The mystery of the Deception Pass sea monster

This Halloween, forget the monster under your bed. What about the one said to be lurking beneath Puget Sound? In the 1950s, reports of a sea serpent made headlines across Washington. Fox 13's Lauren Donovan takes us back to the sightings and the mystery that followed. Most folks driving over the Deception Pass Bridge have lived their entire lives blissfully unaware of the mystery monster that once lurked beneath it. You know, I always thought sea serpents were just something you read about in a storybook. Pure fiction, an old tale spun by sailors. So why then did I find evidence of one in newspapers here in Washington from back in 1958? One headline read, Loch Ness in Scotland has nothing on Whidbey Island, described as light brown, 12 feet long, 12 inches in diameter. out of Anacortes added additional detail about the creature, a tuft of black hair on its head. Claiming that even the Associated Press reported that people came to gawk at it, some even cutting off pieces of the animal as a souvenir. So what was it? We took those old reports to an expert. We love the mystery, right? And the ocean is just full of mysteries. veterinarian and scientist Joe Gatos went through a long list of what it could and could not be. We have this thing called an oarfish. You don't wanna encounter one of these scary things. It is big, it's like a serpent, but we just have never seen an oarfish in the Salish Sea, so that's definitely not it. Other possibilities, a sixgill shark, a basking shark, or even a lancet fish. These are fish of the deep, and imagine your worst nightmare while you're swimming. This is a long eel-like fish that has just giant teeth. But if he was going to bet on it, his money is on the wool field. It can grow to be eight feet long, and its head is probably as big as my head. big giant jowls with super sharp teeth that are just kind of almost sticking out of its mouth. 1958 doesn't feel that long ago. So how could something like a wolf eel be mistaken for a monster? Joe says, hey, keep in mind back then scuba diving was still new. People didn't have submarines. And so there was all of this unknown and there's still a lot of unknowns. So it's not surprising that people are looking out there and wondering what something is and conjuring up cool ideas about it. Reporting on Whidbey Island, Lauren Donovan, Fox 13 News.