Florida’s Trident Tailed Sea Monster
Posted by Xeno on April 28, 2009
It has a large, somewhat mammalian head, clawed fins, and a trident-like tail…so they say of Florida’s sea monster, with sightings dating back to the 1800’s. There’s apparently more than one of these puppies, and they have the potential to move quickly with a lot of power. Hours of video footage exist by a guy named Sowerwine showing bits and pieces of the creature.
MonsterQuest went to an ocean-fed coastal lake in Florida to investigate such legends of a sea monster with a forked tail, but the lake was full of sediment, and the divers couldn’t see diddly. They did, however, have an intriguing sonar hit of something about 14 feet long moving quickly, although murky water conditions made it impossible to find the sucker.
One expert feels that the creature is a manatee, although the snout of the beast is skinnier and its eye and head structure appear different. Others feel that the animal is a seal of some kind following the Gulf Stream, possibly a Hooded seal or a Caribbean Monk seal, thought to be extinct.
- via Vulpesffb
The behavior is the same as mating manatees, but that’s not a manatee tail.
Update: According to the Underwater Times, this is a manatee with an injured tail:
Florida Fish and Wildlife biologists believe that the cold weather has helped to uncover a local mystery; the identity of the mysterious sea monster featured on the TV show MonsterQuest which airs on the History Channel.
As hundreds of manatees huddled to stay warm inside the channel of the Florida Power and Light Riviera Beach Power Plant, one of the gentle sea cows stood out due to a distinct feature of its anatomy.
Thought to have been injured by a boat propeller at some point in its life, the manatee’s tail grew back into three separate prongs.
Due to the unusual shape, the manatee leaves three separate wakes on the water’s surface while swimming just below.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission believes that this is the source of the sea creature shown during a segment last year on Monsterquest….