Have sea dragons appeared in Ha Long Bay?

From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, there were many monster events that were witnessed by many people and were mentioned in the voyage reports archived in the archives of the French Navy. These are the cases where the warships of the French navy have seen giant snake-shaped monsters appear in the Ha Long Bay area.

Some sea monsters that the fishermen of Cat Ba Island have encountered in the sea are similar in shape to the prehistoric dinosaur Plesiosaur (reconstructed).

The case is probably the first for Naval Captain Lagresille, commander of the Avalanche gunboat. In July 1897, sailors on a warship saw two strange animals appear in the Ha Long Bay area. They have a snake shape, about 20 m long, about 2–3 m in diameter, and have a winding way of moving like snakes. Terrified because of the giant animals they had never seen before, the sailors shot at them with cannons, but failed to hit them, perhaps scaring them off, so they dived into the deep sea.

During the Avalanche’s subsequent voyage on February 15, 1898, two similar animals reappeared in front of the ship. Immediately, Captain Lagresille ordered the ship to chase for 35 hours.

The ship intended to herd them to the shallow shore, but they were very clever and immediately turned back to the deep sea. When the distance from the pair of monsters was only about 200 meters, Captain Lagresille saw these animals very clearly. He described their heads as seals but twice as large.

Since ancient times, sailors have told the story of sea monsters attacking ships at sea.

On February 12, 1904, French naval captain Peron, captain of the Chateurenault, early one morning while patrolling in the area of Con Toc Islet, was informed by his crew that far ahead was a rocky outcrop. Peron observed and realized it was a very large and strange animal, so he moved the boat to get a better look. When it was close to the place, the animal dived into the water.

When Peron let down a canoe to chase them, when near Cat Ba, he saw two animals shaped like two giant eels, stone skin with pale yellow spots. They only appear for a short time and then disappear.

The above stories were published in a French newspaper called Haiphong Nouvelles at the time with the title “Dragon apparait sur la baie d’Halong” (Dragon appearing in Ha Long Bay).

According to the British magazine Fortean Times, many oceanographers have also noted that giant sea snakes have been seen in many places outside Ha Long Bay, such as the North Atlantic Ocean, the Persian Gulf, Oceania, and the Corsica islands. (France). Many reports of the ships of the French colonial period mention this giant creature.

In the middle of the sea, the mound was moving.

A notable event was in March 2010, when in the forum of Fortean Times (UK), a member with the nickname Steve0606 talked about a strange event in Ha Long Bay that he witnessed during his trip. previous visit to Vietnam.

That time, Steve boarded a boat to take guests around the Gulf. There were about 20 more Vietnamese guests on the boat. Due to a language barrier, he couldn’t get to know anyone, so he sat on the roof of the boat to admire the scenery when he suddenly saw the back of a strange animal emerging from the water 3 meters away from the boat.

At first, he thought it was a big fish, but after observing closely, it’s back is about 1.5–3 m wide, blue-brown, without scales like fish scales, but also not as smooth as dolphin or whale skin. When its tail floated to the surface, he saw that the tail was quite strange. The round shape was not the usual pointed tail of a fish, about 2–2.4 m long and about 0.6–1 m wide.

The animal swam at a depth of less than 1 m. He noticed that it was 5–6 m long, but the head could not be seen clearly. Its swimming style was somewhat similar to that of dugongs.

Later, he asked the sailors on the boat if there were whales in this area, and they said no. When he told him about what he had just witnessed, the sailors were afraid of the sea and talked for a long time in the local language. Then they told him there was a monster, or “sea dragon,” in this area, and the fishermen here were very afraid of that monster.

Not only the French, some fishermen who often fish in Ha Long Bay also recount that, in the 60s and 80s of the last century, they saw giant animals similar to those described by the French. One of those people is Mr. Nguyen Dinh Huy.

According to Mr. Huy, in the early 1980s, he and some fishermen in the Phu Long Cooperative went fishing at Rang Le beach. When the boat was slowly running towards the mountain of Dai Thanh island, suddenly someone noticed a black mass rising a few tens of meters from the bow of the boat.

The boat must quickly turn left to avoid hitting this foreign object. The foreign object suddenly moved in the direction of the boat and swam parallel to the boat. Mr. Huy saw it as a giant animal, its back protruding from the water by nearly 1 meter.

Its back has a thick and large layer of pale yellow scales. Its head is like a dolphin’s, with eyes as big as two bowls.

Other fishermen, when fishing in the middle of the sea, sometimes encounter large floating mounds in the middle of the sea. When the boat approaches, the “mound” moves and dives into the sea and disappears. They just learned that it was the back of an animal of the largest size ever seen. Sometimes there were carcasses of very large animals with strange shapes washed up on the coast of Cat Ba Island. Even old fishermen who went to sea could not recognize it as a marine animal. any.

A photograph taken in the early twentieth century from a vantage point in Ha Long Bay.

The story of the giant sea monsters in Ha Long Bay is still handed down in folklore to this day. Perhaps, without the serious research interest of the scientific community, this will forever be the mystery of the Gulf, which is classified as one of the wonders of the world.

During his lifetime, GS. Vo Quy, Vietnam’s leading conservationist, once commented: “In the past, science has discovered many mysteries of nature, which at first relied only on information in the form of rumors.” The hypothesis that the above sea snake is a variant of the ichthyosaur that existed in prehistoric times also has some basis.

There may be animals whose ancestors went extinct tens of millions of years ago and now exist somewhere in nature that science has not yet discovered, especially in the ocean. The more science develops, the more unexpected the discovery. “

Perhaps it will take a long time before humans achieve new advances in deep-bottom scanning techniques as well as create more modern underwater exploration robots, and then humanity will have the answer to the question. Is the sea monster real or just a myth?