By: KEVIN JOLLY
Staff Writer
When animals perish and undergo decomposition, they can quickly become unrecognizable from their former selves, especially in seawater. So when larger sea creatures die and wash up on our shores looking completely alien from their former selves, it makes sense that historically their corpses have been at the center of hysteria about sea monsters and other legends. There are many scientifically and historically significant accounts we can learn from this phenomenon known as ‘globsters’.
The concept of globsters originates from Ivan T. Sanderson in 1960 when he was attempting to identify a creature carcass that had washed ashore in Tasmania. He came up with the term because he was quoted saying the creature had, “No visible eyes, no defined head, and no apparent bone structure.” Some other sources of the event describe the Tasmanian carcass as just the “blob”. What is most often the case is that globsters are determined most likely to be just late-staged decomposed whales or sharks, and some are just clumps of blubber expelled from other animals. Modern DNA technological advancements have killed the mythos of many globsters this way, as in 2001, the Newfoundland globster was sampled and identified as a sperm whale. The Newfoundland sperm whale carcass also aligned heavily with that of many historical globsters, pretty much confirming the idea that globsters are just carcasses of known animals, many species being sperm whales, decayed beyond recognition.
One of the first recorded globsters was in 1808 in Scotland after a storm washed an estimated 36-55 foot carcass called the “Stronsay Beast”. Examinations of the Stronsay Beast claimed it had three limbs which were thought to be either paws or wings. Along its back were bristles that were said to glow in the dark when wet. Initial examinations from the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh identified the Stronsay Beast as being a new species of a sea serpent. An anatomist in London later came to the conclusion that the Stronsay Beast was a decomposing basking shark, and in 1849, a Scottish professor in Edinberg concurred.
One of the more confusing globsters was in 1924 in South Africa. Trunko had washed ashore for ten days and in those days, no academic ever conducted a proper investigation of Trunko, so all there is to go off are stories, drawings, and a few photos which were taken. Trunko was described as a large creature covered in thick white fur and a trunk like an elephant. Trunko reportedly was first seen off the shore fighting two killer whales, and supposedly once leaping 20 feet out of the water before beaching. Modern investigations of Trunko after the fact have concluded that Trunko was most likely another whale in which the trunk was actually the spine and the fur coat was how blubber appears after decomposition. Orcas have also been known to often play with animal corpses, which could look like fighting.
To reflect back upon the sensation of globsters and other related things, something interesting I think is an appreciation we can take in the advances of academia in the modern day. Aside from how fun it may be to think about fantastical creatures like globsters, if we tunnel vision on just the entertainment, it can be easy to overlook and underappreciate the fact that thanks to advances in human understandings we no longer have to navigate many of these pseudo-scientific concepts which were so popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.