6. Globsters
With so many large animals inhabiting the oceans of our world, it is unsurprising that we get a fair few carcasses washing up on our shorelines. However, by the time these decaying denizens of the deep are finally deposited on our shores, they are usually in a state of severe decomposition, being rendered unrecognizable by various ocean-going scavengers (as well as the tides of time). These hard to identify (and usually foul-smelling) husks are collectively referred to as Globsters by cryptozoologists. In days gone by, the decomposing remains of large marine animals (in particular basking sharks and baleen whales) were frequently mistaken for sea monsters (usually because the spine survived intact while the rest of the meat/blubber had been picked off, thus hinting at a long, serpentine neck). Famous globsters include a whale corpse that washed ashore in Tasmania in 1960 and was widely reported as a sea monster (it was only debunked in 1981), as well as the St. Augustine Monster, a pink fleshy lump that was discovered on a beach in 1896. This monster was believed to be some sort of giant squid until it was revealed to be a whale carcass. There was also the (rather disgusting) case of the Newfoundland Blob of 2001, where a pile of boneless, putrid sperm whale blubber saw fit to deposit itself on the beaches of Newfoundland, Canada. Yup, dinner can wait; were not hungry right now either... Globsters do exist, of course, but they are not (and never were) the decayed remains of sea monsters, nor are they a species in their own right. Some of them may turn out to be the remains of large species as-yet unknown to Western science, but they are not to be considered cryptids. They are and always have been, putrefied remains of large deep-sea animals, nothing more.