Monster of Monterey

- AI - digital recreation based on description of what the creature could look like -

The legends of sea serpents and sea monsters date back to as early as 1555. The first historically documented description of the watery enigma was recalled by Olaus Magnus, an exiled Catholic archbishop of Sweden, who wrote that sailors off the coast of Norway had often seen a “Serpent…of vast magnitude, namely 200 feet long, and moreover 20 foot thick.”

A dangerous beast, it lived in caves along the shore and devoured both land and ocean creatures, including an occasional seaman. “This snake disquiets the shippers,” Olaus Magnus wrote, “and he puts up his head on high like a pillar.”
Many tales of sea serpents have been described as either vicious monsters that sink ships, or large, long-necked, docile creatures that have been seen with their heads perched above the water.

Some have been referred to as Kraken, Mokele-mbembe, St. Augustine Monster, Nessie, Champ, Morag, Ogopogo, Chessie, and even Bobo—the Old Man of Monterey Bay.

As early as the 1920s, reports from sailors and fishermen alike were surfacing between the areas of Big Sur to Monterey Bay and along the shores of Santa Cruz. They described a strange creature, approximately 50 feet in length, with a long neck, a body shaped like a barrel, flipper-like fins, a large fish-like tail, large eyes, and hair-like features covering its body. Most disturbing of all, it was said to have a human-like face resembling a monkey.

Experts surmised that these tall tales were nothing more than descriptions of an elephant seal. However, experienced sailors, veteran commercial fishermen, and eyewitness accounts were not as easily swayed.
Then, in 1925, the carcass of a strange creature washed ashore upon what is now known as Natural Bridges, formerly Moore Beach, in Santa Cruz County. Many believed this to be the legendary “Bobo,” or the Old Man of Monterey Bay.

THE OLD MAN OF MONTEREY BAY
Bobo — The Monkey-Faced Monster of Monterey Bay

For generations, Monterey Bay has been a place where the known and the unknown seem to meet. Beneath its cold dark waters lies one of the deepest submarine canyons along the California coast, dropping thousands of feet below the surface. Fishermen who worked these waters knew the bay could be unpredictable, but over the years they also began telling stories about something far stranger than storms, fog, or rough seas.
Stories that didn’t pertain to whales, sharks, or sea lions…stories of something unfamiliar to seasoned seafaring men.

They called it the Old Man of Monterey Bay…and some referred to it as Bobo.
According to the fishermen who claimed to have seen it, the creature was enormous—somewhere between thirty and fifty feet in length. It had a massive, barrel-shaped body and, in several accounts, appeared to be covered with hair or something resembling shaggy fur. Its color was variously described as dark, brown, or reddish like seaweed. But it was the head that made the creature so disturbing.

Witnesses struggled to describe it using anything familiar. Some said it looked like a monkey. Others compared it to an ape or an old man. The creature was said to have enormous eyes, a large head, and an almost human expression. Some fishermen reported fins or flippers moving beneath the body, while others described a powerful fish tail. Despite the differences in the individual accounts, a remarkable pattern began to emerge. Again and again, fishermen were describing a creature that was enormous, heavy-bodied, shaggy, and strangely human-looking. And in most cases, this creature was not something they saw for only a few seconds.

The creature sometimes remained at the surface long enough for fishermen to approach and study it. One eyewitness claimed that it remained above the water for at least ten minutes, making the unusual sighting even more intriguing. Yet the accounts never seemed to describe a blowhole or visible gills, raising the question of whether the creature might have been as much mammalian as it was aquatic.

One fisherman even attempted to catch it.
His name was Jack Ferrante.

Ferrante was a Sicilian fisherman who worked the waters between Monterey, Moss Landing, and Santa Cruz. In 1930, while fishing for salmon a couple of miles offshore between Monterey and Moss Landing, he experienced an encounter that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

The weather was foggy that morning, making it difficult to see very far. Ferrante noticed another fishing boat nearby and moved closer. He could hear the boat but eventually lost sight of it in the fog. Then he noticed what appeared to be a barrel floating in the water. He worked around it for a while, continuing to fish. Eventually, the object disappeared. Ferrante thought little more about it until the following day, when he was fishing north of Monterey, closer to Santa Cruz. This time, the weather was clear and the water was calm. Then he saw something floating ahead of him. At first, he thought about the strange barrel from the previous day. But as he drew closer, he realized this was no barrel.
It was alive.

Ferrante later described the creature as red in color, with an enormous body and a head that looked like a monkey. Its eyes were closed, and its mouth appeared to be moving. He could see no arms—only the huge body and the strange head. He estimated that the animal might weigh a ton, minimum. Ferrante was frightened.

But curiosity got the better of him. He decided that if he could catch the creature, he might make a fortune. So, he prepared a rope, fashioned a lasso, and began slowly approaching with his fishing vessel. He reduced the noise of his engine and allowed the boat to drift toward the animal. But the closer he came, the more frightened he became.
Ferrante later recalled that he was only ten or fifteen feet away when the creature suddenly opened its eyes and looked directly at him. For a moment, neither moved, then the creature disappeared beneath the water. Ferrante recalled that he searched for it, but the water was no longer clear enough to see where it had gone.
He returned to Santa Cruz the next day. Again, the weather was bright, and the water was clear.
Once again, he saw it.

This time, the creature was approximately one hundred yards away. Ferrante immediately recognized it. It was the same color, the same enormous body, and the same strange head. He started toward it, but before he could prepare his rope, the creature saw him and submerged. Ferrante moved over the spot where it had disappeared. Looking down into the clear water, he could see the enormous animal swimming below him. It was very large and moved slowly. He described what appeared to be two large fins or wings moving in opposite directions beneath the body—one moving above and the other below in a strange crisscross motion. He watched the creature for a while until it descended. Then it was gone.
Ferrante never saw it again after that.

He told people what had happened. Some laughed at him, and others thought he was crazy. But Ferrante continued to insist that he had seen the creature at close range. His story would eventually be published in the Pacific Grove Tribune in 1954, twenty-four years after the encounter itself. But Ferrante was not the only fisherman who claimed to have seen something enormous in the waters of Monterey Bay.

THE LONG-NECKED CREATURE
Some of the earlier reports were different in one respect: the creature was sometimes seen breaching much farther above the surface. One account from the early 1930s involved a teenager who reportedly saw a strange animal behind the Monterey Bay breakwater. What caught his attention was not simply its size, but it's unusual appearance. It appeared to have a long neck—roughly twelve feet—and what he could best describe as a head resembling that of a giraffe. It sounds bizarre.

But this is where the Monterey Bay reports became particularly interesting. Witnesses were clearly struggling to describe something unfamiliar, and they reached for comparisons—a giraffe, a monkey, an old man, and even a horse when describing it's hairy mane. Yet beneath those comparisons was still the same basic image: a very large creature emerging from the water, with an unusually large or strangely shaped head.

The reports, although not all identical, were beginning to form a pattern.

THE TESTIMONIES

F/V DANTE ALIGHIERI

Then came one of the most famous encounters.
In 1938, fishermen aboard the Dante Alighieri were working over the deep waters of Monterey Bay.
The day was calm, and the water was relatively smooth. Somewhere over the submarine canyon, something appeared at the surface. The crew reportedly saw a large, black-bodied animal with a huge, pale head rising above the water. The head was enormous—described in later accounts as roughly four feet across.

Its face was difficult to describe. One fisherman compared it to an old man, while another saw a monkey. The eyes were enormous, and the mouth was described as having a strange crescent shape. The creature's body was estimated to be approximately thirty feet long, with a fish-like tail. This was not simply a fleeting glimpse. The fishermen had time to observe it. The creature remained near the surface before eventually disappearing beneath the water and once again, the men returned to shore with essentially the same disturbing question: What had they seen? The story spread through the fishing community. And by the beginning of the 1940s, the creature had acquired the names that would follow it for decades.

The Old Man of Monterey Bay. And Bobo.
By March 1940, reports had accumulated to the point that approximately thirty fishing captains were said to have reported encounters to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. A striking number, some thirty fishermen could not certainly all have been mistaken.
But thirty fishermen describing something strange in roughly the same waters made the story difficult to simply ignore.

F/V SANTA ANNA

The following year brought another remarkable encounter.
In the fall of 1939, fishermen aboard the fishing vessel Santa Anna were working approximately nine miles southwest of Point Pinos.
Something appeared in the water. At first, it looked like a log. But as the fishermen approached, the “log” moved. As they came closer, they realized they were looking at a living creature.

According to later accounts, the men were able to get within only a few feet of it. The creature was described as enormously large, with a body resembling that of a gigantic seal and prominent fins. The men reportedly even approached it closely enough to prod it with a gaff, before it disappeared beneath the surface. Leaving behind only the testimony of fishermen who claimed they had been close enough to see the animal for themselves.

THE FACE OF AN OLD MAN
By now, the descriptions were becoming remarkably familiar. The creature was not simply described as a serpent or a sea monster. It wasn't merely a long shadow moving through the water. Again and again, witnesses talked about its head.
Dominic Costanza, associated with the Dante Alighieri, reportedly described the creature as having a huge face resembling that of a very old man or a monkey, with eyes compared to the size of breakfast buns. That strange description would become one of the defining characteristics of the Monterey Bay monster—a face that seemed almost human.

THE FISHERMAN WHO CAME RUNNING HOME
Mario Stagnaro / Bill Totten

The creature wasn't simply a curiosity to everyone who encountered it; some fishermen were terrified. In June 1941, according to the recollection of Monterey fisherman Mario Stagnaro, a fisherman named Bill Totten returned to the docks badly shaken after being out fishing. He reportedly came back shouting: “I saw that serpent or monster out there!” Totten was so frightened that he apparently stayed away from the waterfront for some time afterward.

Years later, when veteran fisherman Stagnaro was interviewed about the Old Man of Monterey Bay, he was asked what the creature actually was. His answer was remarkably honest.
He didn't know.

He simply said that quite a number of fishermen had seen it. Whatever it was, he said, it had been down around the lower end of the bay. And that is perhaps more interesting than someone claiming to know exactly what the creature was.
Stagnaro had spent his life around fishermen. He had heard the stories and knew the people telling them.
And yet, decades later, he still couldn't explain them.

BOBO RETURNS
F/V Katrina F.

The reports did not stop.
In 1946, the creature was reportedly seen again by the crew of a purse seiner, the fishing vessel known as, the Katrina F. Traveling northward, all of the ten men aboard reportedly saw the animal. The creature's enormous head appeared above the water, remaining several feet above the surface as it moved around the boat before it descended back into the deep. The newspaper account described Bobo as a gorilla-faced sea beast and noted that its unusual snout had supposedly appeared in the waters near Monterey roughly once a year for the preceding decade. If the account is accurate, this was no longer a story being passed between two fishermen over drinks. It was ten men aboard one fishing boat, all reportedly witnessing the same animal.

F/V SAL COLLETTO

Then there was the fishing vessel Sal Colletto. Colletto's story is one of the strangest because his encounter was close enough that the creature's physical appearance became almost impossible to dismiss as a vague shape in the distance. According to a later account based on a transcript in the Monterey Maritime Museum's collection, Colletto was fishing approximately ten miles off Moss Landing when he noticed something floating in the water. At first, he thought it might be a man. He approached in his vessel. When he got within about one hundred feet, he realized it was something else.

The creature had a head as large as a fifty-gallon barrel, with a massive forehead and what he described as appearing to be a duck-like bill. Colletto remembered something that made the encounter even more frightening.
He had heard about two fishermen who had recently disappeared without a trace, and for a moment, he wondered if this creature had killed them. There was no evidence establishing that the creature had, yet it was a thought Colletto couldn't ignore.
Fear set in.

His attempt to make sense of what he was seeing tells us how frightening the encounter was to him. He decided he wanted no part of the creature, turned his boat around, and headed back toward Monterey. Sixteen years later, Colletto would encounter the creature again—or at least, that is how his recollection was recorded. This time, he was aboard his 45-foot fishing vessel, the Dante Alighieri. His brother-in-law began telling him about a strange animal that fishermen had reportedly seen near the edge of the deep Monterey submarine canyon. Colletto listened. Then he looked out over the water and sure enough, there it was.
He recognized it.

FIFTY FEET AWAY

Colletto called everyone onto the deck. He wanted the entire crew to see it. Slowly, they approached. The engine was cut, and quietly, the boat drifted toward the creature. Eventually, they were within approximately fifty feet.
The creature was lying at the surface with its eyes closed—as though it were sleeping. One crew member said the face looked like a monkey.

Colletto's brother-in-law disagreed. To him, it looked like an old man. Suddenly, the creature opened its eyes.
They were enormous and pink, reportedly as large as grapefruits. Its body was brown, with skin that was deeply wrinkled and sagged beneath its frame. Its body was described as nearly as long as their boat—forty-five feet. Then, slowly, almost casually, it slipped beneath the surface. And once again, it disappeared.

THE OLD MAN IS SEEN AGAIN

In the years that followed, the newspapers continued to report sightings. One account described the creature as roughly forty feet long. Another said it resembled an old man with a barrel-shaped body, while another described its head as almost human. The stories continued into the late 1940s and 1950s before reports seemingly began to stop. But somewhere along the way, a very different kind of story entered the history of Monterey Bay.
A dead creature had washed ashore.

In 1925, a bizarre carcass was discovered at Moore's Beach near Santa Cruz. It was unlike anything the people who found it could readily identify. The strange remains were so unusual that some believed they had found the body of a prehistoric sea creature.

The story became known as the Moore's Beach Monster. For years, the carcass remained part of the mystery surrounding Monterey Bay. Some believed the elusive Old Man of Monterey had finally been revealed, and that its carcass had washed upon the beach.

Eventually, however, years later, scientists were able to identify the mysterious monster as a Baird's beaked whale, a real deep-water whale that can grow to more than forty feet in length. Modern references confirm that Baird's beaked whales occur in Monterey Bay, particularly around the deep Monterey Canyon. So, was the mystery finally solved, it was an odd species of whale all along? Perhaps the mystery of the dead whale was solved - But there was a problem.

The fishermen were well aware of what a Baird's beaked whale looked like. In fact, they were common in the deep waters of Monterey, and they looked more like a mammoth-sized dolphin in comparison to a barrel-shaped, monkey-faced sea creature with hair. These fishermen weren't talking about a dead whale on a beach. They were talking about something alive. And those reports continued long after the 1925 carcass had washed ashore.

Some have suggested the fishermen may have mistaken an elephant seal for the sea monster. By the 1930s, elephant seals were returning to California in very small numbers, after being hunted nearly to extinction in 1884.

However, the fishermen described a large, shaggy creature with a human-, ape-, or monkey-like face. Elephant seals have short coats and a distinctive long, trunk-like snout—features that don't match the creature described in these accounts.

The last clearly documented newspaper sighting came in 1950, when William J. Marchand and two companions reported seeing the creature off Santa Cruz and even fired at it with a gun.
But the story may not end there.

Decades later, longtime Monterey fisherman Victor Ghio recalled that he had seen the creature repeatedly as a young man and said he had not seen it for approximately 35 to 40 years. If his recollection was accurate, his final encounter may have occurred sometime in the mid to late 1950s. Although later articles continued to preserve fishermen's memories of the Old Man of Monterey, these accounts were recollections of earlier times of sightings rather than confirmed new encounters.

So, what happened to the Old Man of Monterey?

With no new reports of the Old Man of Monterey Bay also known as Bobo, since the 1950's. The only thing left to do, was to determine if sightings of a similar creature existed anywhere else. And oddly at least two encounters raised curiosity.

1888–1889 — THE HAIRY SEA SERPENT

S/V Estrella

In 1888, experienced Captain, Edgar Avery of the sailing vessel Estrella was traveling south along the Oregon coast when he reportedly encountered something enormous in the water near the mouth of the Umpqua River. It was approximately two hundred yards from the ship. The weather was clear, and Avery had a good view of the creature. He immediately believed he was looking at a sea serpent, as opposed to a whale or other common creature of the sea.

Avery estimated the animal to be approximately eighty feet long and as large around as a barrel. Its head and roughly ten feet of its body rose above the surface as it moved through the waves. The creature's head was described as enormous and flat, or “dished.”, shaped; but then Avery noticed something unusual. Approximately ten feet of what appeared to be the creature's neck was covered with coarse hair resembling a mane.

The animal moved strangely through the water, making enormous convolutions as it traveled. Every so often, it dipped its massive head beneath the surface before raising it again as it swam. Avery was so convinced that he was seeing a living unknown creature that he went below deck and retrieved his rifle. He called his wife and members of the crew to come and see it.
As they watched together, Avery fired several shots, but the bullets fell short. The creature appeared completely unaffected by the gunfire and continued moving through the water at a steady pace. The witnesses kept it in sight for approximately half an hour. Then, without any apparent disturbance, the enormous animal disappeared beneath the surface.
It was not seen again.

The account was reported in newspapers in 1889, after Captain Avery arrived in San Francisco. It was subsequently included in historical compilations of sea-serpent reports.

1958 — THE CREATURE OF ANTARCTICA

R/V Sōya

In 1958, roughly eight years after the last documented sighting of the Old Man of Monterey, (a.k.a) Bobo, and thousands of miles away in the frozen waters of Antarctica, another strange creature was reported—one that was strikingly similar to observational reports made in the waters of Monterey Bay, California.

On February 13, 1958, the Japanese research vessel Sōya was traveling through the ice in Lützow-Holm Bay during the Second Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition. At approximately seven o'clock that evening, Captain Mitsuji Matsumoto and several other officers were on the bridge when someone noticed a large black shape in the water. At first, they thought it might be a barrel or some other object floating near the ship.

Then it moved.
The object turned toward the Sōya.
It was alive.

Several officers watched the creature, and one observed it through binoculars. Matsumoto described its head as approximately 70 to 80 centimeters long, with a rounded cranium and a somewhat monkey-like face. It had large eyes and pointed ears.
But the body was perhaps the strangest part.

It was covered with dark brown fur, with hair approximately four inches long. Matsumoto believed the fur covered the animal's entire body. The creature remained visible only briefly before disappearing beneath the Antarctic water. The chief engineer hurried away to retrieve a camera, but by the time he returned, the animal was gone. No photograph was obtained.

Matsumoto later recorded the encounter in his 1959 book, Nankyoku Yusō-ki (Antarctic Transport Diary). The account has since become known in Japan as Nankyoku Gojira, or “Antarctic Godzilla.”

Once again, the similarities are difficult to ignore, and these were witnesses aboard a research vessel who could not identify what they were looking at. The Antarctic creature was not described exactly like Bobo. It reportedly had a somewhat different body structure, according to the visual interpretations of the witnesses, including unusual fin-like projections along its back.
However, the monkey-like face, large eyes, dark fur, and enormous aquatic body bring the account remarkably close to several of the descriptions given by Monterey fishermen.

This unusual sighting occurred in 1958—only a few years after the last clearly documented newspaper sighting of Bobo in Monterey Bay. Whether the two accounts have anything to do with one another is impossible to say.
But it raises a question. Was Bobo unique to Monterey Bay, or was he simply a lost creature of the sea who had gone off course and found himself in California waters?

Whether the monkey-faced monster still exists today is something we can only speculate about. It may have disappeared into the deeper, uncharted waters of the Pacific, far beyond the reach of fishermen and curious eyes. Or could it have been the same creature reported by the R/V Sōya—a migrational creature that adapted to the waters of the Antarctic and is now known as the “Antarctic Godzilla”?
Or could there be more than one?

Somewhere beneath the dark waters of Monterey Bay, the Old Man may still remain, hidden beneath the surface.
One can only hope that, someday, he will make an appearance once again…
And answer the question…what is he?