What does the Karadag snake look like? Karadag Nature Reserve

Stories about him terrify local residents Crimean peninsula, disturb tourists who come to relax on Black Sea coast, and have been exciting the minds of scientists for several centuries. And his name is the Karadag Serpent or Blackie, as the researchers affectionately dubbed him.

Ancient tales don't lie

History knows many legends and tales about strange snakes and dragons. Take, for example, the Bible and the tempting serpent who offered an apple to Eve. There are mentions of the monster in the ancient Slavic Vedas and the Life of St. George the Victorious. Aristotle and Herodotus, Homer and Procopius of Caesarea spoke about him in their works. Alexander the Great and the heroes of the epic epic - heroes Alyosha Popovich, Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya Nikitich - fought with the three-horned dragon. Vladimir Monomakh mentions him in his “Teaching”. And Russian fairy tales, almost every other, tell about battles between heroes and monsters, from which they emerge victorious.

Hercules saves Hesione from sea monster. Engraving

The image of a snake appeared on the coat of arms of the Bakhchisarai Khan, the ancient coat of arms of Milan, one of the municipalities of Switzerland, and many other provinces and cities. This can, of course, be associated with wisdom, eternity and valor, but not everything is so simple in the origin of heraldry...

Monster of the Black Sea

The first mention of a terrible snake living in the depths of the Black Sea dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. One day, the royal police officer, who lived in Crimea, reported to the sovereign that he was making a living on the territory of the district. scary beast. Nicholas I ordered an expedition to be equipped and to catch the uninvited guest. Of course, it was not possible to find it, but they found the remains of a tail belonging to a large reptile, and a huge egg weighing 12 kg. Inside was an embryo that strikingly resembled a fairy-tale dragon. How reliable this information is, no one can argue. In the next century, after such an incredible discovery, no one remembered about the terrible and strange animal.

Monster of the Black Sea

The monster reasserted itself at the beginning of the twentieth century. And Maximilian Voloshin’s wife met him and hastily reported the incident to the local press. The writer sent the news article to friends. It interested his fellow writers so much that it became the basis for Mikhail Bulgakov’s story “Fatal Eggs.”

And yet it exists?

From 1936 to 1946, it was repeatedly encountered by local fishermen, and in the 1950s it was seen by the well-known Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov. The prose writer claims that he watched the thirty-meter block from a cliff in Carnelian Bay for half an hour. Later, he was seen sporadically not only by residents, but also by visiting holidaymakers, including famous writers, artists and historians. Some even found a huge red tooth on the coast. Biologists have not yet answered who it might belong to.

One way or another, all mentions in different years converge at a certain point - in the area Cape Meganom And Karadag mountain range. That is why they dubbed the monster of the Black Sea the Karadag Serpent.

In the early nineties, a dolphin that was almost bitten in half was caught in the net of Turkish fishermen. Scientists at Istanbul University discovered traces of huge teeth on the mammal’s body, but found it difficult to answer who they could belong to. Crimeans have come across similar “trophies” more than once.

Dinosaurs are among us

In 1971, the Japanese, off the coast of New Zealand, discovered an almost decomposed giant pangolin in the nets of a trawler. Then it was assumed that its outlines were very reminiscent of a plesiosaur - a predatory reptile that lives in Cretaceous period. It turns out that they lived on our planet about a hundred million years ago. How could they have survived since then in the conditions of a sharply changed climate? Researchers do not find an answer, but they do not reject such a possibility, building numerous assumptions and hypotheses.

The fact is that the territory of modern Crimea used to be an ocean in which these same lizards lived. In the process of modifying the relief and raising the area, it became dry land, but many karst lakes remained in the underground voids. What is their flora and fauna like? this moment, no one dares to say. Moreover, scientists periodically discover specimens hitherto unknown to science. Perhaps such places function independently of the earth’s biosphere and are a kind of natural repositories.

Something similar can be said about Karadag: given that the caves under the volcano retained heat for hundreds and thousands of years from the close occurrence of magmatic formations, the habitat of the mysterious reptile can even be explained from a logical point of view. But again: he must have both descendants and cubs... However, it is not possible to assert that numerous witnesses saw the same individual. Moreover, every second of them gives descriptions that differ sharply from the previous ones. This applies not only to size, but also to color.

By the way, elusive Loch Ness monster from Scotland, judging by the descriptions, may also well be a descendant of an ancient plesiosaur. The facts associated with it are very reminiscent of the history of the Black Sea Black Sea.

Is Blackie alone?

Assuming that the speculation and eyewitness accounts are true, although not a single photograph exists to prove this, the question arises: “What does the animal feed on?” Given the dinosaur's impressive size, plankton and fish are just a handful of prey. And the Black Sea is a closed sea, that is, at a depth of two hundred meters it is completely lifeless.

Cryptozoologists agree that there are several prehistoric animals on the planet. These include Tanvlasaurus and Tauricus. They do not pose a danger to people, but act as marine orderlies, feeding on sick, injured or dead dolphins. Many biologists and oceanologists are very skeptical about such statements. And yet they admit: further searches for unknown inhabitants of the earth may present unprecedented surprises. And any opinion in this case, even the most controversial, has the right to exist. Whether it will be an amphibian man or another giant reptile, time will tell.

Salad LOVED BEANS

"LOVE BEANS" SALAD

1. Soak beans (0.5 kg and no matter what color they are!) in water overnight, and then boil until half cooked.

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

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

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

5.Cut bell peppers (0.5 kg) into pieces.

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

And then, cheerfully and in good spirits, put your salad into sterilized jars and close and wrap for 12 hours. When it cools down, put it on the shelf for storage.

taken from the Internet

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Sunday, April 12, 2015 10:45 ()

Crimean resident Alexander Georgievich Paraskevidi has a tooth at home (unfortunately, it was not possible to find a photo of it) of some sea monster. About 6 cm long, red Brown, he was found stuck in a piece of wood on the beach near the village of Stary Mayak. Turkish ichthyologist Arif Hakim, after examining and analyzing the strange find, considered that the tooth belonged to an animal unknown to science.

TRADITION OF ANTIQUE DEEP

Official science does not recognize the existence of the Black Sea serpent. It is believed that such a large creature cannot live there, since the hydrogen sulfide layer begins at a depth of 100-150 m. But chronicles indicate that snakes lived in the Black Sea several hundred and even thousands of years ago. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that a mysterious monster lives in the waters of the Pontus Euxine (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 along the surface of the water much faster than 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 chased small boats. Don Cossacks and officers who served under Admiral Ushakov also met with him.

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

The expedition members never found the snake, but they did find an egg weighing 12 kg, which contained an embryo that looked like a fairy-tale dragon with a crest on its head. The skeleton of a giant tail with a shell-like structure was also found nearby. Then a debate even arose in the scientific community: can a sea serpent shed its tail like a lizard?

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

During the First World War, Oberleutnant Günter Prüfner, commander of a Kaiser submarine cruising on the surface off the coast of Crimea, saw something strange. huge creature, silently cutting through the waves. The officer got a good look at the monster through binoculars. The first thought was to torpedo the monster or shoot it from 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, an unknown monster was observed for forty minutes in Carnelian Bay by the Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov. While watching dolphins hunting for mullet, he saw a large stone, about ten meters in circumference, overgrown with brown algae.

The writer had visited this place several times before, but this was the first time he saw this stone. Having looked closely, the writer noted that the “stone” was moving slowly. Assuming it was algae, he continued observing. After some time, the “ball of algae” turned around and stretched out.

“The creature swam in wave-like 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, what immediately occurred to me: was this a hallucination? I took out my watch. It was 12:18. The reality of what I saw was hampered by the distance and the shine of the sun on the water, but since the water was transparent, I even saw the bodies of dolphins, which swam twice as far from me as the monster.

It was large, very large, 25-30 meters, and as thick as a desk top if you turned 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 allowed us to understand, and the upper part is dark brown, which made me mistake it for algae. The monster, wriggling in the same way as swimming snakes, swam towards the dolphins. They immediately disappeared."

The writer Stanislav Slavich also described something similar: “Eyewitnesses talk about a meeting with a huge snake in Kazantip. The shepherd noticed something shiny under a thorn bush, similar to a ram’s skull polished by the rains and winds, and just like that, out of nothing to do, he hit the skull with a gerlyga (a long staff with a wooden hook at the end).

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

He saw only this cloud of dust, and in it his sheepdogs, as if enraged, and something huge, writhing with monstrous strength and speed. When the shepherd came to his senses, one dog was killed, and the two survivors were frantically tearing the body of some huge reptile. What seemed to the shepherd to be a ram's skull was the head of a huge snake. Soon after that, the shepherd, they say, died.”

MONSTERS ATTACK

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

They walked some 300 meters from the pier of the Karadag biological station towards the Golden Gate, when suddenly, fifty meters away from them, they saw an incomprehensible brown spot under the water. When I tried to get closer to it, the spot began to move away. When they managed to catch up with him, it became clear that under the water there was something creepy and very impressive in size.

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

When people saw the monster’s small eyes, they literally became numb with horror. Mikhail Kondratyev still managed to quickly come to his senses, and he turned the boat around and rushed to the shore at full speed. Amazingly, the monster chased after them. Its speed was very high, and it stopped the chase only not far from the shore, after which it headed out to 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 swam, the head of a monster appeared, with water flowing from its mane. Belsky even managed to see the gray skin and horny plates on the head and neck. The sea monster's eyes were small and its body was dark gray in color with a lighter lower part. It is curious that a year earlier, 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 exciting the human imagination for several thousand years. Nowadays, when the weather warms up, some enthusiasts spend days on end on the coast, armed with video equipment. They hope to become famous by being the first to capture a mysterious sea dragon on film.

In October 2009, the Gusarenko spouses seemed to succeed, and quite by accident. Videography is no different. 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 ripped out along with its entrails. The size of the bite in an arc was about a meter, and the depth reached the spine. Along the edge of the arc on the dolphin's skin were visible traces of sixteen large teeth.

A few years ago, a dolphin bitten in half by some monster was pulled out of the water by regional neighbors - Turkish fishermen. Scientists at Istanbul University have concluded that the marks on the body were left by the teeth of a very large animal.

Victor BUMAGIN

Monday, October 22, 2013 00:31 ()

On the southeastern coast of Crimea, glorified by Maximilian Voloshin, is the Karadag mountain range, whose name translates as Black Mountain. The age is truly amazing - 150-160 million years. Scientists assure that from time to time living remnants of long-gone eras appear here.

In June 2013, the lawyer of the branch of the scientific biological station on the territory of the Karadag Nature 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 film (unfortunately, the author of the article does not show either the video or at least a screenshot from him) On board the pleasure boat, people huddled together and screamed in fear. The ship rocked strongly, although there was no storm or wind, it was shining bright sun. 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, quickly attacked the dolphins, immediately devouring them in front of the amazed public. These shots were complemented by others taken from above by tourists who climbed to the top of Karadag on that clear day in order to survey the endless blue expanses. Well, it wasn’t a massive hallucination?! In addition, there were many different eyewitnesses. There was a stir 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. A gigantic snake-like bloodthirsty creature that lives in the waters. Eastern Crimea, mentioned in ancient myths and legends. It entered the annals under the name “Karadag reptile.” Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Evgeniy Shnyukov says: “Having delved into the legends of Crimea, I found a description of how somewhere in the area of the Otuzka River there was some kind of snake that local residents were afraid of and to eliminate which even Janissaries from Central Europe had to be called in. Judging by the events, this was even before Crimea became part of Russia.” In 1921, Maximilian Voloshin sent Mikhail Bulgakov in Moscow a clipping from the local Feodosia district newspaper. The note said: the peasants of the village of Koktebel complain that a certain snake has appeared on Mount Karadag, which comes out of the sea and devours their sheep, and therefore a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to Karadag to capture it. Attempts to find and “distribute the giant reptile” were unsuccessful: they only managed to catch its trace sliding into the sea. But it is known that on the basis of this newspaper clipping Bulgakov wrote the story “Fatal Eggs.” After the war, the writer Vsevolod Ivanov said that on May 14, 1952, during his vacation in 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 snake with interest for 40 minutes (!), made sketches and notes about how it played in the water and hunted dolphins, and then rested, basking on the rocks. Moreover, the “communication” lasted more than one day. O.S. Severtseva recalls that after Ivanov’s story, many young people, including her, went with him to the bay. Hoping to see the monster, they dived into neighboring bays. The water in the underwater cave - the supposed exit point 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 “Film Travelers Club” program. He was convinced that it was a relic of an ancient fauna.

Dog head is deadly

In May 1961, a fisherman from the village of Kurortnoye M. Kondratiev with two companions went out to sea in the morning to fish. Having sailed from the biological station pier, the boat turned towards the Golden Gate. Suddenly, three hundred meters from the shore and 50 meters from the boat, the fishermen spotted something brown under the water. We came closer. A meter-long head, covered with tufts like algae, rose three meters above the water. 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. Having come to his senses, Kondratyev managed to turn the boat around and take off at top speed. The monster gave chase, but stopped a hundred meters from the shore and went into the open sea. The boat jumped ashore at full speed, and the unfortunate fishermen, screaming, rushed towards the biological station. Seven years later, Kondratiev was “lucky enough to meet an old friend again.” Approaching the boat, he saw a large brown spot 30 meters from the shore. The water began to boil, the monster’s head appeared a little - and then 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 was 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: “A 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 - in the darkness, two meters above the water, two eyes glowed. The artist, unable to meet their gaze, became petrified. As soon as he came to his senses, he jumped up and rushed to the shore. He was tormented by terrible dreams for a long time. In 1992, V.M. became closely acquainted with the Karadag dragon. Velsky, a former combat swimmer who served in the army special purpose: “I went into the sea wearing a mask and fins. About five meters from the shore, I immediately went underwater and swam about 40 meters at a fairly great depth. Looking around, I saw that “handsome guy” to my right. I had no fear. I got a good look at him. It was a smooth snake, its body volume was more than half a meter, without any ridges, and more than 15 m long. He saw me, arched his neck upward, looked and rushed towards me. I realized that I had to run away, and broke all existing swimming records. Jumping ashore, I was amazed to see that the head of my pursuer had peeked out at the point from which I had begun to flee. 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 here, and began to quickly leave.” Occasionally, scientists also got lucky. In the late 1980s, the deep-sea underwater laboratory BENTOS operated 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 BENTHOS course. However, there was no clear visibility, and there were no special cameras for underwater filming. On December 7, 1990, a team of employees from 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 Black Sea stingrays at a depth of 40 meters in the area of Carnelian Bay, several miles from the shores of Karadag. When the nets were pulled up, they pulled out a dolphin with its belly eaten out so that its spine was visible. The teeth marks left on the insides resembled the edge of the dough from which circles for dumplings are cut with a faceted glass. How big was the mouth if the teeth were the size of a glass?! Yes and what kind sea predators could they belong? Perhaps a representative of the Mesozoic era... Scientists were at a loss. Later, another prey dolphin was removed from the nets - this one had its head sucked out, as it were. Despite all attempts to find out the truth, one can only guess who the senior researcher at the biological station, V. Machkevsky, recently met at sea. at night he went with his friends on a kayak to set his net behind a ready-made plug-in seine. Having completed the task and sailed a little, they saw from the shore, against the backdrop of Karadag, that same snake. "...Arose in the sky full moon, and she highlighted 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 the rolling body of a rather large animal in the halo of foam. On its back there was no fin characteristic of a dolphin, there was no reflex inhalation and exhalation characteristic of dolphins. The back of the unknown creature was smooth and much larger than a dolphin. Perhaps its surface was scaly, but in the night light it was quite difficult to see. The rolling of my 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 the paddle. It all looked like a huge snake and a car camera, this creature is impossible to describe.”

Vulnerable Caddy

So who swam into Crimean waters? They talked about a frilled shark with flat sides, resembling a huge eel; according to another version, it was the herring king - a belt fish up to nine meters in length, found in the Northern and Mediterranean seas... Maybe some kind of lizard has been preserved in the Black Sea since ancient times? After all, what do we know about Karadag, which was a nature reserve for decades? And why shouldn’t this majestic mountain be a haven for exotic species? Karadag is the remnant of an ancient volcano, the underwater part of which has not been studied. Once upon a time, displacements of earth layers and volcanic clay led to complex layers, the formation of underwater caves, unknown passages and tunnels. Having settled in Koktebel, Voloshin, who had a 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 “living” Cimmeria, which does not reveal its secrets to everyone. Official science is sure: if Karadag lives Living being, there should be several of them - mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother, etc. But neither the remains nor the clutch of eggs of these creatures have yet been discovered. In addition, Crimean hydronautics is completely destroyed today, deep-sea equipment has been sold for scrap. It is known that North American zoologists successfully continue such research in their territories. In 1995, two Canadian oceanographers - Dr. Edward Bousfield (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto) and Professor Paul Le Blond (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) - in the April issue scientific journal Amphipa-Cifika described a large species of animal, Cadborosaurus, discovered in the fjords of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast of Canada. They classified it as a plesiosaur, a group of highly specialized marine reptiles that went extinct in Mesozoic era. This “saurus” got its name from the Cadboro Bay, where it was most often observed. 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 obviously vulnerable species. If you believe eyewitness accounts, the Cadborosaurus, by the way, which has been mentioned in Indian folklore since ancient times, is exactly like the Black Sea serpent in a pod, but feeds on fish, sometimes trying to hunt seabirds. Scientists have no doubt that the depths of the World Ocean hold many unexplored secrets. But they need facts. However, so far not a single high-quality photograph has been taken - neither by us nor by them. This is persistently explained by the fact that mysterious creatures appear and disappear suddenly, as if only to remind: living earth It was not born yesterday, but it must be studied and protected in all its manifestations, especially in unique ones. Nina Yakhontova

The Black Sea is home to about 180 species of fish: beluga, sturgeon, herring, sprat, horse mackerel, mackerel, flounder, tuna and others.

Over the past 80 years, whales have entered the sea twice. Three species of dolphins live permanently: the porpoise (Azov), the bottlenose dolphin and the white-sided dolphin. These animals are real old-timers of the sea.

There are two species of sharks in the Black Sea - the katran, or spiny shark, also called the sea dog; and small spotted shark scyllium, also known as cat shark.

White sharks also swim here. Carcharodon carcharias, or man-eating shark), but this happens rarely.

Katran can reach 2 meters, and the cat shark never grows more than a meter. Both sharks behave in relation to their prey like real predators, and sometimes even a gaping vacationer gets a handout.

They eat everything that moves, even if they are already full.

IN Lately The legend associated with the appearance of a giant monster off the coast of Crimea (also called the Kandahar monster Blackie) is again on the lips. There were even eyewitnesses who described this creature something like this - it is black, with a small head, but huge paws, without hair, with bluish scales and red eyes, in its gaping mouth there are several rows of sharp teeth, like a shark, it makes guttural sounds similar to elephant screams...

The sea lizard was allegedly seen off the coast of Feodosia, near Sudak, and Alupka.

Scientists are extremely skeptical about these stories - if the sea is only 7 thousand years old, then where could the eggs of ancient lizards appear on its bottom?

And if they were brought here by a water flow from the Mediterranean, then these creatures would not be able to survive here.

“New small representatives of fauna periodically appear in the sea, but all the large ones have already been studied by scientists. And believe me, the described creature does not resemble any other inhabitant of the marine fauna that has been studied. It is unlikely, rather even incredible, that it can exist in reality,” comments Oksana Kritskaya, associate professor of the Department of Marine Geology at Kuban University.

But the fishermen's story about the event that happened on December 7, 1990 makes us wonder if scientists are hiding the terrible truth from us?

“A team of fishermen from the Karadag branch of the Institute of Young Fishermen of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine went to sea to check the nets. The network is a canvas 2.5 m wide and 200 meters long with a cell size of 200 mm. It was installed at a depth of 50 meters with coordinates at a distance of 3 miles in the direction southeast of Lyagushachya Bay and 7 miles south of the village of Ordzhonikidze.

They arrived at the scene at about 12 noon and began reassembling the network from the southern end. After 150 meters, the net appeared to be broken, and the fishermen decided that when setting it, they had thrown their net on top of someone else’s, and the owner of the lower net was forced to cut off the upper one in order to check his own.

They came in from the other end of the network and continued checking. When we went to the ragged edge, we pulled a dolphin to the surface - a Black Sea bottlenose dolphin about 2.5 meters in size, whose tail was entangled in a net. After retrieving the dolphin, the fishermen discovered that the dolphin's belly had been bitten out in one bite. The width of the bite along an arc is about 1 meter.

Along the edge of the arc, teeth marks were clearly visible on the dolphin's skin. The size of the tooth mark is about 40 mm. The distance between the teeth marks is about 15-20 mm. In total there were about 16 tooth marks along the arc. The dolphin's belly was bitten out along with its ribs, so that the spine was clearly visible. In the area of the head dangled the remains of the lungs, from which blood flowed as we rose. The marks of teeth were clearly visible on the sides of the frames, and were located symmetrically.

The dolphin's head was severely deformed, evenly compressed on all sides, as if they were trying to drag it through a narrow hole. No eyes were visible, and the deformed part had a whitish color, reminiscent of the color of a fish taken from the stomach of another fish.

The examination of the dolphin lasted no more than three minutes. The sight of the dolphin and the flowing blood caused severe panic among the fishermen. One of them cut the net, the dolphin fell into the sea, and the fishermen left the area at full speed for home.”

Dolphin bite mark unknown creature(According to P.G. Semenkov. Geological journal No. 1, 1994):

In the spring of 1991, fishermen found a second dolphin with similar teeth marks on its body. It was an Azovka 1.5 meters in size.
They pulled him out of the network, which was installed in approximately the same place as on December 7, 1990.

This time the net was not torn, and almost the entire dolphin was very entangled in the net, wrapped like a doll, so that only one head was sticking out. The marks of three teeth were clearly visible on the dolphin's head. By appearance they looked exactly like the teeth marks on the body of a bottlenose dolphin.

Do you believe in sea monster at the Black Sea?
Is it true that this is a giant mutated white shark?

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 explanations of which no one has yet found. One of these secrets is 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, the Pontus Euxine, there lives a huge monster that overtakes the waves as it moves. The Karadag serpent repeatedly appeared to sailors. Thus, the Turks, who regularly sailed to the Crimea and Azov, wrote reports to the Sultan about the dragon.
According to eyewitnesses, the creature was about 30 m long, covered with black scales, and had a comb fluttering on its back, reminiscent of a horse's mane. Her movement was swift, she easily left behind the fastest ships, and the wave created by her was similar to the one that occurs during a storm. The people who inhabited the coastal zone were also familiar with the sea reptile first-hand, which was reflected in fairy tales and myths. The image of the monster was even on the coat of arms of the Bakhchisarai Khan!

In 1828, the Evpatoria police officer reported to higher authorities about the appearance of a huge sea snake in the district. Emperor Nicholas I, who, like Peter I, was distinguished by his curiosity, learned about the Black Sea monster and ordered scientists to be sent to Crimea to find and catch it.
Since evidence of sightings of the monster came mainly from the Karadag region, scientists from the expedition decided to look for it there. They didn’t find a monster, but they found an egg weighing 12 kg, containing 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-shell-like structure.

The Soviet writer saw a monster!

For several thousand years, residents and guests of the peninsula claim that they somehow met this incomprehensible and unknown resident. sea waters. And it must be said that among the eyewitnesses there were famous and serious personalities whom there is no reason not to believe. Among them are 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 prone to mystification and inventions.
In 1952, the Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov happened to see the monster from a cliff in Carnelian Bay. Perhaps, it was he who made 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 you turn it sideways.” He had a snake head “the size of his armspan” with small eyes, top part of the mysterious creature was dark brown in color.

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 small investigation. M. S. Voloshina told him that in 1921, a small article 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 catch 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 an encounter with a monster by one collective farmer, who came across a monster resting on the shore while collecting driftwood for firewood.

Real evidence? Please!

The Karadag snake leaves very real traces of its existence. A few years ago, Turkish fishermen pulled a dolphin from the sea, which had been bitten in half by some monster. The remains of the dolphin were rushed to Istanbul University, where scientists examined the find and confirmed that the marks on the dolphin were not wounds from a ship's propeller and, without a doubt, were left by the teeth of a large animal. The same dead dolphins with huge wounds and even 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, 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 discovered 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 confident that it belongs to an animal unknown to science.

Shocking encounters with the Karadag snake

In May 1961, a rather shocking encounter with a monster took place in Crimea. Local fisherman M.I. Kondratiev, director of the Crimean Primorye sanatorium A. Mozhaisky and chief accountant of this enterprise V. Vostokov went fishing one morning on a boat. They walked only three hundred meters from the pier of the Karadag biological station towards the Golden Gate, when suddenly, 60 meters away from them, they saw a brown spot under the water. They sent the 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 there was something very impressive and creepy under the water. The head of a huge snake, about a meter in size, was quite clearly visible 2-3 meters under the water. The surface of the monster's head was covered with brown hairs, reminiscent of algae. Behind the head, horny plates were visible on the monster’s body. At the top of the head and back, a characteristic mane swayed in the water. The monster's belly was lighter - gray, in contrast to its dark brown back.

When people saw the monster’s small eyes, they literally became numb with horror. Fortunately, Mikhail Kondratyev quickly managed to come to his senses, he turned the boat around and headed it towards the shore at full speed. Amazingly, the monster chased them! Its speed was quite high, but 100 meters from the coast it stopped the chase and headed out to the open sea. Seven years later, Mikhail Kondratyev again observed the Black Sea monster near the Karadag biological station under similar circumstances.

In the 80s 20th century vacationer Grigory Tabunov had a chance to meet the monster. This 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 away, lay on his back, rested, and was just about to swim back when he noticed a dark spot nearby in the waves. Dolphin, probably, he thought. What a dolphin! A huge head appeared above the water. Out of fear, I screamed as loud as I could and rushed to the shore. All this lasted a few seconds, but I remembered what I saw for the rest of my life. The monster’s head was greenish and 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, having emerged, he saw a huge snake head almost next to him... In horror, Belsky rushed to the shore with all his might, 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, with water flowing from its mane. Belsky was able to even see the skin and gray horny plates on the head and neck. The monster's eyes were small, and its body was dark gray with a lighter lower part.

Relatively recently, our compatriot Vladimir Ternovsky even managed to ride on the back of a Black Sea monster! He was windsurfing 2-3 km from the shore, when suddenly someone from below threw the stern of his board. 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 and quickly reaching the shore. The monster did not pursue him.

The servants of one of the monasteries once observed two monsters at once, which, clearly acting in coordination with each other, started a hunt for dolphins.
The Karadag monster was also seen by submariners. This happened during the dive of Benthos-300, a laboratory working at depth. Having reached a dive level of 100 meters, the hydronaut saw a vague shadow with right side ship. A giant snake, slowly wriggling, swam up to the porthole, as if studying people with its small eyes. However, as soon as the scientists decided to photograph it, the monster, as if reading their thoughts, rushed into the depths.

At the moment, there is no official confirmation that the Karadag snake is real creature, he seems to feel that they are looking for him, and goes into the depths of the sea at the slightest attempt to film him on video or with photographic equipment. Perhaps expeditions could clarify the situation, but such events require financial investments, which neither officials, nor scientists, nor individuals are in a hurry to make. 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 - mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, etc. But neither the remains nor the clutch of eggs of these creatures have yet been discovered. In addition, Crimean hydronautics is completely destroyed today, deep-sea equipment has been sold for scrap.
It is known that North American zoologists successfully continue such research in their territories. In 1995, two Canadian oceanographers - Dr. Edward Busfield (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto) and Professor Paul Le Blond (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) - in the April issue of the scientific journal Amphipha-Tsifika, described what was discovered in the fjords of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast Canada, a new large species of animal for science - Cadborosaurus.
They classified it as a plesiosaur, a group of highly specialized marine reptiles that went extinct during the Mesozoic era. This “saurus” got its name from the Cadboro Bay, where it was most often observed.

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 obviously vulnerable species.
If you believe eyewitness accounts, the Cadborosaurus, by the way, which has been mentioned in Indian folklore since ancient times, is exactly like the Black Sea serpent, but feeds on fish, sometimes trying to hunt seabirds.

Scientists have no doubt that the depths of the World Ocean hold many unexplored secrets. But they need facts. However, so far not a single high-quality photograph has been taken - neither by us nor by 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.

According to the most common version, mythical monsters, snake-dragons, owe their origin to the remains of dinosaurs that our ancestors found from time to time.

However, myths about monsters live in the memory of all peoples of the planet, and easily accessible remains of dinosaurs were found only in desert areas Central Asia.

At the same time, the bones found are very different from each other, and the fairytale gorynych snakes are similar, like twin brothers. So, maybe it’s not about ancient bones at all and fairy tales were born after real encounters between people and living monsters, surviving to this day?

Crimean legends and stories about giant snakes were born in time immemorial...

The first time I heard about this creature was in 1995 year, according to an eyewitness who encountered the Karadag dragon in difficult conditions.

Then I listened to the story about this dragon and could not even imagine that part of my life would be connected with the sea and the study of the Karadag dragon.

A fisherman, submariner Anatoly Tatarintsov, who dived all his life for rapan fish, told me about the snake. sea fish, crabs on his beloved Cape Meganom, he told me about his meeting with this Dragon.

The last encounter with a snake took place near Feodosia several years ago,” says local historian Alexander Terekhin. – Some caves were checked by Turkish scuba divers, and they were afraid to dive unarmed. Two scuba divers, husband and wife, descended from the yacht to the depths 60 meters. A few minutes after reaching the depth, the husband surfaces in violation of all the rules of ascent. With a wild cry he climbs on board, pushes his friends aside and falls from decompression onto the deck. The woman did not surface. All her searches ended in vain.

They managed to bring the man to the hospital and pump him out. But he went crazy from decompression and the stress he experienced; for a long time he was treated in a psychiatric hospital. They say that he is afraid of the dark and constantly dreams of some kind of monster.

The snake cannot swim very quickly, so it most likely hunts dolphins and other fish from ambush and lies in one place for a long time. He also doesn’t sail more than six or seven miles from the coast and must have something like a permanent residence somewhere,” Terekhin argues. – The best place for him is Karadag. There are underwater caves there.

U local resident Alexandra Paraskevidi keeps a monster tooth. Rotten, red-brown in color, six centimeters long. According to Turkish ichthyologist Arif Harim, who analyzed the tooth, it does not belong to any known fish.

I picked it up a couple of years ago in the rocks, near the village of Maly Mayak. “He was stuck in a small piece of wood washed ashore by the sea,” says Alexander Georgievich. - Maybe he’s still left from the end 30 's, when a monster attacked a Tatar fisherman there. My father told how his comrades, who responded to a cry for help, saved a Tatar. He was then paralyzed and died a month later.

Many oceanologists are extremely skeptical about stories and eyewitness accounts of the sea dragon, arguing that the Black Sea is only seven thousand years old. Therefore, there is simply nowhere for ancient lizards to appear in it.

But previously it was believed that recently discovered organisms could not exist on the seabed, says Elena Sovga, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences, employee of the Marine Hydrophysical Institute. However, it turned out that hydrogen sulfide, which is contaminated, is a mysterious, little-studied environment with considerable life potential. Therefore, it can be assumed that some mutations occurred in the hydrogen sulfide environment, as a result of which life forms unknown to us arose in the Black Sea.

We have known legends and stories about giant monsters for a long time. And the number of these legends allows us to assume that in ancient times the number of dragons and fairy snakes in our area was very large. It is even possible that it is one of the centers of evolution of mythical reptiles.

If you analyze them, it turns out that there are two types of monsters nearby: snakes meters long 30 with a brown mane and a lizard meters in 10 - 15 .

Questioning local fishermen, I realized that in their minds I am as real as other inhabitants of the Black Sea. After observing the monsters for many years, they found out that, as a rule, they appear after storms, as well as during the spring and autumn migrations of dolphins.

Numerous evidence suggests that in ancient times huge snakes lived on the peninsula, and some of them may have survived to this day.

To discover them and make a film about them (how else can you prove their reality?), a special expedition using underwater vehicles is needed. In the meantime, herpetologists cannot judge who exactly the numerous witnesses saw - even if they completely take their words on faith.

For example, the mentioned “snake of Vladimir Dovgan”: some pseudopods - boas, pythons, bolierins, skinks - have rudiments of limbs, but, according to scientific data, these animals are not found. Theoretically, according to unverified data, proteus olm, a tailed amphibian, is found in Crimean caves.

As for the mythological monsters, in particular the Black Sea Serpent, the question remains open.

Before the war, the banks of all Crimean rivers were covered with impenetrable thickets, and the forests and steppes were not as densely populated as they are now. Therefore, relict species of reptiles and other animals, unknown to science to this day, could well have survived.

Exists 7 - a minute-long video recording of a snake hunting in Yalta. I watched it in full and in good quality.

A minute-long fragment from this video is on YouTube. Perhaps it will appear on the Internet and full version video.

The video “Sea Serpent” was filmed in Yalta in October 2009 of the year.

Tavricus Giganticus - a relative of the Karadag Serpent