obscuritiesoffbeat:

The Hook Island sea monster photos are some of the most stunning cryptid photos ever taken. These images of a tiny boat floating over a huge creature are haunting and mysterious, and have intrigued many people since French photographer Robert Le Serrec snapped them in 1964. But do they hold up to scrutiny? Is there a monstrous sea monster resting off the coast of Queensland, Australia?

From a cryptozoological standpoint, it seems unlikely. I haven’t been able to find any mention of a similar beast in the vicinity, nor of an even more monstrous frog (if we’re assuming that this is a tadpole). Cryptids that end up existing don’t spontaneously generate. They evolve like any other animal and follow the same biological rules. The fact that none of these creatures have been reported before or since mars the case for the Hook Island sea monster.

What is in the pictures, then? Most likely a mass of plastic sheeting weighed down by sand. This explains why the edges of the creature in the (incidentally less-circulated) top pictures look like, well, handfuls of sand over plastic, and why the eyes are oddly un-animal like.

If we look at Le Serrec, the case that the Hook Island sea monster is a hoax grows. Le Serrec had unpaid creditors in France when he took these snapshots and was apparently wanted by Interpol. More damning, though, is the fact that Le Serrec tried to get a group together five years before for a “financially fruitful” enterprise that was “to do with the sea-serpent”.

All of this leads me to wonder: could you or I recreate these pictures through the sand-and-plastic method? Someone want to give it a try? For science?