5. SORTING IT ALL OUT

Heuvelmans' compilation of 358 "significant" reports includes at least a dozen which may concern the same creature as in the Valhalla case, although no other report matches this one in every detail. Every case is different, and the witnesses in these hundreds of cases could not possibly all have been describing the same species. To skeptics, this is evidence of hoax[1] or error. To Heuvelmans, it indicates there are several types of animals involved: as many as nine, according to his book.

The idea of an entire seaquarium of monsters cruising the seven seas is understandably difficult to swallow[2]. Still, there is nothing outrageous about the idea of one or two unknown remaining at large[3]. There had never been a sighting of a megamouth shark (Megachasma pelagios) before the first specimen was caught, quite by accident, in 1976. The Peruvian beaked whale (Mesoplodon peruvians) was unknown to science until 1976 and not formally described until 1990. No one can state with certainty that the oceans hold no more surprises.

If this still sounds like inconclusive speculation, it is. Until we have a body, or, at the least, closeup photographic evidence, what Willy Ley called "the great unknown of the seas" will continue to frustrate all attempts at definitive classification.

We are left with this simple fact: on December 7th, 1905, two well-qualified witnesses observed a large unknown marine animal. Their report stands as irrefutable if incomplete evidence that the oceans hold at least one spectacular creature still evading[4] the probes of science.