Google Earth Sea Monster Off Deception Island: Kraken? [Video]

Nessie. Champy. Ogopogo. Ayia Napa. Kraken.

Sea monsters have haunted the depths of our vast oceans and collective imaginations since the dawn of time, whether giant serpents, leviathans, squids, or prehistoric dinosaurs that somehow escaped the cataclysms of the ancient world.

Encompassing about 71 percent of our planet’s surface—about 140 million square miles with a volume of more than 320 million cubic miles—indeed, our oceans create the perfect habitat for mysterious beasts and the quintessential repository for countless secrets, civilizations, and organisms our modern consciousness may never be able to fully comprehend. Same goes for the countless lakes, rivers, streams and other water bodies throughout the globe.

The long-necked Loch Ness Monster, aka Nessie, is perhaps the most infamous, with sightings of this enigmatic creature stretching back more than 1,500 years within Scotland’s murky, and perhaps most-fabled water body.

As mankind moves further away from our roots as a native species embracing our precious environment and closer toward our narcissistic endeavors manufacturing artificial monstrosities, aka machines, it is only inevitable we would once again detect an elusive marine anomaly to remind us that we are so not alone—in this world, or this universe. There’s just so much still yet to discover, yet to explore, yet to attempt to comprehend!

Recently, social media was abuzz with reports that a YouTube user, through the global mapping program Google Earth, happened upon such a being.

While zooming near the remote (and equally mysterious) Deception Island in the South Shetland Island archipelago—that just so happens to be the protruding precipice of an ancient volcano—user wowforreeel discovered an anomaly among the Antarctic isles.

Posting the findings on YouTube for all the world to witness, wowforreeel’s video shows a perplexing green-dark mass to the southeast of the island.

Measuring 96 yards across with an apparent mouth some 25 yards in length, the mysterious object resembles a gigantic cryptid which some Internet users have come to speculate may in fact be the mythological Kraken monster—a legendary monster legend typically relegates to the waters off Norway.

“Massive disturbance in the ocean,” wowforreeel writes. “Is this a rock formation? Or is it some THING breaking the surface?”

Without further investigation it remains impossible to ascertain exactly what this bizarre Google Earth finding is, and even if it does turn out to be a giant, as yet unidentified, sea being or some sort, there is nothing to indicate such a mutant—or any such mutants, truly—would pose a threat to humans.

MORE – Inside Plum Island: Mysteries, Myths & Monsters, Explained

The so-called Ayia Napa Sea Monster, for example, which has roamed the coast of Cyprus possibly since the 2nd Century, A.D. (and may in fact be the mythical Scylla monster, though this also demands further extensive investigation), is known to locals as “To Filiko Teras,” aka The Friendly Monster.

Champy, a mysterious creature inhabiting Lake Champlain, which borders New York, Vermont, and Canada, and was first spotted by Native Americans, does also not seem to have a record of harming humans. (Though frightening them is another story!)

Nor does Ogopogo, the elusive beast reportedly inhabiting Okanagan Lake in British Columbia. Nor did the so-called “Montauk Monster”—widely believed to be an escaped mutant-hybrid from the top-secret experimentations on Plum Island.

Naysayers will always refute the mysterious and otherworldly as anything but. Perhaps they are all just the result of periodic releases of “swamp gas,” as some noteworthy UFO sightings have been dismissed as. Perhaps these sea monsters (not to be confused with the seminal punk band Sea Monster; shout out to Arthur!) are nothing but supersaturated logs and tree stumps that were stuck at the bottom of these water bodies and for some reason or another inexplicably rise to the surface and are mistaken as dinosaurs. Perhaps they are simply a family of sea otters or other marine subaquatic wildlife that from time to time creep out the water and terrify us.