Perhaps the most famous sea monster is the kraken. According to legends, it lives off the coast of Norway and Iceland. There are different opinions about what his appearance is. Some describe it as a giant squid, others as an octopus. The first handwritten mention of the kraken can be found in the Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan, who in 1752 recorded various oral legends about it. Initially, the word “kgake” was used to refer to any deformed animal that was very different from its own kind. Later it passed into many languages and began to mean “legendary sea monster.”
In the bishop's writings, the kraken appears as a crab fish, of enormous size and capable of dragging ships to the bottom of the sea. Its dimensions were truly colossal; it was compared to a small island. Moreover, it was dangerous precisely because of its size and the speed with which it sank to the bottom. This created a strong whirlpool, which destroyed the ships. The kraken spent most of its time hibernating on the seabed, and then a huge number of fish swam around it. Some fishermen allegedly even took the risk and cast their nets directly over the sleeping kraken. The kraken is believed to be to blame for many maritime disasters.
According to Pliny the Younger, remoras surrounded the ships of the fleet of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, which to some extent contributed to his defeat.
In the XVIII-XIX centuries. Some zoologists have suggested that the kraken may be a giant octopus. Naturalist Carl Linnaeus, in his book “The System of Nature,” created a classification of real-life marine organisms, into which he introduced the kraken, presenting it as a cephalopod. A little later he crossed it out from there.
In 1861, a piece of the body of a huge squid was found. Over the next two decades, many remains of similar creatures were also discovered on the northern coast of Europe. This was due to the fact that the temperature regime in the sea changed, which forced the creatures to rise to the surface. According to the stories of some fishermen, the carcasses of sperm whales they caught also had marks resembling giant tentacles.
Throughout the 20th century. Repeated attempts were made to catch the legendary kraken. But it was possible to catch only young individuals whose height was approximately 5 m in length, or only parts of the bodies of larger individuals were caught. Only in 2004 did Japanese oceanologists photograph a fairly large specimen. Before that, for 2 years they monitored the routes of sperm whales, which eat squid. Finally, they managed to catch a giant squid with bait, whose length was 10 m. For four hours, the animal tried to escape
· 0 bait, and oceanologists took about several photographs that show that the squid has very aggressive behavior.
Giant squids are called architeuthis. To date, not a single living specimen has been caught. In several museums you can see the preserved remains of individuals that were discovered already dead. Thus, the London Museum of Quality History displays a nine-meter squid preserved in formaldehyde. A seven-meter squid is available to the general public in the Melbourne Aquarium, frozen in a piece of ice.
But can even such a giant squid harm ships? Its length can be more than 10 m.
Females are larger than males. The weight of squid reaches several hundred kilograms. This is not enough to damage a large ship. But giant squids are predatory and can still cause harm to swimmers or small boats.
In the movies, giant squids pierce the skin of ships with their tentacles, but in reality this is impossible, since they lack a skeleton, so they can only stretch and tear their prey. Outside the aquatic environment they are very helpless, but in the water they have sufficient strength and can resist sea predators. Squids prefer to live on the bottom and rarely appear on the surface, but small individuals can jump out of the water to a fairly large height.
Giant squids have the largest eyes of any living creature. Their diameter reaches more than 30 cm. The tentacles are equipped with strong suction cups, the diameter of which is up to 5 cm. They help to firmly hold the prey. The composition of the bodies and Lu of the giant squid includes ammonium chloride (common alcohol), which preserves its zero honor. True, such squid should not be eaten.” All these features allow some scientists to believe that the giant squid may be the legendary kraken.
Huge, creepy krakens have dominated the minds of sailors for centuries. Many believed that this monster was capable of entangling a ship with its tentacles and dragging it into the depths of the sea along with its crew. There were all sorts of tales about these monsters.
They said that the tentacles of the kraken can reach a length of up to one mile... And sailors allegedly often mistook the surfaced kraken for an island, landed on it, lit a fire and thereby woke up the dormant monster, it plunged sharply into the abyss, and the resulting giant whirlpool pulled the ship together into the abyss with the sailors...
The terrible kraken - myth or reality? The kraken was first mentioned in a Scandinavian manuscript around the year 1000, the above-mentioned Olaus Magnus (1490-1557) devoted a lot of space to it in his book, and the Danish naturalist Eric Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen (1698-1774), also wrote about the monster ). Although the kraken is essentially a mythical creature, it is believed that its prototype was the giant squid.
“It is difficult to imagine a more terrible image than the image of one of these huge monsters floating in the ocean depths, even more gloomy from the inky liquid released by these creatures in huge quantities; it’s worth imagining hundreds of cup-shaped suckers with which its tentacles are equipped, constantly in motion and ready at any moment to grab onto anyone or anything... and in the center of the interweaving of these living traps is a bottomless mouth with a huge hooked beak, ready to tear the victim apart, found herself in tentacles. Just thinking about it sends a chill through my skin.” This is how the English sailor and writer Frank T. Bullen described the largest, fastest and most terrible of all invertebrates on the planet - the giant squid. With short throws, this ocean giant reaches speeds that exceed the speed of most fish. In size it is quite comparable to the average sperm whale, with which it often enters into mortal combat, although the sperm whale is armed with very sharp teeth.
The squid's beak is very strong, and its eyes are very similar to human ones - they are equipped with eyelids, have pupils, irises and movable lenses that change their shape depending on the distance to the object that the squid is looking at. It has ten tentacles: eight regular ones and two that are much longer than the rest and have something like spatulas at the ends. All tentacles are studded with suckers. The usual tentacles of a giant squid are 3-3.5 m long, and the longest pair stretches up to 15 meters. With its long tentacles, the squid pulls its prey towards itself and, entwining it with its remaining limbs, tears it apart with its powerful beak.
Until the second half of the 19th century, scientists doubted the existence of giant squids, and the stories of sailors were considered the fruit of their unbridled imagination. But for unknown reasons, many dead giant squids began to be found on the coasts and surface of the seas.
True, the monsters found were not always dead. “On October 26, 1873, three fishermen traveling in a small boat,” writes E. R. Richiuti in the book “Dangerous Inhabitants of the Sea,” “saw some strange floating object in one of the fiords of Newfoundland, it was a giant squid. The fishermen had to fight it not to the death, but to the death: one of them, not suspecting anything, poked an unknown object with a hook, and immediately the squid’s tentacles flew out of the water, the animal grabbed the boat with a death grip and dragged it under the water. One of the fishermen, a 12-year-old boy, managed to cut off two tentacles of the squid with an ax, and it gave up; The fishermen leaned on their oars and safely reached the shore. The piece of tentacle cut off by the boy remained in the boat, and was later measured: it was 5.8 meters in length.”
The worst encounter between a man and a giant squid was reported in newspapers in 1874. The steamship Strathoven, bound for Madras, approached the small schooner Pearl, bobbing on the water. Suddenly, the tentacles of a monstrous squid rose above the surface of the water, they grabbed the schooner and dragged it under the water.
The captain of the schooner, who managed to escape, told the details of the incident. According to him, the crew of the schooner watched the fight between a squid and a sperm whale. The giants disappeared into the depths, but after a while the captain noticed that a short distance from the schooner, a huge shadow was rising from the depths. It was a monstrous squid measuring about 30 meters. When he approached the schooner, the captain shot him with a gun, and this was followed by a swift attack by the monster, which dragged the schooner to the bottom.
Biologist and oceanographer Frederick Aldrich is convinced that squid even 50 meters long can live at great depths. The biologist proceeds from the fact that all the found dead specimens of the giant squid, about 15 m long, belonged to young individuals with suckers with a diameter of five centimeters, while on many harpooned whales traces of suckers with a diameter of 20 centimeters were found...
Well, in the meantime, you can see the 8.62-meter-long giant squid with your own eyes at the British Natural History Museum. Archie (as the squid was nicknamed) was caught in 2004 by fishermen from a trawler near the Falkland Islands. Fortunately, the fishermen realized that they had caught a unique specimen, froze it entirely and transported it to London. Scientists not only examined the giant, but also prepared it for display. Now Archie, located in a 9.45-meter-long aquarium filled with a special preservative solution, can be seen by all museum visitors.
It is worth noting that when talking about the kraken there is often some confusion; the latter is sometimes considered a giant octopus. However, the reality of giant octopuses has not yet been proven, although there are a number of facts that indicate the possibility of the existence of very large specimens. For example, in 1897, the corpse of a huge octopus weighing about 6 tons was found on the beach of St. Augustine in Florida. This giant had a body 7.5 m long, and tentacles 23 m long, with a diameter of about 45 cm at their base.
In 1986, the crew and passengers of the motor ship Ururi near the Solomon Islands (Pacific Ocean) were able to observe a 12-meter-long octopus emerging from a depth of 300 meters. Approximately the same octopus was photographed in 1999. Therefore, it is possible that not only giant squids, but also huge octopuses took part in the formation of the eerie image of the kraken.
Andrey Sidorenko
In the dark, uncharted sea waters at great depths live mysterious creatures that have terrified sailors since ancient times. They are secretive and elusive, and are still poorly understood. In medieval legends they are represented as monsters that attack ships and sink them.
According to the sailors, they look like a floating island with huge tentacles that reach the peak of the mast, bloodthirsty and ferocious. In literary works, these creatures received the name “krakens”.
The first information about them is found in the Viking chronicles, which speak of huge sea monsters attacking ships. There are also references to krakens in the works of Homer and Aristotle. On the walls of ancient temples you can find images of a monster dominating the sea. Over time, references to these creatures have become less numerous. However, by the middle of the 18th century, the world again remembered the storm of the seas. In 1768, this monster attacked the English whaling ship Arrow; the crew and ship miraculously escaped death. According to the sailors, they encountered a “small living island.”
In 1810, the British ship Celestine, sailing on the Reykjavik-Oslo voyage, encountered something reaching a diameter of up to 50 meters. It was not possible to avoid the meeting, and the ship was severely damaged by the tentacles of an unknown monster, so it was necessary to return back to the port.
In 1861, the kraken attacked the French ship Adekton, and in 1874 sank the English Pearl. However, despite all these cases, the scientific world considered the giant monster to be nothing more than fiction. Until in 1873 he received material evidence of its existence.
On October 26, 1873, English fishermen discovered some huge and presumably dead sea animal in one of the bays. Wanting to find out what it was, they swam up to it in a boat and poked it with a hook. In response to this, the creature suddenly came to life and wrapped its tentacles around the boat, wanting to pull it to the bottom. The fishermen managed to fight back and get a trophy - one of the tentacles, which was transferred to the local museum.
A month later, another octopus 10 meters long was caught in the same area. So the myth became reality. 
Previously, the likelihood of encounters with these deep-sea inhabitants was more real. However, recently we have hardly heard about them. One of the latest events associated with these creatures dates back to 2011, when the American yacht Zvezda was attacked. Of the entire crew and people on board, only one person was able to survive. The tragic story of “Zvezda” is the last known case of a collision with a giant octopus.
So, what is this mysterious ship hunter?
There is still no clear idea of what species this animal belongs to; scientists consider it a squid, an octopus, and a cuttlefish. This deep-sea inhabitant reaches several meters in length; presumably, some individuals can grow to gigantic sizes.
Its head is cylindrical with a chitinous beak in the middle, which it can use to bite through steel cables. The eyes reach 25 cm in diameter.
The habitat of these creatures extends throughout the World Ocean, starting their journey from the deep waters of the Arctic and Antarctica. At one time it was believed that their habitat was the Bermuda Triangle, and they were the culprits behind the mysterious disappearances of ships in this place.
Hypothesis of the appearance of the Kraken
Where this mysterious animal came from is still not known. There are several theories about its origin. That this is the only creature that survived the environmental catastrophe of the “time of the dinosaurs.” That it was created during Nazi experiments at secret Antarctic bases. That perhaps this is a mutation of an ordinary squid or even an extraterrestrial intelligence.
Even in our time of advanced technology, little has been studied about krakens. Since no one saw them alive, all individuals exceeding 20 m were found exclusively dead. In addition, despite their enormous size, these creatures successfully avoid being photographed and videotaped. So the search for this deep-sea monster continues... 
Stories constantly appear about the Kraken, which are full of fiction. For example, it is assumed that there is such a creature as the Great Kraken, living in the Bermuda Triangle. Then the fact that ships disappear there becomes understandable.
Who is this Kraken? Some consider him an underwater monster, some - a demon, and some - a higher mind, or supermind. However, scientists still received true information at the beginning of the last century, when real krakens ended up in their hands. Until that moment, it was easier for scientists to deny their existence, because until the 20th century they only had eyewitness stories to think about.
Does the kraken really exist? Yes, this is a real organism. This was first confirmed at the end of the 19th century. Fishermen fishing near the shore noticed something very bulky, firmly grounded. They made sure that the carcass was not moving and approached it. The dead kraken was taken to the science center. Over the next decade, several more similar bodies were recovered.
They were first studied by Verrill, an American zoologist, and the animals owe their name to him. Today they are called octopuses. These are terrible and huge monsters, they belong to the class of mollusks, that is, in fact, relatives of the most harmless snails. They usually live at depths from 200 to 1000 meters. Somewhat deeper in the ocean live octopuses 30-40 meters long. This is not an assumption, but a fact, since the actual size of the kraken was calculated from the size of the suckers on the skin of whales.
In the legends they spoke about it like this: a block erupted from the water, engulfed the ship with tentacles and carried it to the bottom. It was there that the kraken from legends fed on drowned sailors.
Kraken is an ellipsoidal substance, made of a jelly-like substance, shiny and having a grayish, transparent color. It can reach 100 meters in diameter, while it practically does not react to any stimuli. She doesn't feel pain either. It is, in fact, a huge jellyfish, similar in appearance to an octopus. It has a head and a large number of very long tentacles with suckers in two rows. Even one kraken tentacle can destroy a ship.
There are three hearts in the body, one main, two gills, as they drive blood, which is blue, through the gills. They also have kidneys, liver, and stomach. The creatures do not have bones, but they have a brain. The eyes are huge, complexly arranged, approximately like those of a person. Sense organs are well developed.
Marine life is very diverse and sometimes frightening. The most bizarre forms of life can lurk in the abyss of the seas, because humanity has still not been able to fully explore all the expanses of water. And sailors have long had legends about a powerful creature that is capable of sinking an entire fleet or convoy with just its appearance. About a creature whose appearance inspires horror, and whose size makes you freeze in amazement. About a creature the likes of which have never been seen in history. And if the sky above the world belongs to and, the earth under our feet also belongs to the Tarascans, then the expanses of the seas belong to only one creature - the kraken.
What does a kraken look like?
To say that the kraken is huge would be an understatement. For centuries, the kraken resting in the depths of the waters can reach simply unimaginable sizes of several tens of kilometers. He is truly huge and scary. Outwardly, it is somewhat similar to a squid - the same elongated body, the same tentacles with suction cups, the same eyes and a special organ for moving underwater using air propulsion. But the sizes of a kraken and an ordinary squid are not even close to comparable. Ships that disturbed the peace of the kraken during the Renaissance sank from just one strike of the tentacle on the water.
The Kraken is mentioned as one of the most terrifying sea monsters. But there is someone to whom even he must obey. It is called differently in different nations. But all the legends say the same thing - this is the God of the seas and the ruler of all sea creatures. And it doesn’t matter what you call this super creature - one of his orders is enough for the kraken to throw off the shackles of a hundred-year sleep and do what he was assigned.
In general, legends often mention a certain artifact that gave a person the ability to control the kraken. This creature is by no means lazy and absolutely good-natured, unlike its owners. Without orders, a Kraken can sleep for centuries, or even millennia, without disturbing anyone with its awakening. Or it can change the appearance of an entire coast in a few days if its peace is disturbed or if an order is given to it. Perhaps, among all creatures, the kraken has the greatest power, but also the most peaceful character.
One or many
You can often find references to the fact that there are many such creatures in the service of the Sea God. But it’s very hard to imagine that this is true. The huge size of the kraken and its strength make it possible to believe that this creature can be on different ends of the earth at the same time, but it is very difficult to imagine that there are two such creatures. How terrifying could a battle like this be?
In some epics, there are references to battles between krakens, which suggests that to this day almost all krakens died in these terrible battles, and the Sea God commands the last survivors. A creature that does not produce offspring, free to eat and rest, has reached such enormous dimensions that one can only wonder how hunger has not yet driven it to land and why it has not yet been encountered by researchers. Perhaps the structure of the kraken's skin and tissues makes it impossible to detect it, and the creature's hundred-year sleep hid it in the sands of the seabed? Or maybe there is a depression left in the ocean, where researchers have not yet looked, but where this creature is resting. We can only hope that even if it is found, the researchers will be smart enough not to awaken the wrath of the thousand-year-old monster and not try to destroy it with the help of any weapons.
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