Seaweed Mane Explanation From Jay Cooney

Re-post
 Green Renaissance's Photos · Green Renaissance's Page

The Mary River turtle (Elusor macrurus) with a green mohawk of algae. It's suggested that the algae helps provide camouflage. Jay Cooney just sent me a copy of the photo and made the suggestion Apparently the turtles do this as camouflage. A longneck doing this could definitely explain the seaweed-like "hair"[in the "mane"]!   And actually that is a quite good explanation. the seaweed (algae) would also be growing in seasonally, in both saltwater and fresh (with different species) and also could look either greenish or reddish brown, and so it fits all of the broad criteria. Furthermore, the animals could be tearing it off of each other by mouth without doing each other any harm, and the photos do show other patches of growth on the face in the area where "ear fins" and "whiskers" [even "green whiskers"] are rarely and irregularly reported So I am going to pencil that in a strong possibility and in fact I now rank it as a strong possibility,  a higher possibility than Bernard Heuvelmans' and Ivan Sanderson's suggestion that vascularized fibers make up the "Mane." I do not have it as the default yet but it might well be the explanation that stands the Occam's Razor test the best. Best Wishes, Dale D.

Sea Giraffes Appendix

We had discussed the matter on the blog before at

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2013/06/update-on-sea-giraffes.html

But Jay Cooney and I had been discussing the matter again more extensively and these are some of my illustrations I had sent to him then. They had been waiting here unpublished until now.

Giraffe like "Caddy" (Off the West Coast of NA) compared to Corinthian SS (Off East Coast of NA)

Both of these sightings compared against Oudemans' composite model

Newspaper drawing of Corinthian SS (Inaccurate) compared to Oudemans SS composite reconstruction
Below, my statistical averages drawn from thousands of Longneck reports worldwide as matched against Hutchinson's SS, Bay of Meil in the Orkneys, 1910

Plesiosaur neck inserted for purposes of comparison
(Plesiosaur skeleton shown at bottom)

Hutchinson's SS off Orkneys (Scotland) is as high as the whole giraffe, not just the neck. That makes the neck approximately twice as long as the giraffe's neck and probably more. Below, Hutchinson's diagram of how he figured the height of the sea serpent "Periscope" by judging it against the mast of their boat and triangulating. Mr Hutchinson had submitted his report directly to Tim Dinsdale in 1960.

Below, Corinthian, Meil Bay, and my composite "Merhorses" (Mine in the brown colouration phase, both redbrown and greenish or olive brown both being regularly noted in such sightings with the reddish brown seen much more commonly. The giraffe-like mottled effect is one infrequent variation on the brownish one) Please note that in opposition to Heuvelmans' "Merhorse" description, the mane is stiff and stands up like a "fin"and the eyes are not large. The "Horns" appear to me to be the same material as the "Fins"

 

 

Neck Flexibilty possible in the long-necked Plesiosaur Muraenosaurus,

 from an illustration supplied by Scott Mardis

 

In the case of these sightings showing the whole length of the neck above the surface, the body can be assumed to be almost vertical below the surface.

 

 

Update on Sea Giraffes

From the mailbag:

Good evening Mr Drinnon,
Always had an interest in Cryptozoology (via my love of the 'Fortean Times' magazine and Mr Karl Shuker), Your website is always educating, interesting,and intriguing,

As with all these crypto subjects I'd like tell you a story about a friend of mine (yes I know)! My friend (he's dead now) was called David Brian Plummer, (he's quite famous in the UK as he bred/devised The Plummer Terrier) He had the (in)famous fact that his books on dogs are the most stolen from British Libraries, Anyway, he used to live in Caithness, NE Scotland. He had a boat and he used to fish for Pollack (a Cod type fish) off the Orkney Isles. He told me (swore on the Bible etc) that he saw a Sea Monster (Plesiosaur type) he said it was marked like a Giraffe? and he said they were often spotted (witnessed, poor choice of words) between the Orkney and Shetland Isles.
He was honest and I believed him!

Thanks for your website
  John Hay

"Hutchinson's Sea-Serpent, 1818"-seen off of the Orkney Islands. Neck is approx. 18 feet high.
 (Should be the reddish-brown colour of Kelp: this is another "sea-giraffe" report)
 Painting by Glen Vaudrey after Hutchinson's original sketch
 http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2011/11/glen-paints-sea-serpent.html

Below, going from North to South and top downwards, Shetlands, Orkneys and Scotland.
(The Moray Firth is at the "Cleft" in Scotland and Loch Ness is inland of that)

(Map is from Wikipedia)

 The Corinthian 1918 "Sea-Giraffe" report also specifies that the creature was Plesiosaur-shaped, and the witnesses believed it to be a Plesiosaur.It was seen off of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
Original Newspaper account for the SS Corinthian "Sea-Giraffe"
Corinthian SS as Retold in Coleman/Huyghe Field Guide

Please note that the manes in such cases (which come from both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of North America) are of the short and "Clipped", upright mane type and not loose and flowing manes. That is part of the "Giraffe-like" description and goes along with the common description as "(Continuous) fins along the spine"
In this series of reports the head and neck are usually given as twenty feet long and the whole length about sixty feet. Both estimates could be somewhat exaggerated. This is the same size range as the Daedalus Sea-serpent (which also had an inconspicuous kelp-coloured  mane) The proportions of the head and arrangement of the facial features are as specified in the reports. The Corinthian SS report also described log fins or ears that seem to be extra streamers of the mane at the back of the head.

The Corinthian "Sea-Giraffe", from Heuvelmans

[A separate discussion on this blog mentions that the "Whiskers" reported in the Corinthian case seem to be the same material as the mane and seemed to be lying crosswise in the mouth, not growing out of the snout as normal whiskers. This would be one in a series of reports that seem to say that male Longnecks engage in non-lethal fighting by attacking each other's manes instead of more vital parts. Another US-coastal report which described aggression against the witnesses in a rowboat also said that the creature was spitting a similar sort of material out of its mouth at the time]

Most Longneck reports specify uneven colouration with lighter and darker spots, but the more extreme "Giraffe-spotted" pattern is a minority. It is not only a local variation, though, it happens at low frequencies world-wide.