HALLOWEEN POSTERS (2020) 3- DEEP SEA CRYPTIDS

Welcome to the third addition to our 2020 Halloween poster selection.

And for this post, I thought we would follow on the aquatic theme that the previous poster gave us.
More specially, just as dagon was a story about a mysterious unknown horror that dwells in the sea...

This subject i'm about to talk about, relates to eerie beings that lurk in the darker parts of the sea...
except that nobody's entirely sure as to whether they exist or not.

that's right, for this post, we'll be looking at a cryptid!
for those who don't know...

In short, a "cryptid" is a term used to describe an animal or entity whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated
usually with evidence of their existence is questionable at best...

in long terms, we have always had strange sightings of such creatures existing, despite there being no 100% solid evidence for their existence.
Every country has at least one of them, whether it be it be the bigfoot, yeti, wendigo, Chupacabra, loch-ness monster, Mokele-mbembe, Ropen, Flatwoods monster etc.

These are creatures that seem to mainly exist by word-of-mouth or in legends and have no solid evidence of actually existing, yet many people (to this day) claim to have seen them. Usually, these sightings are told through eyewitness accounts (which is NOT a good way of looking for evidence of a creature existing without any tracks, dung, DNA or other things to prop it up.) and often by folks who simply want attention or money. Many cryptid sightings have become popular tourist attractions for this very reason.

however...
very rarely, you'll come across accounts of creatures that despite no current evidence of their existence, sounds so entirely plausible and was sighted by a surprisingly legitimate source (like a professional no-nonsense scientist) and in such hard to get places that it causes you to wonder if by some it actually does, or at least did exist.

Well, that is how it happened recently for me...
whilst surfing the internet, i came across a video by the YouTuber:

Trey the Explainer

The video he had just uploaded at the time was called
TERROR IN THE DEEP: THE UNTOUCHABLE FISH INCIDENT

you can find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFypxJwfZOo

and it talked about what might be the most plausible/most likely to actually exist of all the cryptids...

I was so captivated by it, i HAD to make it a halloween poster.
so allow me to introduce....

BEEBE'S ABYSSAL FISH, AKA: BEEBE'S "UNTOUCHABLE FISH"

Beebe's Abyssal Fish are deep-sea fish that were supposedly observed by William Beebe in a expedition in the North Atlantic Ocean off Nonsuch Island, Bermuda, between 1930 and 1934 and never seen since. Beebe’s bathysphere dives incorporated the first direct observations of abyssal/deep sea fish in their natural environment.

The story begins on the 22th of November 1932, Bermuda-based zoologist Dr Beebe was 2100 ft beneath the surface of the sea in a bathysphere (spherical steel vessel for use in undersea observation, provided with portholes, torches and suspended by a cable from a boat), sited 5 miles southeast of Bermuda's Nonsuch Island.

While he was observing the denizens of the deep passing by the bathysphere's windows, two very unusual fishes became illuminated in the craft's electric beam of light as they twice swam past it, perhaps no more than 8 ft away.

Their long slender bodies, each of which were supposedly 6 ft long with strongly undershot jaws housing numerous teeth, reminded Beebe of barracudas or dragon fish, but running along either side of each fish was a single, laterally-sited, horizontal row of luminous organs (photophores), little short of twenty in total, and every one emitting a powerful pale blue or white light.

Equally striking were the two twitching, tentacle-like structures that hung down beneath each fish - one arising from their lower jaw, the other from the beginning of their short anal fin.

Once again, each of these structures emitted light, by virtue of a pair of organs at its tip.
Also noteworthy was their vertical dorsal fin, positioned well back towards the tail-end of the body. Beebe was unable to discern any pectoral fins or pelvic fins.

From these fishes' general morphology, Beebe concluded that their species was most probably allied to the melanostomiatids, popularly known as the scaleless black dragon fishes. However, its single line of lateral photophores, not to mention its pair of ventral tentacles with light-emitting terminal organs and of course it's large size distinguished it from any known species within that family.

As a result, Beebe christened his mystifying discovery "Bathysphaera intacta" ('untouchable bathysphere fish'), sole member of a new genus.

"Bathysphaera" was not the only hitherto unknown species of deepsea fish that Beebe sighted and named.

He also spied a mysterious, 2-ft-long, torpedo-shaped fish at depths of 1500 ft and 2500 ft, and named this grey-coloured species the pallid sailfin "Bathyembrix istiophasma".

He also described a three-rodded angler fish and called it "Bathyceratias trilychnus"

as well as a Chaetodon butterfly fish or an Acanthurus surgeon fish, but exquisitely decorated with five glowing lines of yellow and purple photophores on each side of its roundish body. that he called "Bathysidus pentagrammus",

as you can tell he was qutie fond of using the word "Bathy" in his latin names LOL :)

Now before anybody here gets too excited it's important to take all of these with a major grain of salt:

1-No specimens of any of these 'untouchable' species have ever been obtained.
Not by trawling, not from washed up corpses, not even by other expeditions into the deep.

2- in conjunction with the first point, nobody has since seen these mysterious fish.

3- it's likely that given the conditions that beebe was in...
(such as a small port-hole to view through, the darkness of the sea, and possible a limited oxygen supply maybe causing his mind to not be in best condition)

--maybe he was hallucinating or misidentified the animals he saw as something more unusual.

However, it's also important to note that William Beebe was a pretty trustworthy and reliable zoologist, all things considered, who made it a point to take his observations seriously so it makes it difficult to fully dismiss his fishy descriptions as a total fabrication. Maybe those creatures he sighted DID exist at one point, but have sadly since gone extinct.

or maybe....
these species actually still exist hidden somewhere in the darkest deep...but who really knows for sure.
The ocean after all, is a REALLY big place, and we have only really explored a fraction....

if there is ANYTHING on this old earth still to be uncovered, it's in the ocean.
would you dare to find out?