Crimean snake in the sea. The Karadag snake is the Loch Ness monster of the Crimea. What scientists think about the Karadag snake

The Crimean peninsula is famous not only for the beauty of nature, unique historical and architectural buildings, sweet wines and juicy fruits, but also for amazing mysteries, the explanation of which has not yet been found. One of these secrets is the Karadag snake, a creature that lives in the waters of the Black Sea.

Monster egg weighing 12 kilograms

Even the "father of history" - Herodotus - mentioned in his writings that in the depths of the Black Sea, or, as the Greeks of those times called it, Pontus Euxinus, a huge monster lives, catching up with waves when moving. The Karadag serpent repeatedly appeared to the sailors. So, the Turks, who regularly sailed to the Crimea and Azov, wrote reports to the Sultan about the dragon.
According to eyewitnesses, the creature had a length of about 30 m, was covered with black scales, and a crest fluttering on its back, resembling a horse's mane. Her movement was swift, she easily left behind the fastest ships, and the wave she created was like that which occurs during a storm. The people who inhabited the coastal zone were also familiar with the marine reptile firsthand, which was reflected in fairy tales and myths. The image of the monster was even on the coat of arms of the Khan of Bakhchisaray!

In 1828, the Yevpatoriya police officer reported to higher authorities about the appearance of a huge sea snake in the county. Emperor Nicholas I, who, like Peter I, was distinguished by curiosity, having learned about the Black Sea monster, ordered scientists to be sent to the Crimea so that they would find and catch him.
Since evidence of the sighting of the monster came mainly from the Karadag region, scientists from the expedition decided to look for it there. They did not find the monster, but they found an egg weighing 12 kg, it contained an embryo resembling a fairy-tale dragon with a crest on its head. Nearby were found the remains of a rather impressive tail, which was characterized by a scaly-armored structure.

The Soviet writer saw a monster!

For several millennia, residents and guests of the peninsula claim that one way or another they met with this incomprehensible and unknown inhabitant of sea waters. And I must say that among the eyewitnesses there were well-known and serious personalities who have no reason not to believe. They include the director of the reserve, geologists, a poet, an official of the local executive committee, and the military. It is clear that these people are educated and, most likely, are not inclined to mystification and fiction.
In 1952, the Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov had a chance to see the monster from a cliff in Serdolikova Bay. Perhaps it is he who owns one of the longest observations of the monster, he looked at it for about 40 minutes. According to him, the monster had impressive dimensions: "25-30 meters long, and as thick as a desk top, if it is turned sideways." He had a snake head "in the size of the span of the arms" with small eyes, the upper part of the mysterious creature was dark brown.

After such a unique observation of the monster, Vsevolod Ivanov tried to find out if any of the local residents had seen this monster, and undertook a little investigation. M. S. Voloshina told him that in 1921 a small note flashed in the Feodosia newspaper, which reported that a “huge reptile” had appeared in the area of ​​Mount Karadag, and a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to capture it. As far as is known, the “reptile” was not caught then, but her husband, the famous Russian poet and artist M. A. Voloshin, sent this clipping about the “reptile” to M. Bulgakov, and it formed the basis of the story “Fatal Eggs”. Also, Vsevolod Ivanov, with the help of Voloshina, managed to find out about the fact of meeting with the monster of one collective farmer, who stumbled upon a monster resting on the shore, collecting a fin for firewood.

Real evidence? Please!

The Karadag snake leaves very real traces of its existence. A few years ago, Turkish fishermen pulled a dolphin out of the sea, which had been bitten in half by some monster. The remains of the dolphin were urgently delivered to Istanbul University, where scientists examined the find and confirmed that the marks on the dolphin are not wounds from a ship's propeller and, no doubt, were left by the teeth of a large animal. The same dead dolphins with huge wounds and even with traces of 16 large teeth were seen by Crimean fishermen in 1990 and 1991, and one of them was even taken to the Karadag nature reserve.

By the way, the Crimean Alexander Paraskevidi has even more material evidence of the existence of the monster - his tooth. Six centimeters long, red-brown in color, this tooth was found on the beach, near the village of Maly Mayak, sticking out in a small piece of wood. Turkish ichthyologist Arif Harim, who examined and analyzed the tooth, is sure that it belongs to an animal unknown to science.

Shocking Encounters with the Karadag Serpent

In May 1961, a rather shocking encounter with a monster took place in the Crimea. Local fisherman M. I. Kondratiev, director of the Crimean Primorye sanatorium A. Mozhaisky and the chief accountant of this enterprise V. Vostokov went fishing one morning on a boat. They moved only three hundred meters from the pier of the Karadag biological station towards the Golden Gate, when suddenly, 60 meters away, they saw a brown spot under water. They sent a boat towards it, and it suddenly began to move away from them.

When we managed to get closer to the "spot", it became clear that something very impressive and creepy was under the water. At 2-3 meters under water, the head of a huge snake, about a meter in size, was quite clearly visible. The surface of the monster's head was covered with brown tufts, reminiscent of algae in their appearance. Horny plates were visible behind the head on the body of the monster. In the upper part of the head and back, a characteristic mane swayed in the water. The belly of the monster was lighter - gray in color, in contrast to the dark brown back.

When people saw the small eyes of the monster, they were literally numb with horror. Fortunately, Mikhail Kondratiev quickly managed to recover, he turned the boat around and sent it to the shore at full speed. Amazingly, the monster was chasing them! Its speed was quite high, but 100 meters from the shore, it stopped chasing and headed for the open sea. Seven years later, Mikhail Kondratiev again observed the Black Sea monster near the Karadag biological station under similar circumstances.

In the 80s. In the 20th century, Grigory Tabunov, a vacationer, had a chance to meet a monster. Here is what he recalls: “I lived in Nikita, quickly went down to the sea, undressed and fell into the water. He swam about two hundred meters, lay on his back, rested, and was just about to swim back, when he noticed some dark spot nearby in the waves. Dolphin, I thought. What a dolphin! A huge head appeared above the water. From fear, I yelled with all my might and rushed to the shore. It all lasted a few seconds, but I remembered what I saw for the rest of my life. The head of the monster was greenish, flat…”

On August 12, 1992, V. M. Belsky, an employee of the Feodosia City Council, encountered the monster. He swam in the sea, dived, until, emerging, he saw a huge snake head almost next to him ... In horror, Belsky rushed with all his might to the shore, jumped out of the water and hid among the stones. Looking out from behind the stone, he saw that where he had just bathed, the head of a monster appeared, from the mane of which water was flowing. Belsky even managed to make out the skin and gray horny plates on the head and neck. The eyes of the monster were small, and the body was dark gray with a lighter underside.

Relatively recently, our compatriot Vladimir Ternovsky even managed to ride on the back of the Black Sea monster! He was windsurfing 2-3 km from the shore, when suddenly someone from below threw up the stern of his boards. After this push, he fell into the water, however, to his amazement, he felt something solid under his feet. He was standing on something big, wide and alive, and it was moving! Fortunately, he managed to overcome his fear, jumping off the monster, he quickly reached the shore. The monster didn't follow him.

The servants of one of the monasteries once observed two monsters at once, which, apparently acting in coordination with each other, staged a hunt for dolphins.
The Karadag monster was also seen by submariners. This happened during the dive of "Bentos-300" - a laboratory working at depth. Having reached the immersion level of 100 meters, the hydronaut saw an indistinct shadow on the starboard side of the ship. A giant snake swam up to the porthole, slowly wriggling, as if examining people with its small eyes. However, as soon as the scientists decided to take a photo of her, the monster, as if reading their thoughts, rushed into the depths.

So who swam into the Crimean waters? They talked about a cloaked shark with flat sides, resembling a huge eel; according to another version, it was a herring king - a fish-belt up to nine meters in length, found in the North and Mediterranean seas ... Maybe some pangolin has been preserved in the Black Sea since ancient times? After all, what do we know about Karadag, which has been a nature reserve for decades? And why shouldn't this majestic mountain be a haven for exotic species?
Karadag is the remains of an ancient volcano, the underwater part of which has not been studied. Once the displacement of the earth layers and volcanic clay led to complex layers, the formation of underwater caves, unknown passages and tunnels.

At the moment, there is no official confirmation that the Karadag snake is a real creature, it seems to feel that they are looking for it, and goes into the depths of the sea at the slightest attempt to film it on video or photographic equipment. Perhaps the situation could be clarified by expeditions, but such events require financial investments, which so far neither officials, nor scientists, nor individuals are in a hurry to do. The waters of our planet still firmly keep their secrets - the Loch Ness, Karadag, and other water monsters do not seek contact with people.
Official science is sure: if a living creature lives on Karadag, there must be several of them - mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother, etc. But neither the remains nor the laying of eggs of these creatures have yet been found. In addition, the Crimean hydronautics is completely ruined today, deep-water equipment has been sold for scrap.
It is known that North American zoologists successfully continue such studies in their territories. In 1995, two Canadian oceanographers - Dr. Edward Busfield (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto) and Professor Paul Le Blon (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) - in the April issue of the scientific journal "Amphipa-cythica" described what was discovered in the fjords of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast Canada, a new for science large animal species - cadborosaurus.
They attributed it to the plesiosaurs, a group of highly specialized marine reptiles that became extinct in the Mesozoic era. This "saurus" got its name from the name of the sea bay of Cadborough, where it was observed most often.

The message caused a furor in the media. Newspapers immediately gave the creature the nickname Caddy, and local environmentalists demanded that the government immediately ensure the protection of such a rare and apparently vulnerable species.
According to eyewitness accounts, Cadborosaurus, by the way, has been mentioned in Indian folklore since ancient times, is like two drops of water similar to the Black Sea snake, but eats fish, sometimes trying to hunt sea birds.

For scientists, there is no doubt that the depths of the oceans hold many unexplored secrets. But they want facts. However, not a single high-quality picture has been taken so far - neither with us, nor with them.
This is stubbornly explained by the fact that mysterious creatures appear and disappear suddenly, as if only to remind: the living Earth was not born yesterday, but it is necessary to study and protect it in all its manifestations, especially in unique ones.

Salad LOVE BEANS

SALAD "LOVE BEANS"

1. Beans (0.5 kg and no matter what color it is!) Soak overnight in water, and then boil until half cooked.

2. Cut the eggplant into cubes (2 kg).

3. Pass 1.5 kg of tomatoes through a meat grinder.

4. Grate 0.5 kg of carrots on a coarse grater.

5. Cut sweet peppers into slices (0.5 kg).

6. Mix all these wonderful vegetables and add 2.5 tbsp to them. salt, 1.5 cups of sugar, 0.5 liters of vegetable oil. Mix everything well again and cook for 40 minutes from the moment of boiling. 5 minutes before the end of the process, add 200 g of minced garlic and 100 ml of 9% vinegar to the pan.

And then, cheerfully and with a mood, lay out your salad in sterilized jars and close and wrap for 12 hours. Cool down - for storage on a shelf.

taken from internet

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Sunday, April 12, 2015 10:45 am ()

The Crimean Alexander Georgievich Paraskevidi has a tooth at home (his photo, alas, could not be found) of some sea monster. About 6 cm long, red-brown in color, it was found sticking out of a piece of wood on the beach near the village of Stary Mayak. Turkish ichthyologist Arif Hakim, after examining and analyzing a strange find, considered that the tooth belongs to an animal unknown to science.

OLD OLD DEEP

Official science does not recognize the existence of the Black Sea snake. It is believed that such a large creature cannot live there, since a hydrogen sulfide layer begins at a depth of 100-150 m. But the chronicles testify that the serpent lived in the Black Sea several hundred and even thousands of years ago. Even the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that a mysterious monster lives in the waters of Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea).

According to his descriptions, the creature was dark, almost black in color, had a mane, clawed paws, a terrible mouth with huge teeth and burning red eyes. It moved on the surface of the water much faster than the ancient Greek ships. In the 16th-17th centuries, captains of Turkish military and merchant ships repeatedly reported encounters with the Black Sea dragon. Sometimes the monster even pursued small boats. The Don Cossacks and officers who served under Admiral Ushakov also met with him.

In 1828, a Yevpatoriya police officer reported to higher authorities about the appearance of a huge sea snake in the Karadag region. Emperor Nicholas I, known for his curiosity, having learned about the Black Sea monster, sent scientists to the Crimea.

The expedition members did not find the snake, but they found an egg weighing 12 kg, in which there was an embryo that looked like a fairy-tale dragon with a crest on its head. Nearby, they also found the skeleton of a giant tail with a shell-like structure. Then there was even controversy in the scientific community: can a sea serpent shed its tail like a lizard?

In 1855, the officers of the brig "Mercury" saw in the water a dark gray creature over 20 m long, which, making undulating movements, was moving in the direction of Cape Meganom, located in the southeastern part of the Crimea between Feodosia and Sudak. As soon as the brig approached the monster, it disappeared under the water.

During the First World War, Lieutenant Günther Prüfner, commander of the Kaiser's submarine, cruising on the surface off the coast of Crimea, saw a strange, huge creature silently cutting through the waves. The officer took a good look at the monster through binoculars. His first thought was to torpedo the monster or shoot it with a cannon, but then he made a different decision and, fearing a collision with a giant reptile, gave the command for an urgent dive.

FANTASY OR REALITY?

On May 17, 1952, the Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov observed an unknown monster for forty minutes in Serdolikova Bay. Watching dolphins hunting for mullet, he saw a large, about ten meters in circumference, stone, overgrown with brown algae.

The writer had repeatedly visited this place before, but saw this stone for the first time. Looking closely, the writer noted that the “stone” was moving slowly. Assuming it was algae, he continued his observation. After a while, the "ball of algae" unfolded and stretched out.

“The creature swam with undulating movements to the place where the dolphins were, that is, to the left side of the bay,” Ivanov described this phenomenon. Everything was still quiet. Naturally, it immediately occurred to me: are these hallucinations? I took out my watch. It was 12:18. The reality of what I saw was disturbed by the distance, the brilliance of the sun on the water, but, since the water was transparent, I even saw the bodies of dolphins that swam twice as far from me as the monster.

It was large, very large, 25-30 meters, and as thick as the top of a desk, if you turn it sideways. It was under water and, it seems to me, was flat. Its lower part is white, as far as the blueness of the water made it possible to understand, and the upper part is dark brown, which made me mistake it for algae. The monster, writhing in the same way as swimming snakes, swam towards the dolphins. They disappeared immediately."

Writer Stanislav Slavich also described something similar: “Eyewitnesses talk about meeting with a huge snake at Kazantip. The shepherd noticed something shiny under a thorn bush, similar to a ram's skull polished by rain and wind, and just like that, having nothing to do, hit the gerlyga (a long staff with a wooden hook at the end) on this skull.

And then the incredible happened: a cloud of dust shot up, pieces of earth flew in all directions. The shepherd became dumb and numb, no longer understood what was happening to him and where he was.

He saw only this cloud of dust, and in it his sheepdogs, as if enraged, and something huge, wriggling with monstrous strength and speed. When the shepherd came to his senses, one dog was killed, and the two survivors furiously tore the body of some huge reptile. What seemed to the shepherd a ram's skull was the head of a huge snake. Shortly thereafter, the shepherd, they say, died.

MONSTERS ATTACK

In 1961, another shocking encounter with a sea serpent took place in the Crimea. One day, a local fisherman M. I. Kondratyev, director of the Crimean Primorye sanatorium A. Mozhaisky and the chief accountant of this enterprise V. Vostokov went fishing on a boat in the morning.

They moved some 300 meters away from the pier of the Karadag biological station towards the Golden Gates, when suddenly, fifty meters away, they saw an incomprehensible brown spot underwater. When you try to get closer to him, the stain began to move away. When they managed to catch up with him, it became clear that something terrible and very impressive in size was under the water.

Two or three meters under water, the head of a huge snake, about a meter in size, was quite clearly visible, all dotted with brown hairs, resembling algae in appearance. Horny plates were visible behind the head on the body of the monster. A shaggy mane swayed in the water at the top of the head and dark brown back. The belly of the monster was lighter - gray in color.

When people saw the monster's small eyes, they were literally numb with horror. Nevertheless, Mikhail Kondratiev managed to quickly recover, and having turned the boat around, he rushed to the shore at full speed. Amazingly, the monster was chasing them. Its speed was very high, and it stopped the pursuit only near the coast, after which it headed for the open sea.

On August 12, 1992, a similar story happened to V. M. Belsky, an employee of the Feodosia City Council. He swam in the sea, dived about 30 meters from the shore, and at some point, emerging, he saw a huge snake head almost next to him.

In horror, Belsky rushed to the shore, jumped out of the water and hid among the stones. Looking out from behind the stone, he saw that where he had just swum, the head of a monster appeared, with water dripping from its mane. Belsky even managed to make out the skin and gray horny plates on the head and neck. The eyes of the sea monster were small, and the body was dark gray with a lighter underside. It is curious that a year before this, in the same place, a young man, a master of sports in swimming, died of a heart attack.

NESSIE OF THE BLACK SEA

The Black Sea serpent has been haunting the human imagination for several thousand years. Nowadays, with the onset of warm weather, some enthusiasts spend days on the coast, armed with video equipment. They hope to become famous by being the first to capture the mysterious sea dragon on film.

In October 2009, the Gusarenko spouses seemed to succeed, and quite by accident. Video footage is not of good quality, since it was taken from a great distance, but you can still see a huge serpentine body moving quickly in the water.

In the early 1990s, Crimean fishermen found dead dolphins with huge lacerations. One of the dolphins' belly was literally torn out along with the insides. The bite size along the arc was about a meter, and the depth reached the spine. Along the edge of the arc, traces of sixteen large teeth were visible on the skin of the dolphin.

A few years ago, a dolphin bitten in half by some monster was also taken out of the water by neighbors in the region - Turkish fishermen. Scientists at Istanbul University came to the conclusion that the marks on the body were left by the teeth of a very large animal.

Viktor BUMAGIN

Monday, October 22, 2013 00:31 ()

On the southeastern coast of Crimea, sung by Maximilian Voloshin, there is the Karadag mountain range, whose name translates as Black Mountain. The age is really amazing - 150-160 million years. Scientists assure: from time to time living remnants of bygone eras appear here.

In June 2013, the lawyer of the branch of the scientific biological station on the territory of the Karadag Reserve, E. Rud, received shocking video materials from his Yalta friends, the authenticity of which was difficult to doubt, although what he saw was like a horror movie (unfortunately, the author of the article does not show either the video or at least a screen from it) On board the pleasure boat, huddled together, people screamed in fear. The ship rocked strongly, although there was neither storm nor wind, the bright sun shone. The wave came from a monster that appeared next to the ship: its dimensions exceeded 50 meters in length! (The length of the ship is about 40 meters.) The sea serpent of ancient myths, wriggling in the water, swiftly attacked the dolphins, immediately devouring them in front of the astonished public. These shots were supplemented by other shots taken from above by tourists who ascended that clear day to the top of Karadag in order to survey the endless blue expanses. Well, it wasn't a massive hallucination, was it? In addition, there were many different eyewitnesses. A stir arose around the Karadag serpent, the problem required a scientific word, since a rare visitor to the reserve does not ask a question about the monster.

Red Army soldiers and Janissaries against the Karadag reptile The gigantic snake-like bloodthirsty creature that lives in the waters of the Eastern Crimea is mentioned in ancient myths and legends. It entered the annals under the name "Karadagh reptile". Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Evgeny Shnyukov says: “Digging into the legends of the Crimea, I found such a description that somewhere in the area of ​​​​the Otuzka River there was some kind of snake that the locals were afraid of and for the elimination of which even Janissaries from Central Europe had to be called. Judging by the events, this was even before the entry of Crimea into Russia.” In 1921, Maximilian Voloshin sent Mikhail Bulgakov to Moscow a clipping from the local Feodosia county newspaper. The note said: the peasants of the village of Koktebel complain that a certain snake appeared on the Karadag mountain, which comes out of the sea and devours their sheep, in connection with which a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to Karadag to capture him. Attempts to find and "distribute the giant reptile" were unsuccessful: they managed to catch only his trail, sliding into the sea. But it is known that on the basis of this newspaper clipping, Bulgakov wrote the story "Fatal Eggs". Already after the war, the writer Vsevolod Ivanov said that on May 14, 1952, during his vacation in the Crimea, he went for a walk in Carnelian Bay, where he saw something resembling a ball of algae. Suddenly, this something began to unfold and lengthen. Finally, a huge snake with a meter-long head crawled out of the water onto the stones. The writer was lucky: while smoking a pipe, he watched the kite with interest for 40 minutes (!), made sketches and notes about how he played in the water and hunted dolphins, and then rested, basking on the stones. Moreover, "communication" lasted more than one day. O.S. Severtseva recalls that after Ivanov's story, many young people, including herself, went with him to the bay. Hoping to see the monster, they dived into the neighboring bays. The water in the underwater cave - the supposed place of the exit of the monster - turned out to be icy. It became completely dark, it was impossible to determine the depth, and it seemed that there could be nothing alive there ... Later, Yuri Senkevich collected information about the mysterious snake, personally participating in its search, for the transfer of the Movie Travelers Club. He was convinced that it was a relic of ancient fauna.

Dog head is deadly

In May 1961, a fisherman from the village of Kurortnoye M. Kondratyev, with two companions, went out to sea in the morning to fish. Having sailed from the berth of the biological station, the boat turned towards the Golden Gates. Suddenly, three hundred meters from the shore and 50 meters from the boat, the fishermen discerned something brown under the water. Come closer. A meter-long head rose three meters above the water, covered with cosmos like algae. The neck and visible part of the body were covered with horny plates. From the mane at the top of the head, small eyes looked at them, the look of which plunged everyone into horror. Coming to his senses, Kondratiev managed to turn the boat around and give a tear at top speed. The monster chased after, but stopped a hundred meters from the shore and went into the open sea. The boat ran ashore at full speed, and the unfortunate fishermen rushed towards the biological station with screams. Seven years later, Kondratiev "was lucky enough to meet his old friend again." Approaching the boat, he saw a large brown spot 30 meters from the shore. The water began to seethe, the head of the monster appeared a little - and immediately disappeared under the water, leaving behind a whirlpool with a funnel 10 meters in diameter and about two meters deep. The fisherman, taught by bitter experience, immediately left. Not everyone is so lucky. In the 1930s, a fisherman from Kuchuk-Lambat (now Maly Mayak) met a huge snake among the coastal rocks. When people came running to his inhuman cry, he only managed to whisper: "Dog's head ..." - then he was paralyzed, and a month later he died. So the artist from Moscow A. Kudryavtsev, one might say, escaped with a slight fright. On August 18, 1990, he decided to go fishing at night on the pier in the village of Planerskoye. Not a soul around. Suddenly he was seized with horror - two eyes shone in the darkness at a height of two meters above the water. The artist, unable to miss them with his eyes, turned to stone. As soon as he regained his senses, he jumped up and rushed to the shore. He was tormented by terrible dreams for a long time. In 1992, V.M. Velsky, a former combat swimmer who served in the special forces: “I went into the sea in a mask and flippers. About five meters from the shore, I immediately went under the water and swam 40 meters at a rather great depth. Looking around, to my right, I saw that “handsome man”. I didn't have a fright. I got a good look at him. It was a smooth snake, with a body volume of more than half a meter, without any crests, more than 15 m long. He saw me, arched his neck up, looked and rushed towards me. I realized that I had to run away, and broke all existing swimming records. Jumping ashore, I saw with amazement that the head of my pursuer appeared at the point from which I had started my flight. He scanned the distance exactly! His head rose above the water by more than half a meter (it looked like a horse's), and he, like me, began to look around. I realized that there was no time for jokes, and began to hastily leave. Occasionally, scientists were also lucky. In the late 1980s, the BENTOS deep-sea underwater laboratory worked off the coast of Crimea. During one of the dives, the researchers saw something huge, about two meters in diameter, floating 8-10 meters across the course of the BENTOS. However, there was no clear visibility, and there were no special cameras for underwater filming. On December 7, 1990, a team of employees of the Karadag branch of the Ukrainian Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas of the Academy of Sciences went to sea to check the nets set to catch the Black Sea rays at a depth of 40 meters in the area of ​​Serdolikova Bay, a few miles from the coast of Karadag. When the nets were pulled up, they took out a dolphin with a belly eaten away - so that the spine was visible. The teeth marks left on the insides resembled the edge of dough, from which circles for dumplings are cut with a faceted glass. What size was the mouth, if the teeth were the size of a glass?! And what kind of marine predators could they belong to? Unless the representative of the Mesozoic era... Scientists were at a loss. Later, another prey dolphin was removed from the nets - this one had, as it were, its head sucked out. Despite all attempts to find out the truth, one can only guess who the senior researcher of the biological station V. Machkevsky recently met at sea. at night, who went with friends in a kayak to put his net behind a ready-made plug-in seine. Having completed the work and sailed a little, they saw from the side of the coast, against the background of Karadag, that very snake. “... A full moon rose in the sky, and it illuminated what was happening very well. The surface of the water was absolutely smooth, like glass. Suddenly I heard a splash to my left. He turned his head and... saw in a halo of foam the rolling body of a fairly large animal. There was no fin characteristic of a dolphin on its back, there was no reflex inhalation-exhalation inherent in dolphins. The back of the unknown creature was smooth and much larger than a dolphin's. Maybe its surface was scaly, but in the night light it was quite difficult to see. The rolling of the back in this halo of foam was so long that I managed to show this phenomenon to a friend. It was so close that I could touch the animal's back with an oar. It all looked like a huge snake and a car camera, this creature is impossible to describe.

Vulnerable Caddy

So who swam into the Crimean waters? They talked about a cloaked shark with flat sides, resembling a huge eel; according to another version, it was a herring king - a fish-belt up to nine meters in length, found in the North and Mediterranean seas ... Maybe some pangolin has been preserved in the Black Sea since ancient times? After all, what do we know about Karadag, which has been a nature reserve for decades? And why shouldn't this majestic mountain be a haven for exotic species? Karadag is the remains of an ancient volcano, the underwater part of which has not been studied. Once the displacement of the earth layers and volcanic clay led to complex layers, the formation of underwater caves, unknown passages and tunnels. Voloshin, who settled in Koktebel, possessed spiritual vision, more than once talked to his friends about a certain secret hidden in the depths of Karadag. About wonderful, inaccessible underwater grottoes, about portals with access to the past, to other dimensions, and, finally, about spirits and mythical creatures inhabiting the “living” Cimmeria, which does not reveal its secrets to everyone. Official science is sure: if a living creature lives on Karadag, there must be several of them - mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother, etc. But neither the remains nor the laying of eggs of these creatures have yet been found. In addition, the Crimean hydronautics is completely ruined today, deep-water equipment has been sold for scrap. It is known that North American zoologists successfully continue such studies in their territories. In 1995, two Canadian oceanographers - Dr. Edward Busfield (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto) and Professor Paul Le Blon (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) - in the April issue of the scientific journal "Amphipa-cythica" described what was discovered in the fjords of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast Canada, a new for science large animal species - cadborosaurus. They attributed it to the plesiosaurs, a group of highly specialized marine reptiles that became extinct in the Mesozoic era. This "saurus" got its name from the name of the sea bay of Cadborough, where it was observed most often. The message caused a furor in the media. Newspapers immediately gave the creature the nickname Caddy, and local environmentalists demanded that the government immediately ensure the protection of such a rare and apparently vulnerable species. According to eyewitness accounts, Cadborosaurus, by the way, has been mentioned in Indian folklore since ancient times, is like two drops of water similar to the Black Sea snake, but eats fish, sometimes trying to hunt sea birds. For scientists, there is no doubt that the depths of the oceans hold many unexplored secrets. But they want facts. However, not a single high-quality picture has been taken so far - neither with us, nor with them. This is stubbornly explained by the fact that mysterious creatures appear and disappear suddenly, as if only to remind: the living Earth was not born yesterday, but it is necessary to study and protect it in all its manifestations, especially in unique ones. Nina Yakhontova

February 19 - Marine Mammal Protection Day.
Let's imagine that all the exterminators of animals, legal and poaching, on this day law-abidingly put away their harpoons and watch the programs of the "Wildlife" channel with their families.
(In honor of World Turtle Day, for example, some courageously refuse turtle soup.)
And I spent today at sea - I dreamed of meeting a dolphin. At least a simple gray bottlenose dolphin. And if you're lucky - the legendary Albino.
The dream did not come true, but there is a reason to talk about it.
For several years now, a sea miracle has appeared in the sea near Sudak - a snow-white dolphin:

Here is what Andrei Permyakov, a Sudak resident, who has repeatedly seen a dolphin, reports:

The white dolphin is considered the leader of the pack, because he is the first to rush after the fishing boats.

I worked on a boat, so I saw him often. A minesweeper walked along the Sudak Bay, dolphins followed the ship and ate the fish out of the trawl. It is white-white, and sometimes, in the bright sun, it seems pink.

Unlike other dolphins of this flock, and this is from 50 to 100 individuals, Albino does not let people close to him. Others can be approached at arm's length, they play, and the white dolphin always stays away and even photographing it is a great success.

During the summer, during the tourist season, Andrei managed to meet Albino three or four times a month, despite the fact that he was at sea from eight in the morning to nine in the evening.

In the same flock there are dolphins with white spots - as if white had been smeared over their bodies. Their Sudak people consider the offspring of Albino, although what gender he is is unknown. But he was never seen with cubs, which means he is a handsome man.

We believe that seeing him is a blessing!
http://www.crimea.kp.ru/daily/26642.7/3661325/

Here is the video of Albino and members of his flock:

More photos by Andrey Permyakov. A "spotted" bottlenose dolphin, possibly a descendant of Albino, frolics against the backdrop of Meganom:

Specialists regarding the amazing white dolphin show a certain restraint, although they confirm that this is the only white dolphin in the Black Sea that they know. Yes, and white cetaceans, if this is unusual for their species, in Russia and in the world can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

A very light killer whale is observed in the Kamchatka region. It is difficult to say whether she is an albino or not, because you cannot get close to her. There are videos and photos on the net with a humpback, light or white, observed off the coast of California. White bottlenose dolphins are observed in the Mediterranean Sea, lists Specialist of the Severtsov Institute for Problems of Evolution and Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dmitry Glazov.
http://www.crimea.kp.ru/daily/26642.7/3661325/

It is known that in the 1920s there were about 3 million dolphins in the Black Sea. However, almost the entire last century, these animals were considered commercial. They were killed by the tens of thousands for the sake of fat and meat, protein-rich blood, from which medicines were made. Even the intestines were not thrown away, but were used as casings for sausages and frankfurters.

The fact that a "dolphin processing plant" functioned in Sevastopol in the 1970s is bashfully hushed up.
The genocide continued at a time when there was already an official ban on killing dolphins.
In 1993, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine established the amount of compensation for prey and damage caused to animal species listed in the Red Book. Each individual monk seal (which has not been seen in the Black Sea for fifteen years), azovka, bottlenose dolphins and common dolphins was valued, respectively, at 200, 150, 130 and 110 minimum Ukrainian salaries.

As for the monk seal, this astronomical amount of compensation for him is literally like a dead poultice.
Still, a fine was established for causing damage to the "Karadag snake". And that such is not fiction, but reality, is considered not only by the creators of modern myths, but also by serious scientists: Krivokhizhin, Birkun, Al. Jena.
Here is one of the videos on the topic:

And recently, my friends photographed the remains of a monstrous unknown creature. Kostya and Polina discovered a shaped Chudosaurus in the summer of 2016! It happened on the shore of the bay near the village of Ordzhonikidze.
Here is what IT looks like:


Beak or rostrum?


and the body of a snake...


Relatively recently, the creature was alive.


What caused his death?


Who is this?
Reminds me of one of the monsters in Anton Anfalov's collection:

Konstantin presents a multi-meter monster, demonstrating it from different angles.


Photo by Polina Eroshenko from the Odnoklassniki social network.

It is difficult to say with complete certainty whether Caradagosaurus Tauride actually exists.

But one thing is certain: while dolphins, killer whales, narwhals, seals, walruses, sea otters, minke whales and blue whales still live in the seas, we, the people, need to save them.

02/05/2010 | Karadag Monster or Opuk Serpent. How to live on?

Winter, frost, but you always want to dive. Well, if not diving, then at least talk about it. I go to visit my old friend and from the threshold I get a portion of fresh news! It turns out that a reptile unknown to science lives in our Black Sea, easily snatching the belly from dolphins, harassing poor Tatars, senior executive committee workers and military personnel, masters of sports in swimming, always swimming in the sea! Sharks have already been caught in the Black Sea, crocodiles last year too. But this... Testimonies are old and completely new - in the fall of 2009.

It seems that I have sailed in the sea all my life, I love day and night hunting. At night, you even look more romantic, more courageous in your own eyes, more than once I heard questions - how is it possible in this darkness? And isn't it scary? I can answer this question: it was once in my life, like on Azov, when I experienced very sharp sensations, literally horror to the point of stupor on one of the night hunts.

The sea of ​​Azov is shallow and warm for a long voyage, even a wetsuit is not needed, I was still young and just mastered the hunt for a bull, I decided to try to hunt at night. Moving along the reef, he illuminated stones and grottoes with a lantern, looking for fish. I found gobies, shot them, put them on a kukan, and suddenly a beam of a lantern from the darkness snatches a crevice in the stones, through which, wriggling, a black snake body about a cubit wide is rapidly moving in my direction.

From the size of what he saw, it became somehow not good inside and I wanted to immediately find myself, somewhere far away, on land, preferably behind strong doors. Fear, for some time, literally paralyzed me, and if the beam of the lantern, continuing its movement, did not highlight the absence of the continuation of this body behind the stone, I would not write these lines. Yes, on one side of the stone, crossing the crevice, there was a body, and on the other side, behind the stone, it was no longer there! Having come to his senses, he began to study what he saw. Upon closer examination, the body turned out to be a strip of an automobile camera from a truck about 30 centimeters wide cut along a larger circumference. Unfolded in length, it had a rounded shape with wavy protrusions characteristic of the movement of a snake. I just saw this fragment, as the imagination finished the rest!

The fear that I experienced made itself felt for a long time with nightmares, and very soon I began to swim at night. And I really understand that Tatar who accidentally found himself in a similar situation, but not with an illusion, but with a natural being.

How reliable are the facts - you be the judge. In the article, we have material in the presentation of the author (i.e. a specific person), in which there are inaccuracies that have a chance to cast doubt on all the material presented. And the situation with the stone is also familiar to me. One day, when I came to look for mushrooms on a slope near the Evrika boarding house - not far from Alushta, I saw a large stone in the water, which I told my partner about. Look, I say a cool stone for an ambush, to which he, shaking his head, replied: “There are no stones there! I know this shore very well, ”and we, standing on a slope, watched an object in the water for a long time, which obviously moved slowly. I can’t say for sure about the distance, but as in the case described in the article, it was about two hundred meters. We didn’t see any head, and it’s not clear what was under the water, although Seryoga says that it was a flock of mullet.

Below is an article by E.F Shnyukov "Nessie in the Black Sea". All the events described in this article actually took place. It is absolutely known that at the Feodosiya Production Association "More" trap cages were made by order of the Karadag biological station for catching the "Karadagh monster".

Dolphins were put into these traps as bait. True, these works did not lead to the capture of the monster. After the revolution, a company of Red Army soldiers really went to Koktebel in search of a "huge reptile" and this story was used by M. Bulgakov in the story "Fatal Eggs". Some time ago, a fossilized egg weighing 1.5 kg and the remains of a prehistoric creature covered with scales were found at Cape Aya. In the split of this egg, a snake's head with a crest is visible. Now this find is in the Kherson Museum. Dinosaurs and sea snakes have lived in these places since ancient times. And today you can hear in the Eastern Crimea, primarily in the Karadag region (and in Koktebel, the wine of the local Koktebel factory is sold and allowed to be tasted right on the beach) stories about how the sea Loch Nessie sticks right on the beach, mainly to young and pretty nudists . Many do not believe in the existence of sea monsters. Many people say: "until I see, I will not believe."

I saw the impression that a flock of dolphins makes on vacationers, which, in pursuit of a flock of fish, swims at a speed of 60 km per hour to the Crimean beach. Or what impression was made about 10 years ago by a torpedo that swept past one of the Crimean beaches, not far from the underwater test site. People shoot out of the water like an arrow. And then for some time they are afraid to go into the water. Therefore, I do not wish anyone to meet a sea monster or a sea serpent. And yes, I am afraid of them. But if you do meet him, be sure to take a picture! And send photos around the world to the most famous scientific journals. At the same time send your stories and photos to me. There are many archaeological, historical facts and eyewitness accounts that cannot be denied. Until it is proved that it is not there, it will live in the South-Eastern Crimea. 06/29/2000

Nessie in the Black Sea

The steamer "Chemist Zelinsky" was heading to Odessa from Kherson. Suddenly there were mosquitoes. Lots of mosquitoes, clouds. They penetrated into all the premises, sealed up all the windows and windows. Visibility has deteriorated sharply. From the captain's bridge came the command to slow down. The deck, the bridge - everything was covered with a ten-centimeter layer of mosquitoes. The sailors lit smoke bombs on the holly. Useless. The mosquitoes remained on the holly. It got colder on the second day. Mosquito activity immediately decreased. The jets of fire pumps finally made it possible to get rid of the requested passengers.

This is not the only case of a huge accumulation of insects, often representing, due to their mass character, a formidable danger. There is a known case when ships sank, covered with insects. So it was, for example, in 1913: with the German cargo ship "Adler" in the Persian Gulf, when a giant flock of butterflies clung to the ship. The helmsman lost orientation, the ship hit the rocks.

In 1969, I happened to encounter a similar phenomenon. On the road from Yeysk to Dombai, a huge flock of dragonflies flew towards the expedition car for almost an hour. They clogged the radiator, stuck to the glass, covered the road, and it became slippery. I had to stop, clean the radiator. Dragonflies were leaving the dry wind. They suddenly disappeared, and we drove into a dry wind zone, where before our eyes the leaves of roadside trees turned black and curled up.

In May 1991, a huge flock of swallows, apparently returning from the southern countries and overcoming the Black Sea, landed on the research vessel "Akademik Vernadsky", on which our expedition worked, near Sevastopol. Hundreds of them flew along the corridors, crammed into the cabins. Seagulls hunted swallows right on the holly, the ship's cat ate them, and the flock kept coming and killing. The next day they also suddenly disappeared, as they appeared. In the cases described, thank God, there were no damage to people and no catastrophes.

Do we know everything about the biological mysteries of the Black Sea? It turns out not.

In 1993, during field expeditionary work in the Crimea, I got into a conversation with the director of the Karadag Reserve P. G. Semenkov. Petr Grigoryevich is a wonderful enthusiast of the Crimea, making great efforts to preserve nature and increase the wealth of the beautiful corner of Crimea - Karadag. I worked in the Crimea for many years, wrote several books on the geology of the Crimea and the Crimean shelf. But, apparently, my interest was somewhat narrowed, professionally limited. With great interest, I listened to the story of Peter Grigoryevich about the "" Karadag monster ". However, I will not tell you better than he himself. Therefore, we present a somewhat abridged version of his article.

"On December 7, 1990, a team of fishermen from the Karadag branch of the InByum of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, consisting of Tsabanov A. A., Nuykin Y. M., Sych M. M. and Gerasimov N. V. went to sea to check the nets set for catching Black Sea rays. The net is a canvas 2.5 m wide and 200 m long with a mesh size of 200 mm.It was installed at a depth of 50 m with coordinates at a distance of 3 miles southeast of Lyagushachya Bay and 7 miles south of the village of Ordzhonikidze. arrived about 12 o'clock in the afternoon and began to break the net from the south end.After one hundred and fifty meters the net was broken, and the fishermen decided that when setting they threw their net on top of someone else's, and the owner of the lower net was forced to cut the upper one in order to to check theirs in. They came in from the other end of the network and continued to check.

When we went to the ragged edge, we pulled a dolphin to the surface - a Black Sea bottlenose dolphin about 230 cm in size, whose tail was tangled in a net. Pulling the dolphin up to the nose of the Mogofeluga, the fishermen discovered that the dolphin's belly had been bitten off with one bite. The width of the bite along the arc is about 1 m. Along the edge of the arc, teeth marks were clearly visible on the skin of the dolphin. The size of the trace from the tooth is about 40 mm. The distance between the teeth marks is about 15-20 mm. In total, there were about 16 teeth marks along the arc. The dolphin's belly was bitten off with ribs, so that the spine was clearly visible. In the area of ​​​​the head, the remnants of the lungs dangled, from which blood flowed when lifting. Traces of teeth were clearly visible on the sides of the clips, and were located symmetrically.

The dolphin's head was severely deformed, evenly compressed from all sides, as if they were trying to drag it through a narrow hole. The eyes were not visible, and the deformed part had a whitish color, reminiscent of the color of a fish pulled out of the stomach of another fish.

Inspection of the dolphin lasted no more than three minutes. The sight of the dolphin and the flowing blood caused great panic among the fishermen. One of them cut the net, the dolphin fell into the sea, and the fishermen went home at full speed from the area.

I saw the fishermen immediately upon their return from the sea, I asked them in detail about what had happened, and according to their story, the artist made a sketch of the dolphin they saw.

The bite mark of a dolphin by an unknown creature. (According to P.G. Semenkov. Geol. journal No. 1, 1994)

In the spring of 1991, fishermen brought in a second dolphin with similar teeth marks on its body. It was an azovka one and a half meters in size.

They pulled it out of the network, which was installed approximately in the same place as on December 7, 1990.

This time the net was not torn, and almost the entire dolphin was heavily entangled in the net, wrapped up like a doll, so that one head peeked out. Traces of three teeth were clearly visible on the dolphin's head. In appearance, they exactly resembled the teeth marks on the body of a bottlenose dolphin.

The brought dolphin was placed in a cold cell, and in May 1991, while in Leningrad, I went to the Institute of Zoology, talked with a number of employees, invited us to visit Azovka. Unfortunately, none of the staff was able to go, but I received the address of experts on the traces found on the body of marine mammals caught in the ocean. These were employees of YugNIRO working in Kerch and Odessa. I managed to contact one of them by phone. I described in detail the traces found on the body of dolphins entangled in our nets, and invited him to inspect the azovka kept in our cold cell. I was promised that he would try to find time to come to our institution. However, neither in May, nor in June, nor in July, no one came to us.

At the end of August, an accident happened, and everything that was in the cold cell was gone, including the dolphin.

This is the exact description of the events that took place in December 1990 and April 1991.

Now, perhaps, it is appropriate to propose several hypotheses explaining the causes of the death of dolphins and the origin of traces on the corpses of dolphins.

Most of the scientists of Karadag, and first of all zoologists, unanimously rejected the hypothesis that some living creature is the cause of the death of dolphins and the source of traces on their body. Some of the employees saw the reason for the death of the dolphins in the fact that the animals collided with some kind of technical device (a propeller of a ship or a torpedo).

Some of the employees still admitted that another living being could be the cause of both. However, none of the inhabitants of the Black Sea known to science could be honored to become a candidate for the role of "killer". Moreover, even the famous inhabitants of the World Ocean, if they were guests in the Black Sea, could not leave such traces on the body of dolphins.

And then it's time to remember the legendary monster, supposedly living in the Black Sea. The first mention of it is found in the Crimean legends. It has not been forgotten even today. Despite the fact that officially information about him fell into the category of bad sensations and was not subject to publication, nevertheless, eyewitness accounts of meeting him on land and in water near the Crimean coast sometimes appeared on the pages of periodicals, especially those published in the Crimea. We did not set ourselves the task of systematizing all the information about the Crimean monster mentioned in the publications of the periodical press, however, it should be recognized that the fact of the death of two dolphins was actually registered and the marks on the body of these animals correspond to information about the size and habits of the Crimean monster.

Maybe the time has come when scientists will cast aside skepticism or snobbery and carefully and unbiasedly analyze at least those facts that accidentally fall into their field of vision?

Or maybe the time will come when they themselves will actively begin to finish off new facts about the Crimean monster?

The story and article by P. G. Semenkov also interested me very much. Together with Pyotr Grigoryevich, we went to see some of his acquaintances who had seen the mysterious monster. The correspondent of the newspaper "Sudaksky Vestnik" A. N. Ovchinnikov saw a snake-like creature a few years ago in the sea, from a twenty-meter height of Cape French. The scattered dolphins fled from this snake. According to Alexander Nikolaevich, in the thirties, a fisherman from Kuchuk-Lambat (now Maly Mayak), a Tatar by nationality, encountered a snake in "stone chaos" 2. The fishermen came to the rescue and rescued him. However, he became paralyzed and died a month later. "Dog head" - he managed to utter before his death. So the son of the dead fisherman told Ovchinnikov.

Vladimir Mikhailovich Belsky, a senior official of the executive committee of the Feodosia City Council, on August 12, 1992 at 15-164 pm, swam in a bay on the eastern shore of Cape Kiik-Atlam, 1-2 km from its tip. The water temperature was about 23°. A good swimmer, he easily swam 40 meters from the shore. The depth of the water reached 4 m. Having emerged, he looked around and, to his horror, saw a snake's head about 30 m away from him, a huge head - up to half a meter in size; the neck was thinner - 30 cm. The animal dived towards the swimmer. Then Vladimir Mikhailovich rushed to the side and along the ridge of stones overlooking the sea jumped out onto the shore and hid behind the stones. A moment later, at the place where he was, the head of a monster appeared. Vladimir Mikhailovich saw him clearly, even made out the skin and gray horny plates on his head and neck. The general feeling is creepy.

According to V. M. Belsky, a year before his meeting with the monster in this area of ​​​​the sea, a strong young man, a military man, a master of sports in swimming, who always bathed here, died from a heart attack.

According to V. M. Kostyukov, who worked as a fish inspector for thirty years, one of the shepherds saw in the Chauda region near Cape Salar a snake-like creature with a large head, whose body resembled a pillar. The panicked dolphins disappeared as the snake writhed towards them. Legends about the snake are very common among the fishermen of the Eastern Crimea.

From the inquiries it turned out that the topic of the Black Sea Nessie had already been repeatedly raised in the Crimean and even Moscow newspapers. So, in the newspaper "Izvestia" in the article "Meeting in the Abyss", correspondent Vladimir Shcherbakov wrote that the hydronauts of the underwater vehicle "Bentos-300" saw such a monster at a depth of about 100 m in the Black Sea. I contacted the hydronauts, this is an organization, "Mariekoprom", which owns "Bentos-300". Alas! Hydronaut V. Mashinsky, a participant in this descent, told me that the object observed in the Tarkhankut area was most likely a huge, 5 meters, beluga! Colleagues working with him confirmed his words.

Among the testimonies of eyewitnesses is the testimony of Grigory Tabunov, who met a huge snake in the sea near the village. Nikita. It does not cause much doubt. Later, these same facts were repeated in Krymskaya Gazeta. Polina Kartygina and her friend stumbled upon a "huge log" - a snake - right on the beach near Feodosia. They say that unique materials were collected in Pobeda and Kurortnaya Gazeta, but they were not allowed to print. It must be assumed that these materials have now been published to one degree or another. So, in our days, many have seen in the sea or the coastal zone a "huge monster", a snake. Was this animal not known before? Turns out it was known. And not just a century.

Scheme of location of meeting points of an unknown animal:
1 - before the Second World War; 2 - in our days.
(According to E. F. Shnyukov, L. I. Mitin, V. P. Tsemko, 1994)

In one of the Tatar legends of the Crimea - "Otuz legend" - "Chershamba" tells about a snake place near the village. Otuzy (modern Shchebetovka) on the river Otuzka, where reeds grow - Yulanchik. The literal translation of the word Yulanchik is a snake's nest. "Here... a snake lived in the reeds, which, curled up, seemed like a haystack, and when it walked through the field, it made ten knees and more. True, the Janissaries killed it. The Akmaliz Khan ordered them from Istanbul, But the cubs remained from her ... "

Of course, this legend is naive and simple. It is interesting to pay attention to possible conclusions from the legend. A huge snake lives exactly where it is described today.

Apparently, this is one of the first mentions of the snake, because we are talking about the Janissaries, i.e. troops, which could only be called into the Crimea in the Middle Ages, but not later than 1774, i.e. no later than the time of the conclusion of the Kuchuk-Kainarji peace.

According to V. Kh. Kondaraki, in 1828 the Yevpatoriya police officer filed a report, where he wrote about the appearance in the county of a huge snake with a hare's head and a kind of mane that attacked sheep and sucked blood. "Two snakes were killed by the Tatars, who believed that snakes sailed from hot countries. S. Slavich, according to eyewitnesses, tells about the meeting of a huge snake on Kazantip (Kerch peninsula). "... A one-armed shepherd noticed something shiny under a bush of thorns, similar to a ram's skull polished by rains and winds , and just like that, having nothing to do, hit the gerlyga on this skull. And suddenly the unbelievable happened, there was a kind of noiseless explosion: a thorny bush uprooted from its roots flew up, a cloud of dust shot up, pieces of hardened earth flew in all directions.

The shepherd became dumb and numb, no longer understood where he was and what was happening to him. He saw only this cloud of dust, and in it his sheepdogs, like mad, and something huge, wriggling with monstrous strength and speed. When the shepherd came to his senses, one dog was killed, and the two survivors furiously tore the still convulsing body of some huge reptile.

What seemed to the one-armed ram's skull was the head of a huge snake. Shortly thereafter, the shepherd is said to have died. It was before the war.

M. Bykova (1990) mentions in her book the story of Maria Stepanovna Voloshina that "in 1921, a note was printed in the local Feodosia newspaper, which said that a "huge bastard" appeared in the area of ​​Mount Karadag and a company was sent to capture Red Army soldiers." There was no further information in the newspapers. M. Voloshin sent a clipping about the "reptile" to M. Bulgakov, and it formed the basis of the story "Fatal Eggs". Gad, allegedly, was seen in the village (Koktebel).

In the same book, another description of the meeting with a huge snake on Karadag is given with reference to Natalia Lesina. The story took place in September 1952 with Varvara Kuzminichnaya Zozulya on Karadag near Cape Boy. In a quiet warm place near Cape Varvara Kuzminichna was collecting firewood and mistook the monster for a heap of brushwood, almost stepped on it. According to the description of the stunned woman, the animal has a small head, a thin neck, and a back as thick as a pillar. When she began to wave the rope, the animal began to unwind like a ball. Upper and lower limbs were visible, and it squeaked. The resume is purely household: "How much I live, I have not seen this." Another person, the geologist Promtov, saw a huge snake on Karadag near the wall of Lagorio.

Approximately in the same years, Vsevolod Ivanov observed the "most fantastic of the most fantastic" snakes. I would venture to quote from his story:

"The spring of 1952 in Koktebel was cold and rainy. April was back and forth, and May was rainy and cold ...

On May 14, after a long cold weather, windless warm weather set in. Assuming that during the storms the sea threw a lot of colored pebbles ashore, I again walked past the Devil's Finger, along the Gyaur-Bakh gorge, and then, in order not to waste much time on the difficult descent to the seashore to Carnelian Bay on a rock, near a tree, from where the whole bay is visible, the width of which is 200-250 m, I tied a rope and easily went down with its help ...

The sea, I repeat, was calm. Near the shore, among small stones overgrown with algae, a mullet was playing. Away, about 100 meters from the shore, dolphins swam.

Dolphins flocked moving along the bay to the left. The mullet must have moved there. I turned my eyes to the right and just in the middle of the bay, about 50 meters from the shore, I noticed a large, 10-12 meters in circumference, stone, overgrown with brown algae. In my life I have been to Koktebel many times, and on each visit I have been to Carnelian Bay several times. The bay is not shallow, the depth begins about ten paces from the shore - and I don’t remember this stone in the middle of the bay. It was 200 meters from me to this stone. I did not have binoculars with me. I couldn't see the stone. And is it a stone? I leaned back, put my "eye" against the branch of the tree and noticed that the stone was noticeably deviating to the right. So, it was not a stone, but a large ball of seaweed. Torn up by the storms, where did you bring them here? Maybe the current will wash them against the rocks and I should look at them? I forgot the dolphins.

As I smoked my pipe, I began to observe the tangle of seaweed. The current seemed to be getting stronger. The algae began to lose their rounded shape. The ball has lengthened. There were gaps in the middle.

And then... Then I trembled all over, got to my feet and sat down, as if afraid that I might frighten "it" if I stood up. I looked at the clock. It was 12:15 noon. There was complete silence. Behind me, in the valley of Gyaur-Bah, birds chirped, and my pipe smoked intensely. "Klubok" unfolded. Turned around. Stretched out. I still counted and didn't count "it" as algae until "it" moved against the current.

This creature swam with undulating movements to the place where the dolphins were, that is, to the left side of the bay.

Everything was still quiet. Naturally, it immediately occurred to me: is this not a hallucination? I took out my watch. It was 12:18.

The reality of what I saw was disturbed by the distance, the brilliance of the sun on the water, but the water was transparent, and therefore I saw the bodies of dolphins, which were twice as far from me as the monster. It was large, very large, 25-30 meters, and as thick as the top of a desk, if you turn it sideways. It was under water for half a meter - a meter and, it seems to me, was flat. The lower part of it was, apparently, white, as far as the blueness of the water made it possible to understand, and the upper part was dark brown, which led me to take it for a seaweed.

The monster, writhing, like swimming snakes, did not quickly swim towards the dolphins. They immediately fled.

Having driven away the dolphins and, perhaps, without thinking of chasing them, the monster curled up into a ball, and the current carried him again to the right. It again began to look like a brown stone, overgrown with algae.

Carried to the middle of the bay, just to the place or approximately to the place where I saw it for the first time, the monster turned around again and, turning in the direction of the dolphins, suddenly raised its head above the water. The head, the size of the span of the arms, was similar to that of a snake. I still could not see with my eyes, from which one could conclude that they were small. After holding its head above the water for about two minutes - large drops of water flowed from it - the monster turned sharply, lowered its head into the water and quickly swam away behind the rocks that closed the Carnelian Bay.

I looked at the clock. It was three minutes to one. I watched the monster for forty minutes or so."

In 1967, Lyudmila Szegeda stepped over a log during a walk in the Armatluk valley on an autumn evening. Hearing a splash behind her, she saw a huge log-thick snake crawling from one reservoir to another. The log she had stepped over was not there.

According to the observations of N. Lesina, two types of monsters were seen in Koktebel: with limbs and serpentine.

As you can see, in historical terms, the existence of the monster has been traced for centuries and up to the present day. The narrowing of the monster's habitat is noteworthy. In the last century, it was established from Tarkhankut to Karadag and, obviously, to the east. Before the Second World War, it was observed at Kuchuk-Lambat (Small Mayak), at Ayu-Dag, at Kazantip in the Sea of ​​Azov. Nowadays, in fact, more or less reliable evidence points to one region - Karadag.

The discovery near Cape Kiik-Atlama emphasized the validity of N. Lesina's conclusion about two variants of the description of the animal - a giant snake, or a monster with small limbs, with a "hare", "dog", "horse" head and mane. This is important for further comparisons.

So, there are a lot of facts that are difficult to explain. The degree of their reliability is different. You never know what a frightened person can imagine. Many of the stories, however, are fairly reliable. And yet, it is clearly premature to talk about the existence of some kind of monster in the sea near the Crimean coast. Encounters are too rare and random, it is not clear where these monsters breed, there are no paleontological remains, etc. In fact, the material evidence is only the corpses of dead dolphins. But it can also be disputed. Suddenly, this is really the impact of the ship's propellers or some new underwater vehicle.

However, in our time we meet with unexpected sensations. From the stomach of a sperm whale killed near the North Pacific coast of America, the remains of some large three-meter animal were recovered. Some zoologists called it Cadborosaurus. In December 1992, in Vancouver, at a joint meeting of the American and Canadian Zoological Societies, Edward Busville, a researcher at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, made a presentation on Cadborosaurus. An article recounting these events was published by Penny Park in a major scientific journal, The New Scientist. It is not long, and we present its translation in full, so that the reader himself can be convinced of the surprising coincidence of the described facts with what the Crimean observers recorded.

The beast from the depths confounds zoologists

Such things are usually not taken seriously - take the history of Loch Nessie, for example. But for Paul Leblon, professor of oceanography at the University of British Columbia, the Caddy is a real scientific mystery. Late last month, he presented a paper on the biology of an unknown creature - Cadborosaurus - at a joint meeting of the Canadian and American Zoological Societies in Vancouver.

Cadborosaurus, affectionately known as Caddy, is a mysterious marine animal that has been spoken of many times along the coast of British Columbia and as far south as Oregon. The evidence is too frequent to ignore, Leblond says. He believes that the natives of British Columbia were well acquainted with Caddy, referring to images dating back to 200 AD. e.

Since then, there has been an average of one reliable sighting of the creature each year and at various times over the past 60 years. Individuals even held what they called Caddy's "patterns" in their hands. One such three-meter Keddie ("young man") was, apparently, taken from the stomach of a sperm whale.

The descriptions are generally the same. They claim it is a long-necked animal with short, pointed front fins, a horse-like head, clear eyes, a visible mouth, and either ears or giraffe-like horns. Caddy is often described with hair like a cat, and sometimes with a mane along his neck. Some evidence paints a more snake-like appearance of a creature with a narrow, long body up to 7 m long, which meanders just below the surface of the ocean. Others describe the body as more like a Volkswagen with a long neck.

Leblon and his colleague Ed Bustfeld of the Natural History Department of the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria analyzed the evidence for clues to the creature's biology and behavior. They believe Caddy may be a deep sea animal. This, in their opinion, explains its infrequent sightings, as well as its presence in the stomach of a sperm whale that hunts at great depths. But its hairy body suggests that it is a mammal, and if it does not often come to the surface, how does it breathe?

Some have speculated that the small horns may be a breathing apparatus, but Busfeld argues for a more elaborate breathing mechanism. His idea is that the bumps seen along the animal's back by one of the observers may act as tiny gills. If highly vascular tissue lies beneath these irregularities, then oxygen can be drawn directly from the water through the skin.

The summation of evidence from various locations along the coast of British Columbia at various times indicates that the animal may migrate south to warmer coastal waters to breed.

Leblond and Busfeld claim that they "judge with an open mind" about the type of animal Caddy might be. It may be something like a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile that lived during the time of the dinosaurs. But Leblon is leaning towards a less exotic version. He believes that "this animal is related to some well-known marine mammals, but because of our habits we have not yet caught a single specimen. We see it only by chance, and one day we will inevitably catch it, and it will turn out to be one of the famous ones, but rare animals of the ocean.

By the way, Professor Paul Leblond, mentioned in the article, has been promoting the idea of ​​the existence of a sea serpent in the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to Oregon since 1973, when he published his first article on this topic together with D. Seiberg. D. Gordon cited the same facts in his article in the Reader's Digest magazine.
The magazine "Vokrug sveta" paid close attention to this information.

And yet...

Serious experts believe that it is still premature to draw any conclusions - before the capture of a living specimen of the mysterious Cadborosaurus. This is absolutely correct.

In 1995, Turkish officials and journalists saw "a monster with a horned head overgrown with black wool" on Lake Van. I even managed to photograph a long black shadow with a video camera. The journalists presented this information mockingly and with ridicule at the address of the Turkish parliamentarians."

We also believe that it is necessary to conduct scientific research in order to be convinced of the reality of the Karadag monster. The most unexpected mistakes are possible. The Crimea and the Black Sea near Crimea are too well studied, too many people live on its shores for a large creature to meet people so rarely. Only time will solve this riddle.

In conclusion, additional historical facts. It turns out that the monster lives next to humanity for many centuries. On one of the walls of the ancient Assyrian palace in Nineveh, a sea serpent is depicted, which was met by the Assyrian king Sargon II near the island of Cyprus.

The myths of ancient Hellas testify in one form or another to the constant contacts and collisions of people with sea "monsters" - "dragons" or huge snakes.

In one of the myths, the dragon Python is mentioned, guarding the entrance to the soothsayer. Apollo killed him and entered the crevice where the Oracle lived.

Dragons are frequent inhabitants of myths. But to what extent is there real content behind them?

Another myth tells how Perseus, after killing the Gorgon Medusa, visited Ethiopia, where he saw the daughter of King Cepheus Andromeda tied on the shore to be sacrificed to a sea monster. This monster was sent by Apollo. He also sent a flood. Perseus killed the monster and freed Andromeda. In some sources, this duel is described in sufficient detail.

One of the exploits of Hercules is a journey to the country of the Amazons behind the belt of their queen Hippolyta. Upon returning from the campaign, Hercules arrived in Troy, to which this time Poseidon "sent" the sea "monster, brought by the tide and kidnapped all the people encountered on the plain." The soothsayer predicted that the monster would leave Troy alone if its king, Laomedont, gave his daughter Hesion to be devoured by the monster. Laomedon tied the girl to the coastal rock. Luckily, Hercules killed the monster and saved Hesiona. So, in any case, the author of the "Mythological Library" Apollodorus, who presumably lived in the first century BC, retells the Greek myths.

Homer's Iliad mentions a wall erected by the Trojans and the goddess Athena to protect Hercules from a sea monster.

Finally, Virgil's (70-19 BC) description of the tragedy that happened to Laocoön on the eve of the fall of Troy looks completely realistic. By the way, there are many hundreds of years between the event and the description. Obviously, the author used some sources that have not come down to us.

"Laocoon, that Neptune was chosen as a priest by lot, Before the altar he brought the bull solemnly as a sacrifice. Suddenly, along the surface of the sea, bending the rings of the body, Two huge snakes (and it's scary to talk about it) They are sailing towards us from Tenedos and striving for the shore together: The body's upper part rose, over the bloody swells The crest sticks out of the water, and the huge tail drags, Moisture exploding and all wriggling with a wavy movement. The salty expanse groans: snakes crawled out onto the shore, The eyes of the burning reptiles are full of blood and fire, Licks trembling tongue whistling scary mouth We fled without blood in our faces; the snakes are right Creeping towards Laocoön and his two sons, before In a terrible embrace, squeezing, twisting thin members, Poor flesh is tormented, ulcerated, torn with teeth; Their father hurries to help them, shaking his spear, - The bastards grab him and knit him with huge rings, Twice around his body and around his throat wrapped around And towering over your head with a scaly neck He strives to break the living knots with his hands, Poison and black blood flood the priest's bandages, A shriek, shaking, the unfortunate one will lift up to the stars... ... Both dragons meanwhile slip away to a high temple, They quickly crawl straight to the stronghold of Tritonia formidable, To hide under a round shield at the feet of the goddess."

If we compare this description with the stories of modern eyewitnesses, their coincidence is noted in many ways.

So, Virgil and Vsevolod Ivanov, who described the "monster" in the most detail, featured huge snakes. "The upper part of the body rose above the swells," writes Virgil. The same moment of emerging from the water is recorded in the stories of V. Ivanov and other eyewitnesses. "A bloody comb sticks out of the water." Perhaps this is a "mane"? The snakes swim, "writhing in a wavy motion." Is this not a description of contemporaries? "Torturing the poor flesh." Remember the terrible wounds of dolphins. Also: it is unlikely that the snake torments the flesh. The snake strangles, swallows, but does not torment. However, strangulation was also recorded - the snakes twisted around the body and throat twice. The conclusion is somewhat different. "Both dragons, meanwhile, are escaping..."

Apparently, these creatures are similar to snakes, but do not quite correspond to our ideas about these animals.

A giant serpent or monster is mentioned in the writings of many other ancient authors - Aristotle, Seneca, Pliny, Euripides. Here is the testimony of Procopius of Caesarea: “At the same time, that sea monster (whale), which the Byzantines called Porphyry, was also caught. This monster tormented Byzantium and the surrounding areas for more than fifty years; ships, sailors from many ships, with its swift attack, it made them lose their heads and dispersed them very far. Emperor Justinian was very anxious to catch this monster, but could not do it. How I managed to catch him now, I’ll tell you now. calm and at the mouth of the Euxine Pontus swam a very large flock of dolphins. Suddenly seeing the monster, they dispersed wherever they could; most rushed to the mouth of the river Sagaris. Capturing some of them, the monster immediately swallowed it. But then, under the influence of either hunger or thirst for struggle, it continued to pursue them until it imperceptibly swam close to the shore. to move in order to get away from here as soon as possible, but could not leave the shallows in any way, and was even more strongly sucked in by silt and mud. When the rumor about this spread throughout all the surroundings, everyone rushed here at a run and, striking him continuously with all kinds of axes, they not only killed him, but also dragged him ashore with strong ropes. Putting him on carts, they found that it was about thirty cubits long, ten. Cutting and dividing it into parts, some immediately ate their share, while others decided to populate the part they got.

The monster is thrown ashore in pursuit of dolphins. Apparently, the reason was some other, and not the pursuit of dolphins. Anyway; the monster was aground, this creature was finished off by people and immediately eaten. I thought that in the case of his unusual "dragon-like" or "lizard-like" appearance, this would hardly have been done, obviously, it was still something familiar to the local population. However, this is a modern view. Whales are also a rather unusual assortment on the menu of a Byzantine resident. And finally, another comment by Procopius himself: "... Some say that the monster that was caught is not the one I mentioned, but something else." In other words, a mistake is possible. However, "... with the death of the sea monster, liberation from many disasters turned out." As you can see, Procopius stubbornly calls this creature a monster, not a whale. It can be assumed that this creature was a cetacean. Possibly a killer whale?

A common thread to modern observations: the creature hunted dolphins and devoured them. It must be assumed that the wounds that it inflicted on dolphins looked no less terrible than those observed by P. G. Semenkov.

Icons depicting the "Miracle of the Serpent" are widespread in the Orthodox Church. On icons, especially old icons, starting from the 11th-11th centuries, George the Victorious is depicted slaying a serpent or dragon. A. V. Rystenko, the author of a major study of the story about George and the dragon, claims that the legend is based on a real fact and only later did the images of the legend acquire an allegorical meaning. George, a noble young man from Cappodice (Nicodemia), a Christian warrior, appeared near the pagan city in Lebanon (according to other sources in Libya). This event took place during the time of Emperor Diocletian, near the city there was a swamp in which a serpent or dragon suddenly appeared. As is usually described in legends, the monster ate boys and girls every day. With the help of prayer, George strikes the monster with a sword, saves the daughter of the ruler of the city, whose population is converted to Christianity. The story "The Miracle of George about the Serpent" was created in the environment of Eastern monasticism and goes back to the oral traditions of the 10th-11th centuries. Since the composition of the fauna of those places where George accomplished the feat, today there are no large reptiles. A. V. Rystenko believes that the legend of the noble warrior is connected with the ancient legends of India, Egypt, Babylon, based on real facts. It seems to us that the feat of George is based on real, local facts. The existence of some animal in the Eastern Mediterranean in the past, when the population was relatively rare, is even more likely than it is today. It is interesting that on some ancient Orthodox icons George defeats a dragon, on some - a huge snake. In other words, the legend does not give an answer to the topic of a lizard or a snake.

The prototype of another saint - Theodore Stratilat - kills a snake near the city of Heraclea (modern Turkish city of Eregli on the Black Sea). The legend echoes the story of St. George. In conclusion, I repeat. The existence of a large predator seems unlikely in areas of the Black Sea that are relatively developed by the population, such as the waters near Karadag, Feodosia, and the Kerch Peninsula. For all that, these are perhaps the least studied of the developed water areas. And some doubts remain - which does not happen in nature! Many facts remain unexplained. Perhaps we are talking about a creature that lived in the past and even the recent past. Over the past 50 years, the monk seal has disappeared from the Black Sea. 3 This large predator could well have disappeared, if it existed at all. A sharp decrease in the number of dolphins could well undermine its food supply.

Therefore, I once again support the proposal of the director of the Karadag biological station P. G. Semenkov on the need to conduct scientific research in this zone. First of all, we are talking about research from underwater manned vehicles and with the help of acoustic equipment.

I give an account of the difficulties of these works. The lake where Loch Nessie may live is incomparably smaller than the Black Sea. After many years of searching, the question is still unclear. And yet, if we don't work, we'll never find out.

The given data are the Black Sea versions of the legend about the Great Sea Serpent, which has been the subject of numerous publications over the course of several centuries. In 1892, a major work (600 pages) by the director of the Royal Botanical and Zoological Society in The Hague, "The Giant Sea Serpent", was even published in London. "The legend lives on. It is unproven, but it has not been refuted either. The possibility of the existence of the Great Sea Serpent remains probable.

Notes
1 Maybe the answer to this riddle will be found in this plane. So, on July 11, 1995, with reference to a Bulgarian source, the Ukrainian radio broadcast a message about a huge (fifteen-meter) shark encountered in the Black Sea near the Bulgarian Cape Emine. Or here is another version of this kind - a note in the Odessa newspaper "Izvestia" dated April 26, 1926: Whale in the Black Sea. "Recently, in the eastern part of the Black Sea, one of the ships found a whale of a large size. The killing vessel "Dolphin", which is engaged in catching dolphins, left Novorossiysk to exterminate the whale. As we can see, the information in both cases does not inspire much confidence (Paustovsky's call: beware of Odessa reporters - remains valid), but indicates possible ways to explain the death of dolphins near Karadag.
2 "Stone Chaos" - a random accumulation of large stones.
3 In 1994, news came that a small colony of 4-5 monk seals was found in the Black Sea 74.

E.F. Shnyukov

Treasures and mysteries. NAS of Ukraine. Central Natural History Museum. Kyiv

Opuk Serpent

The picture is made from life at a meeting with a snake

Opuk is a protected cape in the southeast of the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea. This is an absolutely wild, amazingly beautiful place, vaguely reminiscent of the Far Eastern landscape, comparable only to Kamchatka. We stood there for four days and nights with a tent on the Black Sea, next to a salt lake on a narrow sandy spit of mother-of-pearl shell rock, and did not meet a single person. Only rare birds of an unusual color - the pink starling, which lives exclusively in this place, falcons, hoopoes, ducks, cormorants, gulls, albatrosses and many other birds flew everywhere. Snakes, snakes slid along the ground, gophers, hedgehogs, weasels, foxes and even wolves ran.

I confess honestly, I didn’t see wolves, only traces, but foxes came across quite often. They came quite close to the tent and looked with curiosity and surprise with eyes shining like light bulbs. They say that wolves really appeared in the Crimea, as a lot of food was divorced for them, for example, hares. In winter, they crossed the ice through the Kerch Strait from the mainland and remained on the peninsula. At 15 kilometers from our camp they slaughtered a flock of 100 sheep. In summer, wolves are full and do not pose a particular threat to humans. On Opuk there are horseflies, mosquitoes, midges, ticks come across in the grass. In the twentieth of June, they are still quite active. Before you sit down on a folding chair or climb into a tent, you should make a thorough inspection. Therefore, during this period, it is better to set up a tent right on the Black Sea coast, on the beach.

Opuk is accessible to vehicles with high traffic, although in good weather we easily drove on dirt roads and on our five. Around the steppe, not a single tree, and during the day you are under the direct rays of the scorching sun. Therefore, it is necessary to have a large awning made of natural fabric, approximately 20 sq.m., to cover the car, tent and table, and ski poles - extensions with ropes. A constant breeze from the sea creates coolness and blissful comfort under the awning. The number of days spent on Opuk is determined only by the supply of water and food brought with you. In this zone of the steppe Crimea, springs are extremely rare and those are hydrogen sulfide. A small gas bottle and a camping stove are a must for cooking hot food. All domestic difficulties and minor inconveniences seem like nothing compared to the primordial beauty of the surrounding nature, which overwhelms all feelings with the joy of communicating with it, which can only be experienced with complete and prolonged immersion in this divine and wonderful world. Wildlife is not aggressive and even childishly naive and defenseless against a monster called "man". Even in this uninhabited place, traces of ugliness were visible. On the shore lay plastic and glass bottles, beer cans, shoes and other floating garbage of civilization, thrown out by the storm.

In such places, insight suddenly comes, approximately, on the second or third day of stay. Gradually you begin to merge with nature and the universe, feeling the presence of divine forces. Dissolving in space, you understand that you are a small grain of sand of the infinite cosmos. Each experienced moment of the present is inextricably linked with the past and directed to the future. The feeling is very complex: as if you are dead and immortal at the same time, you fall into resonance with the environment, making up a single whole called “life”.

On the third day of our stay at Opuk, after lunch I settled comfortably on the shore, starting to paint another landscape. The water was turquoise, and the rocks-ships were well illuminated by the sun and were clearly visible in the sea at a distance of 4 km. from the shore. The silence was broken only by the splashing of the waves and the laughter of seagulls. While working on the picture, I went into my thoughts, periodically glancing at the sea. Suddenly, about twenty meters from the shore, the head of a huge “scuba diver” in a black spacesuit appeared, but there were no scuba gear behind him, however, there was no mask or snorkel either. I'll tell you the truth - it became creepy, fear mixed with curiosity. Elena, who had come out of the water a minute earlier, stood by, holding her breath. We continued to watch. The head was smooth, reminiscent of a giant bull terrier, black and gray, with large superciliary ridges; she looked at us attentively with the yellow eyes of a predator. Then a smooth torso about three meters long, the size of a horse, appeared. Fins or other body parts were not observed. The body was serpentine in shape and shone in the sun.

Photo - Opuk, meeting place with the Serpent

The serpent resurfaced several times with its head, showed its body and went under the water. This went on for about a minute. The next day in the afternoon around the same time around 15 o'clock the creature reappeared. At that moment, when we were in the water, it appeared ten meters from us. We jumped out onto the beach like a bullet. Then, sitting on the shore, we watched him for an hour, several times sailing close to the shore in both directions. It seems that he had a mind and was looking for contact with us.

In the evening, returning to the village of Pesochnoye, on the Kazantip Bay, and having told this story to the “main Scythian of the Kerch Peninsula” Roman Streltsov, they heard the answer: “What are you talking about! It's a sensation! Where is the picture? This is the Karadag Serpent! You have seen a sea monster that sometimes crawls ashore. You are lucky that you came back alive at all, although it is prestigious to die in the jaws of this monster! It was seen by only a few people in the entire history of mankind, since the 19th century, by sailors, fishermen and local residents. In the past, they frightened young girls who went swimming at night in the sea under the moonlight. The description of the monster is exactly like yours." I listened with my mouth open, forgetting even about the three landscapes painted on the Opuk, about the beautiful salty pink lake with magnificent brine and therapeutic mud, about the endless starry sky with the Milky Way and night cicadas, about the evening smell of steppe herbs, in which the most famous perfumes rest. It’s a paradox, but again I wanted to go to this amazing “lost world”, where the “Opuksky Serpent-Gorynych” lives strangely and mysteriously.

The last mystery of the Black Sea

A week after staying at Opuk, we decided to go there again.

It took about half a day to prepare equipment, food, art and photographic supplies. After lunch, the artist-architect Roman Streltsov with his wife Natasha and daughter Katya in his jeep, and Elena and I set off in a Zhiguli to meet the Karadag snake. The main purpose of the trip was to see and photograph the sea monster. Theoretically, we were a little prepared for the meeting.

It turns out that the first mention of the sea serpent was in the legends of the Crimea. And in the 19th century, sailors and fishermen saw something resembling a giant snake. One of the experts on the Crimea, a doctor by training and a local historian by vocation Oleg Samoilov from the village of Sokolinoye in the Grand Canyon of Crimea said that these are the descendants of the great Atlantis - six-meter Atlanteans that have gone forever under water. Perhaps in this area there is a whole cave underwater city, and the modified Atlanteans have a mind and very rarely make contact with a person. Apparently, modern man is not yet fully prepared psychologically for a meeting with them. It turns out that there is a huge array on the Internet dedicated to the Karadag snake, it is also affectionately called Blackie.

For three years now, the Akinak Travel Club has been searching for cryptozoological creatures, that is, sea snakes or dinosaurs that live in the depths of the Black Sea.

In the Feodosia newspaper in 1921, an article appeared about the "Great Reptile" near Karadag. A company of Red Army soldiers was sent to catch the snake, but when they arrived at the place in Koktebel, they found only a trace of a snake that led to the sea. Maximilian Voloshin sent Mikhail Bulgakov a newspaper clipping about the "reptile". Soon Bulgakov wrote the famous story "Fatal Eggs".

Back in the thirties of the twentieth century, a fisherman under the Small Lighthouse among the rocks met a huge snake. The horror of what he saw was so great that when people ran to his cry, he only managed to whisper "Dog's head." After paralysis, he died a month later. Further, the monster was seen more and more often and the description almost exactly matched. The serpentine torso is more than 6 meters with a dog's head about a meter.

In the 80s, one military man, walking along the bays of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov in the Eastern Crimea, saw a huge monster lying peacefully on the shore. In a panic, he rushed into the steppe, running several kilometers without looking back.

I will no longer list examples of encounters with a snake, there are enough of them described on the Internet, those who wish can familiarize themselves by typing “Karadagh snake”. I just want to note that there were no cases of direct attack on a person. It looks like Blackie is looking for contact with people, but the public needs to be prepared for the meeting.

Recalling our last meeting with him on June 26, 2009 at Opuk, I did not observe any aggression on his part. On the contrary, he carefully watched us with his yellow eyes for forty minutes, sticking his "dog head" out of the sea, periodically going under water. If the snake wanted to devour us, he probably could have easily done it when we were in the water or at night, having climbed ashore, crawled to the tent, but this did not happen.

They say he eats dolphins. I saw the remains of two dolphins on the shore at Opuk, half a kilometer apart from each other with bitten sides. Apparently they are thrown ashore in agony and die. I used to think that this wound was of a torn type from the propeller of a fishing vessel, now I am sure that it is from the teeth of the Karadag Serpent.

So, armed with cameras, we finally went to the sandy spit of the Cape Opuk, next to the salt lake. Having set up camp in front of the rocks-ships, they began to observe what was happening through binoculars. Perhaps, on these wild inaccessible rocks, four kilometers from the coast, the Gorynych lays its huge eggs.

Busy swimming, walking along the coast, taking mud baths, socializing, we did not notice how the evening came with a magnificent sunset. All this time we did not part with cameras, waiting for the snake, filming ourselves and nature. Night has come with a bright map of the starry sky and the Milky Way. The moon came out from behind Cape Opuk and slowly moved towards the ship-rocks, leaving a clear path on the sea. Having heard enough stories about the "reptile", they decided to spend the night in cars, spreading out the seats.

The morning was sunny, the sky without a single cloud, a small awning had to be built on the beach, something like an observation post. At about 11 am, the sky suddenly turned leaden, a breeze pulled from the sea and a wave started. The lightning flashes were getting brighter, and the thunder was getting stronger. Then a sharp gust of wind tore off the awning and knocked over a table with chairs. A few seconds later, a tropical downpour with heavy winds began to fall. Because of the water wall, visibility was only a few meters. I rushed to save the equipment left on the shore. The rest fled to their cars. Five meters of the canvas was swept into the sea, the rest was saved. This went on for about half an hour, the car was shaking and rocking, even sitting in the cab there was a feeling that the car was about to roll over. The bottom of a dried-up lake 20 meters from us instantly filled with water, cutting off our way back. It felt like we were on a small island surrounded by water. The sun came out for a moment, and everything sparkled with bright colors.

I looked at the sea. About two meters from the shore, something black was rapidly moving in a westerly direction. Grabbing my camera, I rushed to shoot, not noticing how I broke my right big toe on a stone. Running closer and pressing the trigger of the camera, I saw a dolphin flying smoothly under water. The sky turned leaden and gloomy again.

An inner voice told us that it was time to leave this mysterious place and the sooner the better. Hastily leaving things in cars, one might say on the last wave, constantly crossing ourselves and repeating prayers, we managed to jump out onto a hard road, and after 15 kilometers onto asphalt. It was almost impossible to determine the native color of the car, a continuous mess of clay and dirt. And at that moment the downpour struck again and, better than any car wash, washed our cars while driving home to Roman.

After that, the road to Opuk was closed for two weeks, as gray clouds constantly circled, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. I ask myself why no one was able to photograph the snake, although many saw it? Maybe he is much smarter than us, feels and reads our thoughts and appears when we do not expect him?

It seems that this is the last mystery of the Black Sea, which has yet to be solved.

Sergey Bagrov

A huge serpentine creature was repeatedly seen off the coast of Crimea. The monster resembles a huge sea serpent. According to eyewitnesses, it preys on Black Sea dolphins. You can observe it only from a high bank when the sea is transparent and calm, then the whole bay is visible to the bottom. According to researchers, this is the famous Karadag snake, which for centuries rare eyewitnesses have seen on the Black Sea coast. It is believed that this is a reptile that lived in the Black Sea in the time of the dinosaurs. Off the coast of the peninsula, there are many underwater caves, not only near the coastal cliffs, but also in the underwater rocks. Researchers believe that huge prehistoric animals could have survived in them since ancient times. Eyewitnesses managed not only to photograph, but also to film the underwater monster on video. The kite is at least 40 meters long. The monster was also seen off the coast of Yalta and in the South-West. I even managed to observe two kites at the same time, which hunted in an organized way, surrounding a flock of dolphins.

Karadag Serpent(Karadag Monster or Opuk Serpent) - a water monster, according to legend, living off the coast of Crimea in the Black Sea.

History

Herodotus also mentioned the terrible sea monster. According to his description, this is a black snake, with a mane, a huge mouth, large teeth and clawed paws. He sailed at cruising speed - faster than the fastest Greek ships. In the XVI-XVIII centuries, Turkish sailors who sailed on ships between Istanbul, Crimea and Azov constantly reported to the Sultan about the Black Sea dragon. And they called him Karadag because, according to legend, the monster lives in the area of ​​​​the Karadag massif, in one of the underwater caves, of which there are many.

In one of the Tatar legends of the Crimea - "Otuz legend" - "Chershamba" tells about a snake place near the village. Otuzy (modern Shchebetovka) on the river Otuzka, where reeds grow - Yulanchik. The literal translation of the word Yulanchik is a snake's nest.
“Here... a snake lived in the reeds, which, curled up, seemed like a haystack, and when it walked through the field, it made ten knees and more. True, the Janissaries killed it. ." »

Descriptions

According to V.X. Kondaraki, in 1828 the Yevpatoriya police officer filed a report where he wrote about the appearance in the county of a huge snake with a hare's head and a kind of mane that attacked sheep and sucked out blood.

S. Slavich, according to eyewitnesses, tells about the meeting of a huge snake on Kazantip (Kerch Peninsula).

M. Bykova mentions in her book the story of Maria Stepanovna Voloshina that "in 1921, a note was printed in the local Feodosiya newspaper, which said that a "huge bastard" appeared in the area of ​​Mount Karadag and a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to capture. " There was no further information in the newspapers. M. Voloshin sent a clipping about the "reptile" to M. Bulgakov, and it formed the basis of the story "Fatal Eggs". Gad, allegedly, was seen in the village (Koktebel).

In the same book, another description of the meeting with a huge snake on Karadag is given with reference to Natalia Lesina. The story happened in September 1952 with Varvara Kuzminichnaya Zozulya on Karadag near Cape Boy. In a quiet warm place near Cape Varvara Kuzminichna was collecting firewood and mistook the monster for a heap of brushwood, almost stepped on it. According to the description of the stunned woman, the animal has a small head, a thin neck, and a back as thick as a pillar. When she began to wave the rope, the animal began to unwind like a ball. Upper and lower limbs were visible, and it squeaked. The resume is purely household: "How much I live, I have not seen this."

eyewitnesses

Geologist Promtov saw a huge snake on Karadag near the wall of Lagorio.

In the same years, Vsevolod Ivanov observed the "most fantastic of the most fantastic" snakes. Quote from his story:

"The spring of 1952 in Koktebel was cold and rainy. April was back and forth, and May was rainy and cold ...

On May 14, after a long cold weather, windless warm weather set in. Assuming that during the storms the sea threw a lot of colored pebbles ashore, I again walked past the Devil's Finger, along the Gyaur-Bakh gorge, and then, in order not to waste much time on the difficult descent to the seashore to Carnelian Bay on a rock, near a tree, from where the whole bay is visible, the width of which is 200-250 m, I tied a rope and easily went down with its help ...

The sea, I repeat, was calm. Near the shore, among small stones overgrown with algae, a mullet was playing. Away, about 100 meters from the shore, dolphins swam.

Dolphins flocked moving along the bay to the left. The mullet must have moved there. I turned my eyes to the right and just in the middle of the bay, about 50 meters from the shore, I noticed a large, 10-12 meters in circumference, stone, overgrown with brown algae. In my life I have been to Koktebel many times, and on each visit I have been to Carnelian Bay several times. The bay is not shallow, the depth begins about ten paces from the shore - and I don’t remember this stone in the middle of the bay. It was 200 meters from me to this stone. I did not have binoculars with me. I couldn't see the stone. And is it a stone? I leaned back, put my "eye" against the branch of the tree and noticed that the stone was noticeably deviating to the right. So, it was not a stone, but a large ball of seaweed. Torn up by the storms, where did you bring them here? Maybe the current will wash them against the rocks and I should look at them? I forgot the dolphins.

As I smoked my pipe, I began to observe the tangle of seaweed. The current seemed to be getting stronger. The algae began to lose their rounded shape. The ball has lengthened. There were gaps in the middle.

And then... Then I trembled all over, got to my feet and sat down, as if afraid that I might frighten "it" if I stood up. I looked at the clock. It was 12:15 noon. There was complete silence. Behind me, in the valley of Gyaur-Bah, birds chirped, and my pipe smoked intensely. "Klubok" unfolded. Turned around. Stretched out. I still counted and didn't count "it" as algae until "it" moved against the current.

This creature swam with undulating movements to the place where the dolphins were, that is, to the left side of the bay.

Everything was still quiet. Naturally, it immediately occurred to me: is this not a hallucination? I took out my watch. It was 12:18.

The reality of what I saw was disturbed by the distance, the brilliance of the sun on the water, but the water was transparent, and therefore I saw the bodies of dolphins, which were twice as far from me as the monster. It was large, very large, 25-30 meters, and as thick as the top of a desk, if you turn it sideways. It was under water for half a meter - a meter and, it seems to me, was flat. The lower part of it was, apparently, white, as far as the blueness of the water made it possible to understand, and the upper part was dark brown, which led me to take it for a seaweed.

The monster, writhing, like swimming snakes, did not quickly swim towards the dolphins. They immediately fled.

Having driven away the dolphins and, perhaps, without thinking of chasing them, the monster curled up into a ball, and the current carried him again to the right. It again began to look like a brown stone, overgrown with algae.

Carried to the middle of the bay, just to the place or approximately to the place where I saw it for the first time, the monster turned around again and, turning in the direction of the dolphins, suddenly raised its head above the water. The head, the size of the span of the arms, was similar to that of a snake. I still could not see with my eyes, from which one could conclude that they were small. After holding its head above the water for about two minutes - large drops of water flowed from it - the monster turned sharply, lowered its head into the water and quickly swam away behind the rocks that closed the Carnelian Bay.

I looked at the clock. It was three minutes to one. I watched the monster for forty minutes or so."

1967 Lyudmila Segeda stepped over a log on a walk in the Armatluk Valley in the autumn evening. Hearing a splash behind her, she saw a huge log-thick snake crawling from one reservoir to another. The log she had stepped over was not there.

Semenkov's article

From an article by the director of the Karadag Reserve P.G. Semenkov:

"On December 7, 1990, a team of fishermen from the Karadag branch of the InByum of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, consisting of Tsabanov A. A., Nuykin Y. M., Sych M. M. and Gerasimov N. V. went to sea to check the nets set for catching Black Sea rays. The net is a canvas 2.5 m wide and 200 m long with a mesh size of 200 mm.It was installed at a depth of 50 m with coordinates at a distance of 3 miles southeast of Lyagushachya Bay and 7 miles south of the village of Ordzhonikidze. arrived about 12 o'clock in the afternoon and began to break the net from the south end.After one hundred and fifty meters the net was broken, and the fishermen decided that when setting they threw their net on top of someone else's, and the owner of the lower net was forced to cut the upper one in order to to check theirs in. They came in from the other end of the network and continued to check.

When we went to the ragged edge, we pulled a dolphin to the surface - a Black Sea bottlenose dolphin about 230 cm in size, whose tail was tangled in a net. Pulling the dolphin up to the nose of the Mogofeluga, the fishermen discovered that the dolphin's belly had been bitten off with one bite. The width of the bite along the arc is about 1 m. Along the edge of the arc, teeth marks were clearly visible on the skin of the dolphin. The size of the trace from the tooth is about 40 mm. The distance between the teeth marks is about 15-20 mm. In total, there were about 16 teeth marks along the arc. The dolphin's belly was bitten off with ribs, so that the spine was clearly visible. In the area of ​​​​the head, the remnants of the lungs dangled, from which blood flowed when lifting. Traces of teeth were clearly visible on the sides of the clips, and were located symmetrically.

The dolphin's head was severely deformed, evenly compressed from all sides, as if they were trying to drag it through a narrow hole. The eyes were not visible, and the deformed part had a whitish color, reminiscent of the color of a fish pulled out of the stomach of another fish.

Inspection of the dolphin lasted no more than three minutes. The sight of the dolphin and the flowing blood caused great panic among the fishermen. One of them cut the net, the dolphin fell into the sea, and the fishermen went home at full speed from the area.

I saw the fishermen immediately upon their return from the sea, I asked them in detail about what had happened, and according to their story, the artist made a sketch of the dolphin they saw.

The bite mark of a dolphin by an unknown creature.

The bite mark of a dolphin by an unknown creature. (According to P.G. Semenkov. Geological journal No. 1, 1994)

In the spring of 1991, fishermen brought in a second dolphin with similar teeth marks on its body. It was an azovka one and a half meters in size.

They pulled it out of the network, which was installed approximately in the same place as on December 7, 1990.

This time the net was not torn, and almost the entire dolphin was heavily entangled in the net, wrapped up like a doll, so that one head peeked out. Traces of three teeth were clearly visible on the dolphin's head. In appearance, they exactly resembled the teeth marks on the body of a bottlenose dolphin.

The brought dolphin was placed in a cold cell, and in May 1991, while in Leningrad, I went to the Institute of Zoology, talked with a number of employees, invited us to visit Azovka. Unfortunately, none of the staff was able to go, but I received the address of experts on the traces found on the body of marine mammals caught in the ocean. These were employees of YugNIRO working in Kerch and Odessa. I managed to contact one of them by phone. I described in detail the traces found on the body of dolphins entangled in our nets, and invited him to inspect the azovka kept in our cold cell. I was promised that he would try to find time to come to our institution. However, neither in May, nor in June, nor in July, no one came to us.

At the end of August, an accident happened, and everything that was in the cold cell was gone, including the dolphin.

This is the exact description of the events that took place in December 1990 and April 1991.