’t have the same romance and mystery as finding something truly shocking and different (like sasquatch or a surviving dinosaur, etc), or finding the occasional “Lost World” of new species. But I am sure if they were to dredge up a new type of tentacled, bioluminescent thing from the depths rather than a new whale, we’d see more media coverage because of its shock appeal. Anyway, I get really excited about any new species discovery in this world of shrinking habitats. It is kind of sad to me that the media typically does not cover them enough to my liking. When some sensationalized blobsquatch photos get more media response (albeit usually negative) than an actual new discovery, it just makes me realize how much people crave the drama and mystery over the tangible discoveries being made.

By: DWA

DWA — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:10:01 +0000

[yawn] big deal.

Hey, as I’ve said here, if you don’t exhibit characters diagnostic of species, it’s just another blobsquatch.
Cool. I’m starting to think that stuff like this might eventually get the hard biological sciences off the dime on animals like [bias][species diagnostic] the sasquatch. See enough of these, and even a “mainstream” scientist might start thinking: OK, what really is so farfetched about [another] bipedal ape?