The Crimean peninsula is famous not only for its natural beauty, unique historical and architectural buildings, sweet wines and juicy fruits, but also for its amazing mysteries, the explanations of which no one has yet found. One of these secrets is the Karadag snake, a creature that lives in the waters of the Black Sea.
Monster egg weighing 12 kilograms
Even the “father of history” - Herodotus - mentioned in his writings that in the depths of the Black Sea, or, as the Greeks of those times called it, the Pontus Euxine, there lives a huge monster that overtakes the waves as it moves. The Karadag serpent repeatedly appeared to sailors. Thus, the Turks, who regularly sailed to the Crimea and Azov, wrote reports to the Sultan about the dragon.
According to eyewitnesses, the creature was about 30 m long, covered with black scales, and had a comb fluttering on its back, reminiscent of a horse's mane. Her movement was swift, she easily left behind the fastest ships, and the wave created by her was similar to the one that occurs during a storm. The people who inhabited the coastal zone were also familiar with the sea reptile first-hand, which was reflected in fairy tales and myths. The image of the monster was even on the coat of arms of the Bakhchisarai Khan!
In 1828, the Evpatoria police officer reported to higher authorities about the appearance of a huge sea snake in the district. Emperor Nicholas I, who, like Peter I, was distinguished by his curiosity, learned about the Black Sea monster and ordered scientists to be sent to Crimea to find and catch it.
Since evidence of sightings of the monster came mainly from the Karadag region, scientists from the expedition decided to look for it there. They didn’t find a monster, but they found an egg weighing 12 kg, containing an embryo resembling a fairy-tale dragon with a crest on its head. Nearby were found the remains of a rather impressive tail, which was characterized by a scaly-shell-like structure.
The Soviet writer saw a monster!
For several thousand years, residents and guests of the peninsula claim that they have one way or another encountered this incomprehensible and unknown inhabitant of sea waters. And it must be said that among the eyewitnesses there were famous and serious personalities whom there is no reason not to believe. Among them are the director of the reserve, geologists, a poet, an official of the local executive committee, and the military. It is clear that these people are educated and, most likely, are not prone to mystification and inventions.
In 1952, the Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov happened to see the monster from a cliff in Carnelian Bay. Perhaps, it was he who made one of the longest observations of the monster; he looked at it for about 40 minutes. According to him, the monster had impressive dimensions: “25-30 meters long, and as thick as a desk top, if you turn it sideways.” It had a snake-like head “the size of an arm span” with small eyes, and the upper part of the mysterious creature was dark brown in color.
After such a unique observation of the monster, Vsevolod Ivanov tried to find out if any of the local residents had seen this monster, and undertook a small investigation. M. S. Voloshina told him that in 1921, a small article flashed in the Feodosia newspaper, which reported that a “huge reptile” had appeared in the area of Mount Karadag, and a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to catch it. As far as is known, the “reptile” was not caught then, but her husband, the famous Russian poet and artist M. A. Voloshin, sent this clipping about the “reptile” to M. Bulgakov, and it formed the basis of the story “Fatal Eggs.” Also, Vsevolod Ivanov, with the help of Voloshina, managed to find out about the fact of an encounter with a monster by one collective farmer, who came across a monster resting on the shore while collecting driftwood for firewood.
Real evidence? Please!
The Karadag snake leaves very real traces of its existence. A few years ago, Turkish fishermen pulled a dolphin from the sea, which had been bitten in half by some monster. The remains of the dolphin were rushed to Istanbul University, where scientists examined the find and confirmed that the marks on the dolphin were not wounds from a ship's propeller and, without a doubt, were left by the teeth of a large animal. The same dead dolphins with huge wounds and even traces of 16 large teeth were seen by Crimean fishermen in 1990 and 1991, and one of them was even taken to the Karadag Nature Reserve.
By the way, Crimean Alexander Paraskevidi has even more material evidence of the existence of the monster - his tooth. Six centimeters long, red-brown in color, this tooth was discovered on the beach, near the village of Maly Mayak, sticking out in a small piece of wood. Turkish ichthyologist Arif Harim, who examined and analyzed the tooth, is confident that it belongs to an animal unknown to science.
Shocking encounters with the Karadag snake
In May 1961, a rather shocking encounter with a monster took place in Crimea. Local fisherman M.I. Kondratiev, director of the Crimean Primorye sanatorium A. Mozhaisky and chief accountant of this enterprise V. Vostokov went fishing one morning on a boat. They walked only three hundred meters from the pier of the Karadag biological station towards the Golden Gate, when suddenly, 60 meters away from them, they saw a brown spot under the water. They sent the boat towards it, and it suddenly began to move away from them.
When we managed to get closer to the “spot,” it became clear that there was something very impressive and creepy under the water. The head of a huge snake, about a meter in size, was quite clearly visible 2-3 meters under the water. The surface of the monster's head was covered with brown hairs, reminiscent of algae. Behind the head, horny plates were visible on the monster’s body. At the top of the head and back, a characteristic mane swayed in the water. The monster's belly was lighter - gray, in contrast to its dark brown back.
When people saw the monster’s small eyes, they literally became numb with horror. Fortunately, Mikhail Kondratyev quickly managed to come to his senses, he turned the boat around and headed it towards the shore at full speed. Amazingly, the monster chased them! Its speed was quite high, but 100 meters from the coast it stopped the chase and headed out to the open sea. Seven years later, Mikhail Kondratyev again observed the Black Sea monster near the Karadag biological station under similar circumstances.
In the 80s 20th century vacationer Grigory Tabunov had a chance to meet the monster. This is what he recalls: “I lived in Nikita, quickly went down to the sea, undressed and fell into the water. He swam about two hundred meters away, lay on his back, rested, and was just about to swim back when he noticed a dark spot nearby in the waves. Dolphin, probably, he thought. What a dolphin! A huge head appeared above the water. Out of fear, I screamed as loud as I could and rushed to the shore. All this lasted a few seconds, but I remembered what I saw for the rest of my life. The monster’s head was greenish and flat...”
On August 12, 1992, V.M. Belsky, an employee of the Feodosia City Council, encountered the monster. He swam in the sea, dived until, having emerged, he saw a huge snake head almost next to him... In horror, Belsky rushed to the shore with all his might, jumped out of the water and hid among the stones. Looking out from behind the stone, he saw that where he had just bathed, the head of a monster appeared, with water flowing from its mane. Belsky was able to even see the skin and gray horny plates on the head and neck. The monster's eyes were small, and its body was dark gray with a lighter lower part.
Relatively recently, our compatriot Vladimir Ternovsky even managed to ride on the back of a Black Sea monster! He was windsurfing 2-3 km from the shore, when suddenly someone from below threw the stern of his board. After this push, he fell into the water, however, to his amazement, he felt something solid under his feet. He was standing on something big, wide and alive, and it was moving! Fortunately, he managed to overcome his fear, jumping off the monster and quickly reaching the shore. The monster did not pursue him.
The servants of one of the monasteries once observed two monsters at once, which, clearly acting in coordination with each other, started a hunt for dolphins.
The Karadag monster was also seen by submariners. This happened during the dive of Benthos-300, a laboratory working at depth. Having reached a dive level of 100 meters, the hydronaut saw a vague shadow on the right side of the ship. A giant snake, slowly wriggling, swam up to the porthole, as if studying people with its small eyes. However, as soon as the scientists decided to photograph it, the monster, as if reading their thoughts, rushed into the depths.
So who swam into Crimean waters? They talked about a frilled shark with flat sides, resembling a huge eel; according to another version, it was the herring king - a belt fish up to nine meters in length, found in the North and Mediterranean seas... Maybe some kind of lizard has been preserved in the Black Sea since ancient times? After all, what do we know about Karadag, which was a nature reserve for decades? And why shouldn’t this majestic mountain be a haven for exotic species?
Karadag is the remnant of an ancient volcano, the underwater part of which has not been studied. Once upon a time, displacements of earth layers and volcanic clay led to complex layers, the formation of underwater caves, unknown passages and tunnels.
At the moment, there is no official confirmation that the Karadag snake is a real creature; it seems to feel that they are looking for it, and goes into the depths of the sea at the slightest attempt to film it on video or with photographic equipment. Perhaps expeditions could clarify the situation, but such events require financial investments, which neither officials, nor scientists, nor individuals are in a hurry to make. The waters of our planet still firmly keep their secrets - the Loch Ness, Karadag, and other water monsters do not seek contact with people.
Official science is sure: if a living creature lives on Karadag, there must be several of them - mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, etc. But neither the remains nor the clutch of eggs of these creatures have yet been discovered. In addition, Crimean hydronautics is completely destroyed today, deep-sea equipment has been sold for scrap.
It is known that North American zoologists successfully continue such research in their territories. In 1995, two Canadian oceanographers - Dr. Edward Busfield (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto) and Professor Paul Le Blond (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) - in the April issue of the scientific journal Amphipha-Tsifika, described what was discovered in the fjords of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast Canada, a new large species of animal for science - Cadborosaurus.
They classified it as a plesiosaur, a group of highly specialized marine reptiles that went extinct during the Mesozoic era. This “saurus” got its name from the Cadboro Bay, where it was most often observed.
The message caused a furore in the media. Newspapers immediately gave the creature the nickname Caddy, and local environmentalists demanded that the government immediately ensure the protection of such a rare and obviously vulnerable species.
If you believe eyewitness accounts, the Cadborosaurus, by the way, which has been mentioned in Indian folklore since ancient times, is exactly like the Black Sea serpent, but feeds on fish, sometimes trying to hunt seabirds.
Scientists have no doubt that the depths of the World Ocean hold many unexplored secrets. But they need facts. However, so far not a single high-quality photograph has been taken - neither by us nor by them.
This is stubbornly explained by the fact that mysterious creatures appear and disappear suddenly, as if only to remind: the living Earth was not born yesterday, but it is necessary to study and protect it in all its manifestations, especially in unique ones.
The Crimean Peninsula is famous not only for the beauty of nature, juicy fruits and sweet wines, and unique architectural structures, but also for its amazing mysteries. One of them is the Karadag snake, which supposedly lives in the waters of the Black Sea.
The oldest evidence
Even Herodotus, the “father of history,” mentioned in his writings that in the depths of the Black Sea (the Greeks of those times called it Pontus Euxine) there lives a huge monster, which is overtaken by the movement of waves. The Karadag serpent appeared to sailors more than once. For example, the Turks, who regularly sailed to the Azov and Crimea (Black Sea), wrote reports about the dragon to the Sultan.
According to eyewitnesses, this creature was about 30 meters long. Her body was covered with black scales. The comb fluttered on the back of the Karadag serpent, reminiscent of the mane of a horse. This creature moved quickly, it easily left fast ships behind. The wave it created was similar to that created by a storm. The people who inhabited the coast were also familiar first-hand with the sea reptile. This was reflected in their myths and fairy tales. The legend of the monster was very popular. The image of the Karadag serpent was even placed on the coat of arms of the Bakhchisarai Khan!
Discovery of the Karadag snake egg
In 1828, the Evpatoria police officer reported that a huge sea snake had appeared in the district. Nicholas I, who, like Peter I, was distinguished by his curiosity, learned about this and ordered scientists to be sent to Crimea to catch the snake. The researchers decided to look for it here, since evidence of sightings of this creature mainly came from Karadag (Crimea). The Black Sea, however, did not give them its secret - they did not find the monster. But they found an egg containing an embryo. The egg weighed 12 kg, and the embryo resembled a fairy-tale dragon. There was a crest on his head. Also found nearby were the remains of a tail, quite impressive in size. It was covered with scales.
Numerous eyewitnesses
Residents and guests of the peninsula for many centuries talk about how they met with this unknown and incomprehensible inhabitant of the depths of the sea. It should be said that among the eyewitnesses there were serious and famous personalities, and there is no reason not to believe them. Among them are the director of the reserve, a poet, geologists, military personnel, and an official of the local executive committee. It is clear that all these people have received an education and are unlikely to be prone to inventions and hoaxes.
Vsevolod Ivanov's meeting with the monster
In 1952, Vsevolod Ivanov, a Soviet writer, had a chance to observe the monster from a cliff located in Carnelian Bay. It is he who, perhaps, has the longest observation of this monster. The writer looked at the Karadag monster for about 40 minutes. The creature, he said, was of impressive size. It was about 25-30 meters long, and its thickness was approximately equal to the thickness of the desk top. This monster had a snake head “the size of the span of his arms.” The upper part of the Karadag monster was dark brown in color and had small eyes.
Investigation results
After this unique observation, Vsevolod Ivanov tried to find out whether any of the local residents had seen the Karadag monster. He undertook a little investigation. It turned out that Ivanov was not the only one who encountered the Karadag snake in Crimea. According to M. S. Voloshina, a note appeared in a Feodosia newspaper in 1921, which stated that a huge creature had appeared in the area of the city of Karadag. A company of Red Army soldiers was sent to capture him. Gad, as far as is known, was not caught then. But her husband, the famous Russian artist and poet M. A. Voloshin, sent M. Bulgakov this clipping about the reptile. It was she who formed the basis of the famous story called “Fatal Eggs”.
Vsevolod Ivanov also learned that a collective farmer had met with the monster. She came across the monster resting on the shore while collecting driftwood for firewood.
Dolphins eaten by a monster
The Karadag snake leaves very real evidence of its existence. A few years ago, Turkish fishermen pulled a dolphin from the sea, which had been bitten in half by some kind of monster. His remains were taken to Istanbul University. Here, scientists examined the dolphin and confirmed that the marks on its body were not wounds from a ship's propeller. Without a doubt, they were left by the teeth of a huge animal. In 1990 and 1991, Crimean fishermen also saw dead dolphins with wounds and marks from 16 large teeth. They even took one of them to the Karadag Nature Reserve.
Karadag snake tooth
Alexander Paraskevidi, a Crimean, has another material proof of the existence of this monster - his tooth. It is 6 cm long and red-brown in color. The tooth was discovered near the village of Maly Mayak, in a small piece of wood on the beach. Arif Harim, a Turkish ichthyologist who analyzed the find, is convinced that this tooth belongs to an animal unknown to science.
Fishermen observed the monster
In Crimea in May 1961, a shocking encounter with this monster took place. M.I. Kondratiev, a local fisherman, A. Mozhaisky, the director of a sanatorium called "Crimean Primorye", as well as the chief accountant of the enterprise V. Vostokov went fishing on a boat one morning. They walked only 300 meters away from the pier towards the Golden Gate, when suddenly they saw a brown spot under water 60 meters away. The fishermen directed their boat towards it, and it suddenly began to move away.
When we finally managed to get closer to the “spot,” it became clear that there was something very creepy and impressive under the water. The head of this giant snake, the size of which was about a meter, was quite clearly visible at a depth of 2-3 meters. Its surface was covered with brown tufts that looked like algae. Horny plates were visible on the body behind the head. The mane swayed in the water at the top of his back and head. The monster's belly was gray, and its back was dark brown. When the fishermen saw the small eyes of this monster, they were numb with horror. Mikhail Kondratyev, fortunately, managed to quickly come to his senses. Turning the boat around, he sent it at full speed towards the shore. However, the monster chased the fishermen! It moved at high speed, but stopped the chase 100 m from the shore and headed out to sea. Mikhail Kondratyev, 7 years later, again observed a Black Sea monster near the Karadag biological station in similar circumstances.
Meeting of Grigory Tabunov with a monster
Grigory Tabunov, who was vacationing in these places, had a chance to meet the monster in the 80s of the 20th century. He recalls that he swam 200 meters from the shore, and suddenly noticed a dark spot in the waves. A huge head appeared above the water. Gregory immediately rushed to the shore. He managed to remember that the monster’s head was flat and greenish in color.
Another eyewitness account
On August 12, 1992, V.M. Belsky, an employee of the Feodosia City Council, encountered the Karadag monster. He swam in the sea and, emerging, saw a huge snake head next to him. Belsky rushed to the shore in horror. He jumped out of the water and managed to hide among the stones. Belsky saw, looking out from behind a stone, that the monster’s head appeared where he was swimming. Water dripped from the monster's mane. Belsky also saw skin and gray horny plates on the neck and head. The creature had small eyes, and its body was dark gray in color, the lower part being lighter.
An amazing story by Vladimir Ternovsky
Vladimir Ternovsky relatively recently was even able to ride on the back of this sea monster! This man was windsurfing about 2-3 km from the coast. Suddenly, someone threw the stern of his board from below. Vladimir fell into the water after this shock, but to his amazement he felt something solid under his feet. He stood on the Karadag monster! Vladimir, fortunately, managed to overcome his fear. He jumped off the monster and reached the shore. He was lucky - the terrible monster did not pursue him.
Who else has seen an unusual creature?
One day, servants of one of the monasteries saw two monsters at once. They hunted dolphins, while coordinating their actions with each other.
The submariners also saw the Karadag monster. This happened during the dive of the Bentos-300 laboratory working at depth. The hydronaut, having reached a depth of 100 meters, saw a vague shadow on the right side of the ship. Slowly wriggling, the monster of the Black Sea swam up to the porthole, as if studying people with small eyes. As soon as the scientists wanted to take a photo of the snake, it, as if reading their thoughts, immediately rushed into the depths.
Who is the Karadag snake?
Who actually swam into the Black Sea? Can the legend of the monster be explained by science? Experts talked about a frilled shark resembling a huge eel, and the herring king - a strap fish reaching 9 m in length, which was found in the Mediterranean and North Seas. Perhaps some monster has been preserved in the Crimean waters since ancient times? Mount Karadag (Crimea), which has been a nature reserve for decades, is fraught with many mysteries. We know very little about her.
Mount Karadag (Crimea) is the remnant of an ancient volcano; its underwater part has not yet been studied. Displacements of earth layers, as well as volcanic clay, once led to complex layers, the appearance of underwater caves, unknown tunnels and passages. Perhaps the monster of the Black Sea is hiding here.
Today there is no official confirmation that this is a real creature. Perhaps expeditions could clarify the situation, but these activities require significant financial investments, and neither scientists, nor officials, nor individuals are in a hurry to do them. The waters of our planet still keep their secrets - the Karadag sea serpent, Loch Ness and other water monsters do not at all seek to contact people.
02/05/2010 | Karadag Monster or Opuk Serpent. How to live further?
It’s winter, frosty, but I always want to dive. Well, if you don’t dive, then at least talk about it. I go to visit my old friend and immediately receive a portion of the latest news! It turns out that in our Black Sea there lives quietly a certain reptile, unknown to science, that easily snatches the belly of dolphins, tormenting poor Tatars, senior officials of the executive committee and military personnel, masters of sports in swimming, who always swim in the sea! Sharks have already been caught in the Black Sea, as well as crocodiles last year. But this... The evidence is old and completely new - from the fall of 2009.
.jpg)
It seems like I’ve been swimming in the sea all my life, I love day and night hunting. At night, you look even more romantic, more courageous in your own eyes, I have heard questions more than once - how is it possible in this darkness? And isn't it scary? I can answer this question: there was once in my life, once in Azov, when I experienced very sharp sensations, literally horror to the point of numbness, on one of the night hunts.
The Sea of Azov is shallow and warm for a long swim, you don’t even need a wetsuit, I was still young and just mastering goby hunting, so I decided to try hunting at night. Moving along the reef, I illuminated rocks and grottoes with a flashlight and looked for fish. I found gobies, shot, put them on a cukan, and suddenly the beam of a flashlight from the darkness snatches a crevice in the stones, through which, wriggling, a black snake body about an elbow wide is rapidly moving towards me.
From the size of what I saw, I felt somehow uneasy inside and wanted to immediately find myself somewhere far away, on land, preferably behind strong doors. Fear literally paralyzed me for some time, and if the flashlight beam, continuing its movement, had not highlighted the absence of continuation of this body behind the stone, I would not have written these lines. Yes, on one side of the stone, crossing the crevice, there was a body, but on the other side behind the stone it was no longer there! Having come to his senses a little, he began to study what he saw. Upon careful examination, the body turned out to be a strip of a car camera from a truck cut out along a larger circumference, about 30 centimeters wide. Unfolded in length, it had a rounded shape with wavy protrusions characteristic of the movement of a snake. As soon as I saw this fragment, my imagination completed everything else!
.jpg)
The fear I experienced for a long time made itself felt through nightmares, and it was not long before I began to swim at night. And I really understand that Tatar who accidentally found himself in a similar situation, but not with an illusion, but with a natural being.
How reliable the facts are is for you to judge. In the article, we have material as presented by the author (i.e., a specific person), in which there are inaccuracies that have a chance to cast doubt on all the material presented. Moreover, the situation with the stone is also familiar to me. One day, when I came to look for mushrooms on the slope near the boarding house "Eureka" - not far from Alushta, I saw a large stone in the water, which I reported to my partner. Look, I say a cool stone for an ambush, to which he shook his head negatively and replied: “There are no stones there! I know this shore very well,” and we, standing on the slope, watched for a long time an object in the water that was clearly moving slowly. I can’t say for sure about the distance, but as in the case described in the article, it was about two hundred meters. We didn’t see any head, and what was under the water is not clear, although Seryoga says it was a school of mullet.
Below is an article by E.F. Shnyukov, “Nessie in the Black Sea.” All the events described in this article actually took place. It is absolutely known that at the Feodosia Production Association "Sea" trap cages were manufactured by order of the Karadag biological station to catch the "Karadag monster".
Dolphins were put into these traps as bait. True, these works did not lead to the capture of the monster. After the revolution, a company of Red Army soldiers actually went to Koktebel in search of the “huge bastard” and this story was used by M. Bulgakov in the story “Fatal Eggs”. Some time ago, a fossilized egg weighing 1.5 kg and the remains of a prehistoric creature covered with scales were found at Cape Aya. In the split of this egg a snake's head with a crest is visible. Now this find is in the Kherson Museum. Dinosaurs and sea snakes have been found in these places since ancient times. And today you can hear in Eastern Crimea, primarily in the Karadag region (and in Koktebel, wine from the local Koktebel plant is sold and tasted right on the beach) stories about how the sea Loch Nessie pesters right on the beach, mainly to young and pretty nudists . Many people do not believe in the existence of sea monsters. Many people say: “I won’t believe it until I see it.”
.jpg)
I saw the impression made on vacationers by a school of dolphins that, in pursuit of a school of fish, swims at a speed of 60 km per hour to the Crimean beach. Or what impression was made about 10 years ago by a torpedo that swept near one of the Crimean beaches, not far from an underwater test site. People fly out of the water like an arrow. And then for some time they are afraid to go into the water. Therefore, I do not wish anyone to encounter a sea monster or a sea serpent. And I myself am afraid of them. But if you do meet him, be sure to take a photo! And send photos around the world to the most famous scientific journals. At the same time, send your stories and photographs to me. There are many archaeological, historical facts and eyewitness accounts that cannot be ignored. Until it is proven that he does not exist, he will live in South-Eastern Crimea. 06/29/2000
Nessie in the Black Sea
The steamship "Khimik Zelinsky" was heading to Odessa from Kherson. Suddenly mosquitoes appeared. Lots of mosquitoes, clouds. They entered all the rooms and covered all the portholes and glass. Visibility deteriorated sharply. The command to slow down came from the captain's bridge. The deck, the bridge - everything was covered with a ten-centimeter layer of mosquitoes. The sailors lit smoke bombs on the holly tree. Useless. The mosquitoes remained on the holly. On the second day it got colder. Mosquito activity decreased immediately. The jets of fire pumps finally made it possible to get rid of the requested passengers.
This is not the only case of a huge accumulation of insects, which, due to their large numbers, often pose a formidable danger. There are known cases where ships perished while covered in insects. This happened, for example, in 1913: with the German cargo ship Adler in the Persian Gulf, when a giant flock of butterflies surrounded the ship. The helmsman lost his bearings and the ship hit rocks.
In 1969, I happened to encounter a similar phenomenon. On the road from Yeisk to Dombay, a huge flock of dragonflies flew towards the expedition vehicle for almost an hour. They clogged the radiator, stuck to the glass, covered the road, and it became slippery. I had to stop and clean the radiator. The dragonflies were leaving the dry wind. They suddenly disappeared, and we drove into a dry wind zone, where before our eyes the leaves of roadside trees turned black and curled up.
In May 1991, a huge flock of swallows landed on the research vessel "Akademik Vernadsky", on which our expedition worked, near Sevastopol, apparently returning from the southern countries and crossing the Black Sea. Hundreds of them flew along the corridors, huddled in cabins. Seagulls hunted swallows right on the holly tree, the ship's cat feasted on them, and the flock kept coming and killing them. The next day they disappeared as suddenly as they appeared. In the cases described, thank God, there was no harm to people or disasters.
Do we know everything about the biological mysteries of the Black Sea? It turns out not.
In 1993, during field expeditionary work in Crimea, I got into a conversation with the director of the Karadag Nature Reserve P. G. Semenkov. Petr Grigorievich is a wonderful enthusiast of Crimea, making great efforts to preserve nature and increase the wealth of the beautiful corner of Crimea - Karadag. I worked in Crimea for many years, wrote several books on the geology of Crimea and the Crimean shelf. But, apparently, my interest was somewhat narrowed, professionally limited. With great interest I listened to Pyotr Grigorievich’s story about the “Karadag monster”. However, I won’t tell you about it better than he himself. Therefore, we present a slightly shortened version of his article.
“On December 7, 1990, a team of fishermen from the Karadag branch of the Institute of Biomedicine of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, consisting of A. A. Tsabanov, Y. M. Nuykin, M. M. Sych and N. V. Gerasimov, went to sea to check the nets set for catching Black Sea stingrays. The net is a canvas 2.5 m wide and 200 m long with a mesh size of 200 mm. It was installed at a depth of 50 m with coordinates at a distance of 3 miles in the direction southeast of Lyagushachya Bay and 7 miles south of the village of Ordzhonikidze. arrived at about 12 o'clock in the afternoon and began sorting the net from the southern end. After one hundred and fifty meters, the net appeared torn, and the fishermen decided that when setting up they had thrown their net on top of someone else's, and the owner of the lower net was forced to cut off the upper one in order to to check theirs.They came from the other end of the network and continued checking.
.jpg)
When we went to the ragged edge, we pulled a dolphin to the surface - a Black Sea bottlenose dolphin about 230 cm in size, whose tail was entangled in a net. Having pulled the dolphin to the nose of the mothfish, the fishermen discovered that the dolphin's belly had been bitten out in one bite. The width of the bite along the arc was about 1 m. Along the edge of the arc, teeth marks were clearly visible on the dolphin’s skin. The size of the tooth mark is about 40 mm. The distance between the teeth marks is about 15-20 mm. In total there were about 16 tooth marks along the arc. The dolphin's belly was bitten out along with its ribs, so that the spine was clearly visible. In the area of the head dangled the remains of the lungs, from which blood flowed as we rose. The marks of teeth were clearly visible on the sides of the frames, and were located symmetrically.
The dolphin's head was severely deformed, evenly compressed on all sides, as if they were trying to drag it through a narrow hole. No eyes were visible, and the deformed part had a whitish color, reminiscent of the color of a fish taken from the stomach of another fish.
The examination of the dolphin lasted no more than three minutes. The sight of the dolphin and the flowing blood caused severe panic among the fishermen. One of them cut the net, the dolphin fell into the sea, and the fishermen left the area at full speed for home.
I saw the fishermen immediately upon their return from the sea, asked them in detail about what had happened, and based on their story, the artist made a sketch of the dolphin they saw.
.jpg)
A dolphin bite mark from an unknown creature. (According to P.G. Semenkov. Geological journal No. 1, 1994)
In the spring of 1991, fishermen brought back a second dolphin with similar teeth marks on its body. It was an Azovka one and a half meters in size.
They pulled him out of the network, which was installed in approximately the same place as on December 7, 1990.
This time the net was not torn, and almost the entire dolphin was very entangled in the net, wrapped like a doll, so that only one head was sticking out. The marks of three teeth were clearly visible on the dolphin's head. In appearance, they were exactly like the teeth marks on the body of a bottlenose dolphin.
The brought dolphin was placed in a cold chamber and in May 1991, while in Leningrad, I went to the Institute of Zoology, talked with a number of employees, and invited the Azov fish to come and examine it. Unfortunately, none of the employees were able to go, but I received the address of specialists in traces found on the body of marine mammals caught in the ocean fishery. These were YugNIRO employees working in Kerch and Odessa. I managed to contact one of them by phone. I described in detail the marks found on the bodies of the dolphins entangled in our nets, and invited him to examine the Azov fish stored in our cold chamber. I was promised that he would try to find time to come to our institution. However, neither in May, nor in June, nor in July, no one came to us.
At the end of August there was an accident, and everything that was in the cold chamber was lost, including the dolphin.
This is an accurate description of the events that occurred in December 1990 and April 1991.
Now, perhaps, it is appropriate to propose several hypotheses explaining the reasons for the death of dolphins and the origin of the marks on the corpses of dolphins.
The majority of Karadag researchers, and primarily zoologists, unanimously rejected the hypothesis that the cause of the death of dolphins and the source of marks on their bodies was some living creature. Some of the employees believed that the reason for the death of the dolphins was that the animals collided with some kind of technical device (a ship’s propeller or a torpedo).
Some of the employees still admitted that the cause of both could be another living creature. However, none of the inhabitants of the Black Sea known to science could achieve the honor of being considered a candidate for the role of “killer”. Moreover, even the famous inhabitants of the World Ocean, if they were guests in the Black Sea, would not be able to leave such marks on the body of dolphins.
And now it’s time to remember the legendary monster that supposedly lives in the Black Sea. The first mention of it is found in Crimean legends. It has not been forgotten in our time. Despite the fact that officially information about him fell into the category of bad sensations and was not subject to publication, eyewitness accounts of encounters with him on land and in water off the Crimean coast sometimes appeared on the pages of periodicals, especially those published in Crimea. We did not set ourselves the task of systematizing all the information about the Crimean monster mentioned in periodical publications, but it should be recognized that the fact of the death of two dolphins was actually recorded and the marks on the body of these animals correspond to information about the size and habits of the Crimean monster.
Perhaps the time has come when scientists will cast aside skepticism or snobbery and carefully and impartially begin to analyze at least those facts that accidentally come into their field of view?
Or maybe the time will come when they themselves will actively seek new facts about the Crimean monster?”
The story and article by P. G. Semenkov also interested me very much. Together with Pyotr Grigorievich, we went to visit some of his friends who had seen the mysterious monster. Correspondent of the Sudaksky Vestnik newspaper A.N. Ovchinnikov saw a snake-like creature several years ago in the sea, from a twenty-meter height of Cape Frantsuzhenka. The scattered dolphins fled from this snake. According to Alexander Nikolaevich, in the thirties, a fisherman from Kuchuk-Lambat (now Maly Mayak), a Tatar by nationality, encountered a snake in the “stone chaos” 2. Fishermen arrived in time and saved him. However, he became paralyzed and died a month later. “Dog's head,” he managed to say before his death. This is what the son of the deceased fisherman told Ovchinnikov.
Vladimir Mikhailovich Belsky, a senior employee of the executive committee of the Feodosia City Council, on August 12, 1992, at 15-164 pm, swam in a bay on the eastern shore of Cape Kiik-Atlama, 1-2 km from its tip. The water temperature was about 23°. A good swimmer, he easily swam 40 meters from the shore. The depth of the water reached 4 m. Having emerged, he looked around and, to his horror, saw about 30 m from himself the head of a snake, a huge head - up to half a meter in size; the neck was thinner - 30 cm. The animal dived towards the swimmer. Then Vladimir Mikhailovich rushed to the side and along the ridge of stones that went out into the sea, he jumped onto the shore and hid behind the stones. A moment later, the head of a monster appeared in the place where he was. Vladimir Mikhailovich saw him clearly, he even saw the skin and gray horny plates on his head and neck. The general feeling is creepy.
According to V.M. Belsky, a year before his meeting with the monster, a strong young man, a military man, a master of sports in swimming, who always swam here, died of a heart attack in this area of the sea.
According to V.M. Kostyukov, who worked as a fisheries inspector for thirty years, one of the shepherds saw in the Chauda area near Cape Salar a snake-like creature with a large head, whose body resembled a pillar. The dolphins disappeared in panic when the snake, wriggling, began to approach them. Legends about the snake are very common among fishermen of Eastern Crimea.
From questioning, it turned out that the topic of the Black Sea Nessie had already been repeatedly raised in Crimean and even Moscow newspapers. Thus, in the Izvestia newspaper, in the article “Meeting in the Deep,” correspondent Vladimir Shcherbakov wrote that the hydronauts of the Bentos-300 underwater vehicle saw such a monster at a depth of about 100 m in the Black Sea. I contacted the hydronauts - this is an organization, "Mariekoprom", which owns "Bentos-300". Alas! Hydronaut V. Mashinsky, a participant in this descent, told me that the object observed in the Tarkhankut area was most likely a huge, 5 meters, beluga! Colleagues working with him confirmed his words.
Among the eyewitness accounts is the testimony of Grigory Tabunov, who met a huge snake in the sea near the village. Nikita. It does not raise much doubt. Later, these same facts were repeated in the Crimean Newspaper. Polina Kartygina and her friend came across a “huge log” - a snake - right on the beach near Feodosia. They say that Pobeda and Kurortnaya Gazeta collected unique materials, but they were not allowed to be published. It must be assumed that these materials have now been published to one degree or another. So, these days, many have seen a “huge monster”, a snake, in the sea or coastal area. Was this animal really unknown before? It turned out that it was known. And not just one century.
.jpg)
Layout of meeting points for an unknown animal:
1 - before the Second World War; 2 - nowadays.
(According to E.F. Shnyukov, L.I. Mitin, V.P. Tsemko, 1994)
One of the Tatar legends of Crimea - the "Otuz Legend" - "Chershamba" tells about a snake place near the village. Otuzy (modern Shchebetovka) on the Otuzka river, where reeds grow - Yulanchik. The literal translation of the word Yulanchik is a snake's nest. “Here... in the reeds lived a snake, which, curled up, seemed like a shock of hay, and when it walked through the field, it made ten knees and more. True, the Janissaries killed it. Akmaliz Khan sent them out of Istanbul, But only its cubs remained... "
Of course, this legend is naive and simple. It is interesting to pay attention to possible conclusions from the legend. The huge snake lives exactly where it is described today.
Apparently, this is one of the first mentions of a snake, for we are talking about the Janissaries, i.e. troops, which could only be called into Crimea in the Middle Ages, but not later than 1774, i.e. no later than the time of the conclusion of the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi peace.
According to V. Kh. Kondaraki, in 1828, the Evpatoria police officer filed a report, where he wrote about the appearance in the district of a huge snake with a hare's head and the semblance of a mane, which attacked sheep and sucked blood." Two snakes were killed by the Tatars, who believed that the snakes swam from hot countries. S. Slavich, from the words of eyewitnesses, talks about meeting a huge snake on Kazantip (Kerch Peninsula). "... A one-armed shepherd noticed something shiny under a thorn bush, similar to a ram’s skull polished by the rains and winds , and just like that, out of nothing to do, he hit this skull with his gerlyga. And suddenly the incredible happened, there was a seemingly silent explosion: a thorn bush uprooted took off, a cloud of dust flew up, pieces of hardened earth flew in all directions.
The shepherd became numb and numb, no longer understanding where he was and what was happening to him. He saw only this cloud of dust, and in it his seemingly enraged shepherd dogs and something huge, writhing with monstrous strength and speed. When the shepherd came to his senses, one dog was killed, and the two survivors were frantically tearing at the still convulsing body of some huge reptile.
What appeared to the one-armed man to be a ram's skull was the head of a huge snake. Soon after, the shepherd is said to have died. This happened before the war.
M. Bykova (1990) mentions in her book the story of Maria Stepanovna Voloshina that “in 1921, a note was published in the local Feodosia newspaper, which said that a “huge reptile” had appeared in the area of Mount Karadag and a company was sent to catch Red Army soldiers." There was no further information in the newspapers. M. Voloshin sent a clipping about the “reptile” to M. Bulgakov, and it formed the basis of the story “Fatal Eggs.” Gad was allegedly seen in the village (Koktebel).
The same book provides another description of a meeting with a huge snake on Karadag with reference to Natalia Lesina. The story took place in September 1952 with Varvara Kuzminichnaya Zozulya on Karadag near Cape Boy. In a quiet, heated place near the cape, Varvara Kuzminichna was collecting brushwood and mistook the monster for a pile of brushwood and almost stepped on it. According to the description of the stunned woman, the animal has a small head, a thin neck, and a back as thick as a pillar. When she began to wave the rope, the animal began to unwind like a ball. The lower and upper limbs were visible, and it squeaked. The summary is purely everyday: “As long as I’ve been living, I haven’t seen anything like this.” Another person, geologist Promtov, saw a huge snake on Karadag near the Lagorio wall.
Around the same years, Vsevolod Ivanov observed the “most fantastic of the most fantastic” snake. I would venture to quote from his story:
“The spring of 1952 in Koktebel was cold and rainy. April was back and forth, and May was rainy and cold...
On May 14, after prolonged cold weather, windless, warm weather set in. Assuming that during storms the sea had thrown a lot of colored pebbles ashore, I walked again past the Devil’s Finger, along the Gyaur-Bakh gorge, and then, so as not to waste a lot of time on the difficult descent to the seashore into Carnelian Bay on a rock, near a tree, from where you can see the entire bay, the width of which is 200-250 m, I tied a rope and easily went down with it...
The sea, I repeat, was calm. Near the shore, among small stones overgrown with algae, a mullet was playing. Further away, about 100 meters from the shore, dolphins swam.
A school of dolphins moved along the bay to the left. The mullet must have moved there. I turned my eyes to the right and just in the middle of the bay, about 50 meters from the shore, I noticed a large stone, 10-12 meters in circumference, overgrown with brown algae. I have visited Koktebel many times in my life, and on each visit I visited Carnelian Bay several times. The bay is not shallow, the depth begins about ten steps from the shore, but I don’t remember this stone in the middle of the bay. It was about 200 meters from me to this stone. I didn’t have binoculars with me. I couldn't see the stone. And is it a stone? I leaned back, placed my “eye” against a tree knot and noticed that the stone was noticeably leaning to the right. This means that it was not a stone, but a large ball of algae. Torn out by storms, where did they come here from? Maybe they will be washed to the rocks by the current and I should look at them? I forgot the dolphins.
While smoking my pipe, I began to observe a tangle of algae. The current seemed to be intensifying. The algae began to lose their round shape. The ball lengthened. Tears appeared in the middle of it.
And then... Then I trembled all over, rose to my feet and sat down, as if afraid that I might scare “it” if I stood on my feet. I looked at my watch. It was 12.15 pm. There was complete silence. Behind me, in the Gyaur-Bakh valley, the birds were chirping, and my pipe was smoking intensely. The "tangle" was unfolding. Turned around. Stretched out. I was still counting and not counting "it" as seaweed until "it" moved upstream.
This creature swam with wave-like movements to the place where the dolphins were, that is, to the left side of the bay.
Everything was still quiet. Naturally, what immediately came to mind was: is this a hallucination? I took out my watch. It was 12:18.
The reality of what I saw was hampered by the distance and the shine of the sun on the water, but the water was transparent, and that’s why I saw the bodies of dolphins, which were twice as far from me as the monster. It was large, very large, 25-30 meters, and as thick as a desk top if you turned it sideways. It was half a meter to a meter under water and, it seems to me, it was flat. The lower part of it was apparently white, as far as the blueness of the water made it clear, and the upper part was dark brown, which allowed me to take it for algae.
The monster, wriggling, just like swimming snakes, did not quickly swim towards the dolphins. They immediately fled.
Having driven away the dolphins and, perhaps, not even thinking about chasing them, the monster curled up into a ball, and the current carried it again to the right. It again began to look like a brown stone overgrown with algae.
Carried to the middle of the bay, just to the place or approximately where I saw it for the first time, the monster turned around again and, turning towards the dolphins, suddenly raised its head above the water. The head, the size of the arm span, looked like a snake's. I still couldn’t see the eyes, from which I could conclude that they were small. After holding its head above the water for about two minutes - large drops of water were dripping from it - the monster turned sharply, lowered its head into the water and quickly swam away behind the rocks that closed Carnelian Bay.
I looked at my watch. It was three minutes to one. I watched the monster for a little over forty minutes."
In 1967, Lyudmila Szegeda stepped over a log while walking in the Armatluk Valley on an autumn evening. Hearing a splash from behind, she saw a huge snake, as thick as a log, crawling from one body of water to another. The log she had stepped over was not there.
According to the observations of N. Lesina, two types of monsters were seen in Koktebel: with limbs and snake-like."
As we see, in historical terms, the existence of the monster can be traced for centuries and right up to the present day. Noteworthy is the narrowing of the monster’s habitat. In the last century it was established from Tarkhankut to Karadag and, obviously, further east. Before the Second World War, it was observed near Kuchuk-Lambat (Small Lighthouse), near Ayu-Dag, and on Kazantip in the Sea of Azov. Nowadays, in fact, more or less reliable evidence points to one area - Karadag.
The discovery at Cape Kiik-Atlama emphasized the validity of N. Lesina’s conclusion about two options for describing the animal - a giant snake, or a monster with small limbs, with a “hare”, “dog”, “horse” head and mane. This is important for further comparisons.
So, there are a lot of facts that are difficult to explain. Their degree of reliability varies. You never know what a frightened person might imagine. Many of the stories, however, are quite reliable. And yet, it is clearly premature to talk about the existence of some kind of monster in the sea near the Crimean coast. Encounters are too rare and random, it is not clear where these monsters breed, there are no paleontological remains, etc. In fact, the only material evidence is the corpses of killed dolphins. But it can also be disputed. Perhaps this is really the impact of the propellers of a ship or some new underwater vehicle.
However, nowadays we encounter unexpected sensations. The remains of some large three-meter animal were recovered from the stomach of a sperm whale killed near the North Pacific coast of America. Some zoologists called it Cadborosaurus. In December 1992, in Vancouver, at a joint meeting of the American and Canadian Zoological Societies, Edward Busville, a researcher at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, gave a report on Cadborosaurus. An article telling about these events was published by Penny Park in a serious scientific journal - New Scientist. It is not large, and we present its translation in full so that the reader can see for himself the amazing coincidence of the described facts with what the Crimean observers recorded.
A beast from the depths baffles zoologists
Such things are usually not taken seriously - take the story of Loch Nessie. But for Paul Leblond, a professor of oceanography at the University of British Columbia, the Caddy is a real scientific mystery. Late last month, he presented a paper on the biology of the unknown creature, Cadborosaurus, at a joint meeting of the Canadian and American Zoological Societies in Vancouver.
Cadborosaurus, affectionately known as Keddy, is a mysterious sea animal that has been talked about many times along the coast of British Columbia and as far south as Oregon. The evidence is too abundant to ignore, Leblond says. He believes that the Aboriginal people of British Columbia were well acquainted with the Keddies, referring to images dating back to 200 AD. e.
Since then, there has been an average of one reliable sighting of the creature every year and at various times over the past 60 years. Some people even held what they called Keddie "samples" in their hands. One such three-meter long Keddy ("youth") was apparently removed from the stomach of a sperm whale.
The descriptions are generally similar. They claim it is a long-necked animal with short pointed front fins, a horse-like head, clear eyes, a visible mouth and either ears or giraffe-like horns. The Caddy is often described as having cat-like hair, and sometimes with a mane along the neck. Some evidence depicts a more serpentine-like appearance of the creature, with a narrow, long body up to 7 m long, which writhes just under the surface of the ocean. Others describe a body more like a Volkswagen with a long neck.
Leblond and his colleague Ed Bustfeld of the Royal British Columbia Museum's natural history department in Victoria analyzed the evidence for clues about the creature's biology and behavior. They believe that Kaddy may be a deep sea animal. This, in their opinion, explains its infrequent sightings, as well as its presence in the stomach of sperm whales that hunt at great depths. But its hairy body suggests that it is a mammal, and if it does not often rise to the surface, then how does it breathe?
Some have suggested that the small horns may be a breathing apparatus, but Busfeld advocates a more elaborate breathing mechanism. His idea is that the bumps spotted along the animal's back by one observer may act like tiny gills. If highly vascular tissue lies beneath these irregularities, oxygen can be supplied directly from the water through the skin.
Adding up evidence from various locations along the coast of British Columbia at various times shows that the animal may be migrating, moving south to warmer coastal waters to breed.
Leblond and Busfeld say they are "keeping an open mind" about the type of animal that Keddy could have been. It may be something like a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile that lived during the time of the dinosaurs. But Leblon is leaning towards a less exotic version. He believes that "it is an animal related to some well-known marine mammals, but due to our habits we have not yet caught a single specimen. We see it only by chance, and one day we will inevitably catch it, and it will turn out to be one of the famous, but rare animals of the ocean."
By the way, Professor Paul Leblond, mentioned in the article, has been promoting the idea of the existence of a sea serpent in the Pacific Ocean region from Alaska to Oregon since 1973, when he published his first article on this topic together with D. Seyberg. The same facts were cited in his article by D. Gordon in the Reader's Digest magazine.
The magazine "Around the World" paid attention to this information.
And yet...
Serious experts believe that it is still premature to draw any conclusions - until a living specimen of the mysterious Cadborosaurus is captured. This is absolutely correct.
In 1995, Turkish officials and journalists saw “a monster with a horned head covered in black fur” on Lake Van. We even managed to photograph a long black shadow with a video camera. Journalists presented this information mockingly and with ridicule to the Turkish parliamentarians."
We also believe that it is necessary to carry out scientific research in order to verify the reality of the Karadag monster. The most unexpected errors are possible. Crimea and the Black Sea near Crimea have been studied too well, too many people live on its shores for a large creature to meet people so rarely. Only time will allow us to solve this riddle.
In conclusion, additional historical facts. It turns out that the monster has been living next to humanity for many centuries. On one of the walls of the ancient Assyrian palace in Nineveh, a sea serpent was painted, which was met by the Assyrian king Sargon II near the island of Cyprus.
The myths of ancient Hellas testify in one form or another to constant contacts and clashes between people and sea “monsters” - “dragons” or huge snakes.
One of the myths mentions the dragon Python guarding the entrance to the oracle. Apollo killed him and entered the crevice where the Oracle lived.
Dragons are common inhabitants of myths. But to what extent is there real content behind them?
Another myth tells how Perseus, after killing the Gorgon Medusa, visited Ethiopia, where he saw the daughter of King Kepheus Andromeda tied on the shore to be sacrificed to a sea monster. This monster was “sent by Apollo.” He also sent a flood. Perseus killed the monster and freed Andromeda. Some sources describe this fight in sufficient detail.
One of the labors of Hercules is a journey to the land of the Amazons under the belt of their queen Hippolyta. Upon returning from the campaign, Hercules arrived in Troy, to which this time Poseidon “sent” a sea “monster, brought by the tide and abducting all the people encountered on the plain.” The soothsayer predicted that the monster would leave Troy alone if its king Laomedont gave his daughter to Hesion to be devoured by the monster. Laomedont tied the girl to a coastal rock. Fortunately, Hercules killed the monster and saved Hesione. This is, in any case, how the author of the Mythological Library, Apollodorus, who supposedly lived in the first century BC, retells Greek myths.
Homer's Iliad mentions a wall that was built by the Trojans and the goddess Athena to protect Hercules from a sea monster.
Finally, the description given by Virgil (70-19 BC) of the tragedy that happened to Laocoon on the eve of the fall of Troy looks completely realistic. By the way, there are many hundreds of years between the event and the description. Obviously, the author used some sources that have not reached us.
"Laocoon, who was chosen by lot as priest of Neptune, |
If we compare this description with the stories of modern eyewitnesses, we note their similarity in many respects.
Thus, Virgil and Vsevolod Ivanov, who described the “monster” in most detail, feature huge snakes. “The upper part of the body rose above the swells,” writes Virgil. The same moment of emerging from the water is recorded in the stories of V. Ivanov and other eyewitnesses. "A bloody ridge sticks out of the water." Perhaps it's the "mane"? Snakes swim, "wiggling in an undulating motion." Are these not descriptions of contemporaries? "They torment the poor flesh." Remember the terrible wounds of dolphins. Also: the snake is unlikely to tear at the flesh. The snake strangles, swallows, but does not torment. However, strangulation has also been recorded - snakes wrap themselves twice around the body and throat. The conclusion is somewhat different. "Both dragons are slipping away..."
Apparently, these creatures are similar to snakes, but do not quite correspond to our ideas about these animals.
The giant snake or monster is mentioned in the works of many other ancient authors - Aristotle, Seneca, Pliny, Euripides. Here is the testimony of Procopius of Caesarea: “At the same time, that sea monster (whale) was caught, which the Byzantines called Porphyry. This monster tormented Byzantium and the surrounding areas for more than fifty years; however, it did this with sometimes long interruptions. It sank many ships, sailors from many ships, with its swift attack it forced them to get lost and drove them very far away. Emperor Justinian was very concerned about catching this monster, but could not do it. I will now tell you how he managed to catch it. It happened that the sea was completely smooth and calm and at the mouth of the Euxine Pontus a very large school of dolphins was swimming. Suddenly seeing the monster, they scattered wherever they could; the majority rushed to the mouth of the Sagaris River. Having captured some of them, the monster immediately swallowed it. But then, under the influence of hunger or the thirst for fight, it continued to pursue them until it unnoticedly swam close to the shore. Having found itself here in deep silt, it began to fight and move in every possible way in order to get away from here as quickly as possible, but it could not leave the shallows, and was even more sucked in by silt and mud. When the rumor about this spread throughout all the surrounding areas, everyone rushed here and, continuously hitting him with all kinds of axes, not only killed him, but also dragged him to the shore with strong ropes. Having laid him on carts, they found that it was about thirty cubits long, wide ten. Having cut it and divided it into parts, some immediately ate their share, while others decided to populate the part they got.”
The monster washes ashore in pursuit of dolphins. Apparently, there was some other reason, and not the pursuit of dolphins. Anyway; the monster was stranded, people finished off this creature and immediately ate it. I thought that given his unusual “dragon-like” or “lizard-like” appearance, they would hardly have done this; obviously, it was still something familiar to the local population. However, this is a view from modern times. Whales are also a rather unusual assortment on the menu of a Byzantine resident. And finally, another comment from Procopius himself: “... Others say that the monster that was captured is not the one I mentioned, but different.” In other words, there may be an error. However, "... with the death of the sea monster, liberation from many disasters resulted." As we see, Procopius persistently calls this creature a monster, not a whale. It can be assumed that this creature was a cetacean. Perhaps a killer whale?
A common thread to modern sightings: the creature hunted and ate dolphins. Presumably, the wounds it inflicted on the dolphins looked no less terrible than those observed by P. G. Semenkov.
In the Orthodox Church, icons depicting the “Miracle of the Serpent” are widespread. On icons, especially old icons, dating from the 11th to 11th centuries, St. George the Victorious is depicted slaying a serpent or dragon. A.V. Rystenko, the author of a major study of the plot of George and the dragon, argues that the legend is based on a real fact and only later the images of the legend acquired an allegorical meaning. George, a noble young man from Cappodicea (Nicodymia), a Christian warrior, appeared near the pagan city in Lebanon (according to other sources in Libya). This event took place during the time of Emperor Diocletian; near the city there was a swamp, in which a snake or dragon suddenly appeared. As is usually described in legends, the monster ate young men and women every day. With the help of prayer, George defeats the monster with a sword and saves the daughter of the ruler of the city, whose population converts to Christianity. The story “The Miracle of George about the Serpent” was created among Eastern monasticism and dates back to the oral traditions of the 8th-11th centuries. Since the fauna of those places where Georgiy accomplished his feat today does not include large reptiles. A.V. Rystenko believes that the legend of the noble warrior is connected with the ancient legends of India, Egypt, Babylon, based on real facts. It seems to us that George’s feat is based on real, local facts. The existence of some animal in the Eastern Mediterranean in the past, when the population was relatively sparse, is even more likely than it is today. It is not without interest that on some ancient Orthodox icons George defeats a dragon, on others - a huge snake. In other words, the legend does not give an answer to the topic of lizard or snake.
The prototype of another saint - Theodore Stratilates - kills a snake near the city of Heraclea (the modern Turkish city of Eregli on the Black Sea). The legend echoes the story of St. George. In conclusion - I will repeat. It seems unlikely that a large predator will exist in areas of the Black Sea that are relatively developed by the population, such as the waters near Karadag, Feodosia, and the Kerch Peninsula. For all that, these are perhaps the least studied of the developed water areas. And some doubts remain - which does not happen in nature! Many facts remain unexplained. Perhaps we are talking about a creature that lived in the past or even the recent past. Over the past 50 years, the monk seal has disappeared from the Black Sea. 3 This large predator could well have disappeared, if it existed at all. A sharp decrease in the number of dolphins could well undermine its food supply.
Therefore, I once again support the proposal of the director of the Karadag biological station P. G. Semenkov about the need to conduct scientific research in this zone. First of all, we are talking about research from underwater manned vehicles and using acoustic equipment.
I am aware of the difficulties of these works. The lake where Loch Nessie may live is incomparably smaller than the Black Sea. After many years of searching, the question remains unclear. And yet, if we don’t work, we’ll never find out anything.
The data presented are Black Sea versions of the legend of the Great Sea Serpent, to which numerous publications have been devoted over the course of several centuries. In 1892: a major work (600 pages) by the director of the Royal Botanical and Zoological Society in The Hague, “The Giant Sea Serpent,” was even published in London. "The legend lives on. It has not been proven, but it has not been disproven. The possibility of the existence of the Great Sea Serpent remains probable.
Notes
1 Perhaps the answer to this riddle will be found precisely in this plane. Thus, on July 11, 1995, with reference to a Bulgarian source, a message was broadcast on Ukrainian radio about a huge (fifteen-meter) shark encountered in the Black Sea near the Bulgarian Cape Emine. Or here is another option of this kind - a note in the Odessa newspaper "Izvestia" dated April 26, 1926: Whale in the Black Sea. “Recently, in the eastern part of the Black Sea, one of the ships discovered a large whale. The killing vessel “Dolphin”, which is engaged in catching dolphins, left Novorossiysk to exterminate the whale.” As we see, the information in both cases does not inspire much confidence (Paustovsky’s call: be afraid of Odessa reporters remains in force), but it indicates possible ways to explain the death of dolphins near Karadag.
2 "Stone chaos" - a disorderly accumulation of large stones.
3 In 1994, news came about the discovery of a small colony of 4-5 monk seals in the Black Sea 74.
E.F.Shnyukov
Treasures and mysteries. NAS of Ukraine. Central Scientific and Natural History Museum. Kyiv
Opuk Serpent
The painting was made from life during a meeting with a snake
Opuk is a protected cape in the southeast of the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea. This is an absolutely wild, amazingly beautiful place, vaguely reminiscent of the Far Eastern landscape, comparable only to Kamchatka. We stood there for four days and nights with a tent on the shore of the Black Sea, next to a salt lake on a narrow sandy spit of mother-of-pearl shell rock, and did not meet a single person. Only rare birds of unusual colors - the pink starling, which lives exclusively in this place, falcons, hoopoes, ducks, cormorants, gulls, albatrosses and many other birds flew everywhere. Snakes and snakes glided along the ground, gophers, hedgehogs, weasels, foxes and even wolves ran.
To be honest, I didn’t see any wolves, only tracks, but I came across foxes quite often. They came quite close to the tent and looked with curiosity and surprise with eyes shining like light bulbs. They say that wolves really appeared in Crimea, since there was a lot of food for them, for example, hares. In winter, they walked across the ice through the Kerch Strait from the mainland and remained on the peninsula. 15 kilometers from our camp they slaughtered a flock of 100 sheep. In summer, wolves are well-fed and do not pose a particular threat to humans. On Opuka there are horseflies, mosquitoes, midges, and there are ticks in the grass. In the twentieth of June they are still quite active. Before sitting on a camp chair or climbing into a tent, you should do a thorough inspection. Therefore, during this period it is better to set up a tent right on the Black Sea shore, on the beach.
Opuk is accessible to vehicles with high cross-country ability, although in good weather we easily drove on dirt roads in our five. There is steppe all around, not a single tree, and during the day you are under the direct rays of the scorching sun. Therefore, it is necessary to have a large awning made of natural fabric, approximately 20 sq.m., to cover the car, tent and table, and ski poles - stretchers with ropes. A constant breeze from the sea creates coolness and blissful comfort under the awning. The number of days spent on Opuka is determined only by the supply of water and food brought with them. In this zone of the steppe Crimea, springs are extremely rare and those are hydrogen sulfide. A small gas cylinder and a camp stove are essential for preparing hot food. All everyday difficulties and minor inconveniences seem trivial compared to the pristine beauty of the surrounding nature, which fills all senses with the joy of communicating with it, which can only be experienced through complete and long-term immersion in this divine and amazing world. Wildlife is not aggressive and even childishly naive and defenseless against the monster called “man.” Even in this uninhabited place traces of ugliness were visible. Plastic and glass bottles, beer cans, shoes and other floating debris of civilization thrown up by the storm were scattered on the shore.
In such places, insight suddenly comes, approximately on the second or third day of your stay. Gradually you begin to merge with nature and the universe, feeling the presence of divine forces. Dissolving in space, you realize that you are a small grain of sand in infinite space. Every moment of the present experienced is inextricably linked with the past and directed towards the future. The feeling is very complex: as if you are dead and at the same time immortal, you find yourself in resonance with the environment, making up a single whole called “life”.
On the third day of our stay on Opuka, after lunch, I comfortably settled down on the shore, starting to paint the next landscape. The water was turquoise, and the ship rocks were well lit by the sun and were clearly visible in the sea at a distance of 4 km. from the shore. The silence was broken only by splashes of waves and the laughter of seagulls. While working on the painting, I was lost in my thoughts, periodically glancing at the sea. Suddenly, about twenty meters from the shore, the head of a huge “scuba diver” in a black spacesuit appeared, but there were no scuba gears behind him, however, there were no masks or snorkels. I'll tell the truth - it became creepy, fear mixed with curiosity. Elena, who had emerged from the water a minute earlier, stood nearby, holding her breath. We continued to watch. The head was smooth, reminiscent of a giant black-gray bull terrier, with large brow ridges; she looked at us carefully with the yellow eyes of a predator. Then a smooth body about three meters long, the size of a horse, appeared. No fins or other body parts were observed. The body was serpentine in shape and glistened in the sun.
Photo - Opuk, the meeting place with the Serpent
The snake surfaced with its head several times, showed its body and went under the water. This lasted for about a minute. The next afternoon, at about the same time around 3 p.m., the creature appeared again. At that moment, when we were in the water, it appeared about ten meters from us. We rushed ashore like a bullet. Then, sitting on the shore, we watched it for an hour, swimming close to the shore several times in both directions. It felt like he had intelligence and was looking for contact with us.
In the evening, having returned to the village of Pesochnoe, on the Kazantip Bay, and having told this story to the “chief Scythian of the Kerch Peninsula” Roman Streltsov, we heard the answer: “What are you talking about! This is a sensation! Where's the picture? This is the Karadag snake! Have you seen a sea monster that sometimes crawls onto the shore? You are lucky that you returned alive at all, although it is prestigious to die in the mouth of this monster! Only a few people have seen it in the entire history of mankind, since the 19th century, sailors, fishermen and local residents. In the past, they frightened young girls who went swimming in the sea at night under the moon. The description of the monster is exactly the same as yours.” I listened with my mouth open, forgetting even about the three landscapes painted on Opuka, about the beautiful salty pink lake with magnificent brine and healing mud, about the endless starry sky with the Milky Way and night cicadas, about the evening smell of steppe herbs, in which the most famous perfumes resting. It’s a paradox, but I again wanted to go to this amazing “lost world”, where the “Opuksky Serpent-Gorynych” strangely and mysteriously lives.
The last mystery of the Black Sea
A week after staying on Opuka, we decided to go there again.
It took about half a day to prepare equipment, food, art and photography supplies. After lunch, artist-architect Roman Streltsov with his wife Natasha and daughter Katya in their jeep, and Elena and I in a Zhiguli set off to meet the Karadag Serpent. The main purpose of the trip was to see and photograph the sea monster. Theoretically, we were a little prepared for the meeting.
It turns out that the first mention of the sea serpent was in the legends of Crimea. And in the 19th century, sailors and fishermen saw something resembling a giant snake. One of the experts on Crimea, a doctor by training and local historian by vocation, Oleg Samoilov from the village of Sokolinoe of the Grand Canyon of Crimea, said that these are the descendants of the great Atlantis - six-meter Atlanteans who went under water forever. Perhaps there is an entire cave underwater city in this area, and the modified Atlanteans are intelligent and very rarely make contact with humans. Apparently modern man is not yet quite prepared psychologically to meet them. It turns out there is a huge array on the Internet dedicated to the Karadag serpent, also affectionately called Blackie.
The AKINAC travel club has been searching for cryptozoological creatures for three years now, that is, sea snakes or dinosaurs living in the depths of the Black Sea.
In 1921, an article about the “Huge Reptile” near Karadag appeared in a Feodosia newspaper. A company of Red Army soldiers was sent to catch the snake, but when they arrived at the place in Koktebel, they found only a trail of the snake that led into the sea. Maximilian Voloshin sent Mikhail Bulgakov a newspaper clipping about the “reptile.” Soon Bulgakov wrote the famous story “Fatal Eggs”.
Back in the thirties of the twentieth century, a fisherman near Maly Mayak among the rocks met a huge snake. The horror of what he saw was so great that when people came running to his cry, he only managed to whisper “Head of a Dog.” After being paralyzed, he died a month later. Then the monster was seen more and more often and the description matched almost exactly. The snake-shaped body is more than 6 meters long with a dog’s head about a meter long.
In the 80s, one military man, walking along the bays of the Azov Sea in Eastern Crimea, saw a monster of enormous size lying peacefully on the shore. In a panic, he rushed into the steppe, running several kilometers without looking back.
I will no longer list examples of encounters with a snake; there are enough of them described on the Internet; those who wish can find out for themselves by typing “Karadag snake.” I just want to note that there were no cases of direct attacks on people. Blackie appears to be looking to connect with people, but the public needs to be prepared for the encounter.
Remembering our last meeting with him on June 26, 2009 on Opuka, I did not observe aggression on his part. On the contrary, he carefully watched us with his yellow eyes for forty minutes, sticking his “dog head” out of the sea, periodically going under the water. If the snake wanted to devour us, he probably could have easily done this when we were in the water or at night, having climbed ashore, crawled up to the tent, but this did not happen.
They say he eats dolphins. I saw the remains of two dolphins on the shore at Opuka, half a kilometer from each other, with their sides bitten off. Apparently they are thrown ashore in agony and die. Previously, I thought that this lacerated wound was from the propeller of a fishing boat, but now I am sure that it was from the teeth of the Karadag snake.
So, armed with cameras, we finally drove out onto the sandy spit of Opuk Cape, next to the salt lake. Having set up camp opposite the rock-ships, we began to observe what was happening through binoculars. Perhaps “Gorynych” lays its huge eggs on these wild, inaccessible rocks four kilometers from the shore.
Busy with swimming, walking along the shore, taking mud baths, and socializing, we didn’t notice how evening came with a magnificent sunset. All this time we did not part with our cameras, waiting for the snake, we took pictures of ourselves and nature. Night fell with a bright star map and the milky way. The moon came out from behind Cape Opuk and slowly moved towards the rock-ships, leaving a clear path on the sea. Having heard enough stories about the “bastard,” we decided to spend the night in the cars with the seats folded down.
The morning was sunny, the sky without a single cloud, we had to build a small tent on the beach, something like an observation post. Around 11 am the sky suddenly became leaden, a breeze came from the sea and a wave began to blow. The lightning flashes became brighter, and the thunder became stronger. Then a sharp gust of wind tore off the awning and knocked down a table with chairs. A few seconds later there was a tropical downpour with strong winds. Because of the water wall, visibility was only a few meters. I rushed to save the equipment left on the shore. The rest fled to their cars. About five meters of canvas was carried out to sea, but the rest was saved. This went on for about half an hour, the cars shook and swayed, even sitting in the cab there was a feeling that the car was about to roll over. The bottom of a dry lake 20 meters away from us instantly filled with water, cutting off our way back. It felt like we were on a small island surrounded by water. For a moment the sun came out and everything sparkled with bright colors.
I looked out to sea. About two meters from the shore, something black was rapidly moving in a westerly direction. I grabbed the camera and rushed to take pictures, not noticing how I smashed my right big toe on a stone. Having run closer and pulled the trigger of the camera, I saw a dolphin smoothly flying under water. The sky again became leaden and gloomy.
An inner voice told us that it was time to leave this mysterious place and the sooner the better. Having quickly left our things in the cars, one might say on the last wave, constantly crossing ourselves and repeating prayers, we managed to jump onto the hard road, and after 15 kilometers onto the asphalt. It was almost impossible to determine the original color of the car; it was a continuous mess of clay and dirt. And at that moment the rain came again and washed our cars better than any car wash while driving home to Roman.
After this, the road to Opuk was closed for two weeks, as gray clouds constantly circled, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. I ask myself why no one was able to photograph the snake, although many people saw it? Maybe he is much smarter than us, feels and reads our thoughts and appears when we are not expecting him?
It seems that this is the last mystery of the Black Sea that has yet to be solved.
Sergey Bagrov
Hello friends.
Many of us know that the world is full of secrets and mysteries. Let us recall, for example, the famous Nessie, who has been seen more than once in Loch Ness, or the giant octopuses of which are occasionally raised from the depths by fishing boats. Every year there are more and more such messages.
Whether to believe in their existence or not, everyone decides for themselves. Today I want to talk about a mysterious animal that supposedly lives in the Black Sea at the foot of an ancient volcano.
Some call it the Karadag snake, others consider it an extinct reptile that has somehow survived to this day, others consider it the spirit of Mount Karadag.
The locals even gave him a name - Blackie.
But first things first.
The first mentions of a strange creature living in the Black Sea appeared a long time ago. The ancient Greeks composed legends about him that have survived to this day. The scholar Herodotus described it as a giant snake with black scales, a horse's head, a long tail and a crest on its back.
According to ancient legends, when the creature surfaced, it foamed the water, raising large waves that could sink a small boat. The look of the terrible red eyes made the sailors freeze with horror and discouraged any desire to approach the terrible place.
This was also confirmed by Turkish sailors. In their reports to the Sultan, they talked about a terrible monster that sank ships and devoured their crew alive.
Local residents also added fuel to the fire by frightening travelers with stories of snake attacks on coastal villages.
One of the ancient legends “Chershambe” tells about a snake place located near the current village of Shchebetovka (the old name is Otuz). In a lowland overgrown with reeds, according to legend, there lived a large snake which (curled up in a ball) could be confused with a haystack, and if anyone met it crawling, then its length was ten knees or more (a knee is a measure of length equal to 40-50 cm).
To get rid of this scourge, the local khan specially ordered the Janissaries from Istanbul, who killed the snake, but it is no secret that offspring could remain from it.
Later mentions
In the 19th century, the Evpatoria police officer (authority representative) wrote in his report to Emperor Nicholas 1 about the appearance in the vicinity of a huge snake with a hare's head and a horse's mane, which attacked sheep and drank their blood.
These eyes are opposite...
By order of Nicholas, an expedition was sent to Crimea to capture this reptile. It was not possible to catch the snake itself, but an egg weighing 12 kilograms was found, and nearby the remains of a giant tail. The egg was cracked, revealing an embryo with clear signs of its “dragon” affiliation. There are rumors that the egg is still kept somewhere in the storerooms of the Kherson Museum of Nature.
At the beginning of the last century, a note appeared in a Feodosia newspaper that a huge snake had appeared in the area of Mount Karadag, and a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to catch it. Arriving in Koktebel and exploring the surrounding area, the military found only a trace of a mighty body going into the sea.
In 1952, the writer Vsevolod Ivanov, while walking in Carnelian Bay (Koktebel area), saw a ball of algae in the sea, which at first he did not pay much attention to. However, after some time, I noticed that the ball began to unravel and lengthen on its own, and as a result, it swam towards a pod of dolphins that appeared nearby.
The length of the creature was about 30 meters and it moved like a snake, in a wave-like manner. The dolphins, sensing danger, scattered.
Cases of attacks by unknown creatures on dolphins in the Black Sea are quite common.
In 1990, a team of fishermen, near the village of Ordzhonikidze, went to sea to check their nets. While checking one of the nets, the fishermen discovered its break, at the end of which a dolphin, the Black Sea bottlenose dolphin, was dangling with its tail entangled.
The animal's stomach and ribs were bitten out in one piece, and the width of the bite was about a meter. The edge of the bite was framed by teeth marks up to 4 cm in size.
Frightened by what they saw, the fishermen cut the net, threw the remains of the dolphin into the water, and quickly left the place.
What does modernity say?
According to one of the windsurfers, who was engaged in his favorite sport a few kilometers from the shore, suddenly something threw his board, causing him to fall into the water. But what surprised him most of all was not this, but the fact that he fell on something large, hard and clearly alive.
Having come to his senses, he rushed to the shore at the speed of a bullet and, fortunately, “something” did not pursue him.
During one of the dives of the Bentos underwater laboratory, scientists noticed a blurry shadow across the submarine’s hull. Having looked more closely, they realized that something huge was swimming near the porthole, resembling a snake in appearance.
It was not possible to photograph it, either because of the stupor that arose, or because the creature, sensing something was wrong, quickly went into the depths.
An equally interesting incident occurred quite recently in 2004 and was described on her website by Tatyana Karatsuba Seid-Burkhan.
According to her, while relaxing on Karadag with their friends, they watched the love games of two sea snakes at once. Huge white bodies with black backs wriggled right at the foot of Karadag.
The observation lasted for several hours, and then... her words simply amazed me:
— Tired of looking, we retired to the cave!?
In my opinion, this is a strange statement! Can you get tired of looking at a creature that no one has seen before? Don't try to take a video or photo of it?
I would probably run to Koktebel just for this to get a camera.
Who are you, Blackie?
What kind of animal is this anyway?
Based on the descriptions of eyewitnesses, Blackie could either be a large representative of the lizards that dominated the planet millions of years ago, or a snake that somehow grew to enormous sizes. Or perhaps these are two different types of animals altogether.
Lizard?
Could an ancient lizard of this size survive the impact of a meteorite and the ensuing ice age, and exist for millions of years practically undetected?
If we assume that he lived in underwater caves near Karadag, where at that time it was probably warm from the close occurrence of magma, then it is possible.
It’s hard to say what he ate all this time, whether he could breathe on the surface or whether he had enough air from the caves, or whether he had gills at his disposal.
One thing can be said with certainty: in order to exist for so long, it needed to breed offspring, which means there must be at least two animals.
Snake?
If this is still a sea serpent, which appeared long after the meteorite fell, then how did it reach such a size? Today, the largest snake known to science is the anaconda, but its size does not exceed 12 meters.
What did this snake eat to grow so big? Dolphins? Given their agility, this is not an easy prey.
Plankton? Fish? As you know, the Black Sea is a closed sea, and due to the presence of a hydrogen sulfide zone, it is also practically lifeless at depths of more than 200 meters. There are clearly no such huge migrations of fish and plankton as in the oceans.
Or maybe gigantism is associated specifically with hydrogen sulfide? It is found in small quantities in the cells of our bodies and the bodies of animals and helps regulate life processes.
Well, just like in the first case, there must be at least two individuals of different sexes.
Where do you live?
During the period of active movement of earth layers, when the appearance of the Southern Crimea was being formed, it is quite possible that voids could have formed under Karadag and in the nearby bottom layer. This area has been a nature reserve for a long time and is therefore poorly studied.
It was in these voids, and possibly entire networks of caves with huge galleries, that life hitherto unknown to modern science could well have survived. It’s not for nothing that every year scientists discover new species of animals and plants.
Why do you meet so rarely?
Well, they don’t like people with their wild desire to tame an unknown animal.
But seriously, as mentioned above, the area has been poorly studied. There may be only a few animals, and due to mass fishing, they have serious problems with food.
There may be many options, and there is no clear answer to this question yet.
However, some environmental activists are trying to protect the marine reptile unknown to science and are appealing to the government to take measures to preserve the habitat of the Karadag snake.
It is not known for certain whether snakes actually exist or are they just a figment of fantasy, however, for example, the Scottish authorities still keep the question of Nessie’s existence open on the agenda, and are trying with all their might to keep its halo of habitat intact.
Interesting fact?)
About 20 years ago, residents of a remote Chinese village killed and ate a real sea dragon!
Having stoned him to death, they, following old grandmother’s recipes, began to cook a stew from him, grind the bones into powder to prepare healing potions, and sell the meat at the local market.
The dragon in China is a sacred and magical creature, and therefore the villagers decided to use it for its intended purpose.
When information about this reached civilization, scientists decided to reassure the local population. We conducted an examination of the half-eaten leftovers and... almost went crazy!
The remains belonged to a plesiosaur!
This is how science lost living proof of the existence of dinosaurs in our time.
To believe what is told or not is a purely personal matter. I don’t claim to be the original source, so I ask you not to hit me too hard with sticks. It’s better to express your own opinion on this matter.
That's all I have for today.
Best regards, Sergey Drozdov.
P. S. If you have any questions after reading the article, do not hesitate to ask in the comments.
P. P. S. You can familiarize yourself with the topics that will be covered in the near future at.A huge snake-like creature has been repeatedly seen off the coast of Crimea. The monster resembles a huge sea serpent. According to eyewitnesses, it hunts Black Sea dolphins. It can only be observed from the high shore when the sea is clear and calm, then the entire bay is visible to the bottom. According to researchers, this is the famous Karadag snake, which for centuries rare eyewitnesses have seen on the Black Sea coast. It is believed that this is a reptile that lived in the Black Sea back in the time of dinosaurs. Off the coast of the peninsula there are many underwater caves, not only near the coastal cliffs, but also in the underwater rocks. Researchers believe that huge prehistoric animals may have survived in them since ancient times. Eyewitnesses managed not only to photograph, but also to film the underwater monster on video. The length of the kite is at least 40 meters. The monster was seen off the coast of Yalta and in the South-West. It was even possible to observe two snakes at the same time, which were hunting in an organized manner, surrounding a school of dolphins.
Karadag snake(Karadag monster or Opuk serpent) is a water monster, according to legend, living off the coast of Crimea in the Black Sea.
Story
Herodotus also mentioned the terrible sea monster. According to his description, it is a black snake, with a mane, a huge mouth, large teeth and clawed paws. He sailed at cruising speed - faster than the fastest Greek ships. In the 16th-18th centuries, Turkish sailors who sailed on ships between Istanbul, Crimea and Azov constantly reported to the Sultan about the Black Sea dragon. And they called it Karadag because, according to legend, the monster lives in the area of the Karadag massif, in one of the underwater caves, of which there are many.
One of the Tatar legends of Crimea - the "Otuz Legend" - "Chershamba" tells about a snake place near the village. Otuzy (modern Shchebetovka) on the Otuzka river, where reeds grow - Yulanchik. The literal translation of the word Yulanchik is a snake's nest.
“Here... in the reeds lived a snake, which, curled up, seemed like a shock of hay, and when it walked through the field, it made ten knees or more. True, the Janissaries killed it. Akmaliz Khan sent them out of Istanbul, But only its cubs remained.. ""
Descriptions
According to V.X. Kondaraki, in 1828, the Evpatoria police officer filed a report, where he wrote about the appearance in the district of a huge snake with a hare’s head and the semblance of a mane, which attacked sheep and sucked blood.
S. Slavich, from the words of eyewitnesses, talks about meeting a huge snake on Kazantip (Kerch Peninsula).
M. Bykova mentions in her book the story of Maria Stepanovna Voloshina that “in 1921, a note was published in the local Feodosia newspaper that said that a “huge reptile” had appeared in the area of Mount Karadag and a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to catch it.” There was no further information in the newspapers. M. Voloshin sent a clipping about the “reptile” to M. Bulgakov, and it formed the basis of the story “Fatal Eggs.” Gad was allegedly seen in the village (Koktebel).
The same book provides another description of a meeting with a huge snake on Karadag with reference to Natalia Lesina. The story happened in September 1952 with Varvara Kuzminichnaya Zozulya on Karadag near Cape Boy. In a quiet, heated place near the cape, Varvara Kuzminichna was collecting brushwood and mistook the monster for a pile of brushwood and almost stepped on it. According to the description of the stunned woman, the animal has a small head, a thin neck, and a back as thick as a pillar. When she began to wave the rope, the animal began to unwind like a ball. The lower and upper limbs were visible, and it squeaked. The summary is purely everyday: “As long as I’ve been living, I haven’t seen anything like this.”
Eyewitnesses
Geologist Promtov saw a huge snake on Karadag near the Lagorio wall.
During these same years, Vsevolod Ivanov observed the “most fantastic of the most fantastic” snake. Quote from his story:
“The spring of 1952 in Koktebel was cold and rainy. April was back and forth, and May was rainy and cold...
On May 14, after prolonged cold weather, windless, warm weather set in. Assuming that during storms the sea had thrown a lot of colored pebbles ashore, I walked again past the Devil’s Finger, along the Gyaur-Bakh gorge, and then, so as not to waste a lot of time on the difficult descent to the seashore into Carnelian Bay on a rock, near a tree, from where you can see the entire bay, the width of which is 200-250 m, I tied a rope and easily went down with it...
The sea, I repeat, was calm. Near the shore, among small stones overgrown with algae, a mullet was playing. Further away, about 100 meters from the shore, dolphins swam.
A school of dolphins moved along the bay to the left. The mullet must have moved there. I turned my eyes to the right and just in the middle of the bay, about 50 meters from the shore, I noticed a large stone, 10-12 meters in circumference, overgrown with brown algae. I have visited Koktebel many times in my life, and on each visit I visited Carnelian Bay several times. The bay is not shallow, the depth begins about ten steps from the shore, but I don’t remember this stone in the middle of the bay. It was about 200 meters from me to this stone. I didn’t have binoculars with me. I couldn't see the stone. And is it a stone? I leaned back, placed my “eye” against a tree knot and noticed that the stone was noticeably leaning to the right. This means that it was not a stone, but a large ball of algae. Torn out by storms, where did they come here from? Maybe they will be washed to the rocks by the current and I should look at them? I forgot the dolphins.
While smoking my pipe, I began to observe a tangle of algae. The current seemed to be intensifying. The algae began to lose their round shape. The ball lengthened. Tears appeared in the middle of it.
And then... Then I trembled all over, rose to my feet and sat down, as if afraid that I might scare “it” if I stood on my feet. I looked at my watch. It was 12.15 pm. There was complete silence. Behind me, in the Gyaur-Bakh valley, the birds were chirping, and my pipe was smoking intensely. The "tangle" was unfolding. Turned around. Stretched out. I was still counting and not counting "it" as seaweed until "it" moved upstream.
This creature swam with wave-like movements to the place where the dolphins were, that is, to the left side of the bay.
Everything was still quiet. Naturally, what immediately came to mind was: is this a hallucination? I took out my watch. It was 12:18.
The reality of what I saw was hampered by the distance and the shine of the sun on the water, but the water was transparent, and that’s why I saw the bodies of dolphins, which were twice as far from me as the monster. It was large, very large, 25-30 meters, and as thick as a desk top if you turned it sideways. It was half a meter to a meter under water and, it seems to me, it was flat. The lower part of it was apparently white, as far as the blueness of the water made it clear, and the upper part was dark brown, which allowed me to take it for algae.
The monster, wriggling, just like swimming snakes, did not quickly swim towards the dolphins. They immediately fled.
Having driven away the dolphins and, perhaps, not even thinking about chasing them, the monster curled up into a ball, and the current carried it again to the right. It again began to look like a brown stone overgrown with algae.
Carried to the middle of the bay, just to the place or approximately where I saw it for the first time, the monster turned around again and, turning towards the dolphins, suddenly raised its head above the water. The head, the size of the arm span, looked like a snake's. I still couldn’t see the eyes, from which I could conclude that they were small. After holding its head above the water for about two minutes - large drops of water were dripping from it - the monster turned sharply, lowered its head into the water and quickly swam away behind the rocks that closed Carnelian Bay.
I looked at my watch. It was three minutes to one. I watched the monster for a little over forty minutes."
1967 Lyudmila Szegeda stepped over a log on an autumn evening while walking in the Armatluk Valley. Hearing a splash from behind, she saw a huge snake, as thick as a log, crawling from one body of water to another. The log she had stepped over was not there.
Semenkov's article
From an article by the director of the Karadag Nature Reserve P.G. Semenkova:
“On December 7, 1990, a team of fishermen from the Karadag branch of the Institute of Biomedicine of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, consisting of A. A. Tsabanov, Y. M. Nuykin, M. M. Sych and N. V. Gerasimov, went to sea to check the nets set for catching Black Sea stingrays. The net is a canvas 2.5 m wide and 200 m long with a mesh size of 200 mm. It was installed at a depth of 50 m with coordinates at a distance of 3 miles in the direction southeast of Lyagushachya Bay and 7 miles south of the village of Ordzhonikidze. arrived at about 12 o'clock in the afternoon and began sorting the net from the southern end. After one hundred and fifty meters, the net appeared torn, and the fishermen decided that when setting up they had thrown their net on top of someone else's, and the owner of the lower net was forced to cut off the upper one in order to to check theirs.They came from the other end of the network and continued checking.
When we went to the ragged edge, we pulled a dolphin to the surface - a Black Sea bottlenose dolphin about 230 cm in size, whose tail was entangled in a net. Having pulled the dolphin to the nose of the mothfish, the fishermen discovered that the dolphin's belly had been bitten out in one bite. The width of the bite along the arc was about 1 m. Along the edge of the arc, teeth marks were clearly visible on the dolphin’s skin. The size of the tooth mark is about 40 mm. The distance between the teeth marks is about 15-20 mm. In total there were about 16 tooth marks along the arc. The dolphin's belly was bitten out along with its ribs, so that the spine was clearly visible. In the area of the head dangled the remains of the lungs, from which blood flowed as we rose. The marks of teeth were clearly visible on the sides of the frames, and were located symmetrically.
The dolphin's head was severely deformed, evenly compressed on all sides, as if they were trying to drag it through a narrow hole. No eyes were visible, and the deformed part had a whitish color, reminiscent of the color of a fish taken from the stomach of another fish.
The examination of the dolphin lasted no more than three minutes. The sight of the dolphin and the flowing blood caused severe panic among the fishermen. One of them cut the net, the dolphin fell into the sea, and the fishermen left the area at full speed for home.
I saw the fishermen immediately upon their return from the sea, asked them in detail about what had happened, and based on their story, the artist made a sketch of the dolphin they saw.
A dolphin bite mark from an unknown creature.
A dolphin bite mark from an unknown creature. (According to P.G. Semenkov. Geological journal No. 1, 1994)
In the spring of 1991, fishermen brought back a second dolphin with similar teeth marks on its body. It was an Azovka one and a half meters in size.
They pulled him out of the network, which was installed in approximately the same place as on December 7, 1990.
This time the net was not torn, and almost the entire dolphin was very entangled in the net, wrapped like a doll, so that only one head was sticking out. The marks of three teeth were clearly visible on the dolphin's head. In appearance, they were exactly like the teeth marks on the body of a bottlenose dolphin.
The brought dolphin was placed in a cold chamber and in May 1991, while in Leningrad, I went to the Institute of Zoology, talked with a number of employees, and invited the Azov fish to come and examine it. Unfortunately, none of the employees were able to go, but I received the address of specialists in traces found on the body of marine mammals caught in the ocean fishery. These were YugNIRO employees working in Kerch and Odessa. I managed to contact one of them by phone. I described in detail the marks found on the bodies of the dolphins entangled in our nets, and invited him to examine the Azov fish stored in our cold chamber. I was promised that he would try to find time to come to our institution. However, neither in May, nor in June, nor in July, no one came to us.
At the end of August there was an accident, and everything that was in the cold chamber was lost, including the dolphin.
This is an accurate description of the events that occurred in December 1990 and April 1991.
Loading...
