Northwest Noir: A Deception Pass sea monster?

Now, I'm just going to tell you guys, this next story involves Fox 13's Lauren Donovan. And that always means that she likes to throw me curveballs on live television. I've been told that it's about sea monsters. And when I asked her if there's anything I need to know about this, and no, I have not unmuted her yet because I could see her. She's already responding on live television. She told me to strap in. So I say that, then I hit live. And Lauren, you are now unmuted. I didn't say strap in. I said buckle up. Buckle up. Sorry. I'm a Midwesterner. I say strap in. you're a Pacific Northwest you're born in res you say buckle up apparently that's the vernacular here you know to be used by all pop soda coke you know whatever hey you know it's spooky season i've been trying to dive into my little history segments on the social media um into fun curiosities and spooky coincidences here in the Pacific Northwest and one thing i came across blew my mind and then i think subsequently it blew the minds of other people uh sea serpents matt how familiar are you with these specimens of the deep of uh you know mythical proportions did you see him on the screen uh this last summer uh watching the Odyssey i i will admit to you that uh i'm i i don't always know uh the the mythical creatures i'm not always aware you said sea monsters guy yeah when you said sea monsters i i thought that i was going to be helpful so oh i i know some aquatic species and then you said mythical i was like i might i might have to tap out i i don't know the kraken you're familiar with the kraken yes yes thanks thanks to our our lovely nhl team and also the spiced rum i i know all about the kraken so we're good there perfect let's let's leave it at that so that is one basis of uh mythical sea monster understanding that you have here uh matthew smith so what what have i told you that in 1958 there were reports of a sea monster specifically a sea serpent think about this more as like a brachiosaurus uh this is what i'm envisioning you know old old uh sailor tales a brachiosaurus in the water right you kind of think of it maybe like looking a little pokemon-ish um that's what i think of sea serpents and sea monsters whatever 1958 not that long ago somebody is saying that they spot one of these things on whidbey island not just that that it washes ashore at deception pass this is not the animal i just use this for references from the time period um they were spotted cavorting around puget sound and they were saying loch ness has nothing on whidbey island this creature was about 12 feet long 12 inches in diameter and it washed ashore deception pass and people cut chunks of it out as souvenirs and supposedly this is like from an official city of Anacortes website here Matt they said that um the Associated Press was reporting on this in 1958 and that is like the most trusted voice in news so i'm like what i just started like looking at my little newspaper thing like oh sea serpents what is this you know is there any evidence of that here you know because there's all sorts of weird stories graveyard of the Pacific right why did ships go down or things like that and then i stumbled upon this i was like 1958 we there's got to be a better explanation for what's going on here you know a whole Scooby-Doo more moment like what is the truth right i will say sometimes i i try to get ahead of where these things could go Lauren and i i heard i saw sea monster and and you had already given me a little bit of a hint on what where we were going but when we talk about historical i didn't think we were talking 1958 i thought we were talking about like the fake journalism of like the late 1800s that you know as i like to say uh where where the journalists technically just went to the bar and wrote down the tallest tale they heard and it became fact yes yes no no this is like quite recent and it blew my mind that it was quite recent so i called in the big dogs i called Joe Gatos. He is a scientist who works with the SeaDog Society. He's absolutely one of my hands down favorite interviews and he's up on San Juan Island and he goes diving. He is with animals in the deep all the time. If you go to a Kraken game, Matt, speak of the Kraken, he's the guy on the big screen that talks about monsters of the deep. Actually, he has his own segment at the Kraken. That's cool. Yeah. I love that. That's so cool. If anybody knows anything, it's this guy to talk about monsters. So I called him yesterday I said, I probably have the weirdest pitch for you that you've gotten maybe in the last six months. And he was like, you know what? I'm game for it. So I sent him all the historical accounts and we went through together what potential creatures of the deep this thing could be, because the truth is probably just stranger than fiction. Right. We've got some crazy creatures in the deep. Mind you, scuba diving 1958. That wasn't really happening, Matt. There it wasn't like people were having submarines at the same scale that we did. to our understanding of the underwater world of basking sharks was quite limited so this is one on his short list that he thought it could be a basking shark 30 feet long instead of one of those washed ashore it would be pretty terrifying this is the wolf eel we'll circle back to that one there's the oarfish that was suggested in my comments and you guys the oarfish it fits the description best of the monster but there's no oarfish here locally okay this one i'm gonna keep up with these names matthew smith that spiny creepy creature that is called a lancet fish and it could have been that because that kind of looks like a sea serpent at least to me um some crazy crazy teeth in there um he says it's like an eel-like fish that has giant teeth but it's so deep and down below that you probably wouldn't cross paths with it so his bet his money in fact matthew smith after going through a list of at least eight potential creatures was he thinks it's a wolf eel which we did have a photo um we can run back through it but of course the wolf eel yes yes are you are you familiar with no i'm not okay that's a six gill shark that's also on the list there is six gill shark capital of the world des moines you know this is perhaps an old basking shark you know and um great old illustrations of sea monsters of yore that is the oarfish and that is the wolf eel and he thinks that is the most likely suspect because of how it moves and it actually goes up on the surface too so the one thing it maybe it was a real juiced up wolf eel maybe it was really big um because it doesn't fit the size dimensions per se of that time period but he thinks what could be at the surface what could be feeding what could wash ashore what is very prominent here in the Salish Sea and that he's dived with and interacted with before it is the wolf eel and he says those things just gobble up urchins like they're popcorn and they the urchin like i don't know what you call them prongs they like shoot out through their mouth they're like tough guys okay he says this guy's pretty much nails so uh i thought it was really interesting as a takeaway you know bring the scientist in let's have some fun with some wacky history i'm i'm dying of laughter because for our viewers at home i always tell you guys that you know lauren loves to catch me off guard on tv i think she's successfully done this multiple times when she doesn't have like the hardcore you know crime and grime that we sometimes have to cover we we get into these stories and i think she just enjoys seeing looks on my face and i'm laughing now because i'm also thinking about like hey we'll be having somebody from google stopping by for our next story and they're just randomly going to jump into this this newscast they're going to be like why is this woman talking about eel fish and sea monsters and i i just love it for that individual i hope i hope that they become a fan of these stories as much as i am they'll be intrigued you know um it's so fun i mean they they said it washes ashore right beneath the deception pass bridge so i've been driving over that bridge my whole life matt and i didn't know about the lore of a monster washing ashore there and you know the currents and tide like that's a pretty rough area um as far as it goes uh in terms of like when the storms hit it of currents and whatnot so i'm sure all sorts of things could wash ashore over there so a little real quick i i saw this image because we were like rolling through so many things thing after thing like where did you find this guy actually photographer colby murdoch found it for me so colby and i do a lot of the history stories together and so i sent him a lot of potential the cast of characters it could be and my understanding is he found this one linked as a um archaic photo or description of what a basking shark and harper's weekly 1868 one of these big bad boys here they are here in puget sound um but yeah those things are really gentle they wouldn't want to hurt you but i think the oarfish sounds like the most accurate definition Matt the oarfish that you just saw those guys carrying it that one's like huge um but they're just not here locally it's the one that looks more like a serpent other than this one i think that's a pretty good the lancet fish well you as well you've blown my mind you've outdone yourself for the spooky season stories the history stories i will say a job well done we are going to push forward we got to take a short commercial break in a second but before we jump out i always like to ask you a to let the folks know where they can find you online because i know you do even more of these deep dives but also b what should they be looking forward to in your four o'clock story today i think you need to see the wizardry of Colby Murdoch photographer putting all the pieces together because i kind of have these like crazy visions of what i want these history pieces to look like and so i know i gave him a tall order today so hopefully um you can all enjoy the the visual storytelling of this and everything lining up with as we're describing it um yeah i think that's it and if you want to find me and follow my little Northwest Noir segment as i'm talking about in my evergreen history series um you can find a bunch of other creepy spooky PNW stories there at Lauren Donovan TV on Instagram and TikTok Box 13's Lauren Donovan, we appreciate as always, she got me this time folks