It tends to bring the significance of eyewitness testimonial credibility to skeptics, but also helps the eyewitness awaken from their cryptozoological coma.

It sounds like a Leatherback turtle to me.

The Curator suggested an oarfish (standard response…but you could say that ‘leatherback turtle’ is equally cliche) if so, what was it doing on the surface, clearly happy and not dying, as a deep sea fish like the oarfish would be in such a position?

I don’t recall fish sticking their heads out of the water…most odd

and of course an oarfish would have its trademark crest, wouldn’t it?

(unless it was a ribbon fish which is similar)

If not a turtle, could be a walrus or strange species of seal strayed down from the north.

(can you imagine how funny a bladder nosed seal would look if you had never seen one before?)

I was reading an article on arctic seals in a British nature mag, apparently we often get visitors. Sometimes they are lost youngsters, but at others they seem to be healthy adults who have teamed up with local seals.

I contacted a local division of NRK (Norwegian State Channel) who aired the several minute shoot, since NRK lets you order DVD copies of the news, but after a lot of ado it turned out they didn’t have it in their archive anymore.
A poor, scaled-down version is available online here. (Click the red button to see the video)

Anyway, its good to note that the classic New England-style sea serpent is still being sighted.

This sounds very like your run-of-the-mill Loch Ness Monster type of sighting. I am actually rather surprised that the dimensions are so conservative in this case.

The witness evidently confused the meanings of “vertical” and “horizontal”.