The Giant Jellyfish, locally known as Nomura's Jellyfish, was sighted only a few times in the past couple of years but has struck people with awe for decades.
Sightings[]
Christopher Loeb's Jellyfish[]
In 1953, an Australian diver named Christopher Loeb reportedly witnessed an enormous brown mass engulf a shark - this mass also caused the water around it to become much colder. The case was chronicled in a book called Great World Mysteries published in 1967. Allegedly, Christopher's story was published in an undisclosed newspaper - the article is now considered a piece of lost media, and some consider it an inspiration for the Black Carpet 4chan legend.
Some sources also cite the diver's surname as "Loupa" (a possible mistranslation from Russian) or "Lowe".
The enormous brown mass engulfing a shark, a still from Encounter in the Abyss by Richard Svensson
Christopher's story goes as follows:
All the way down I was followed by a fifteen foot shark which circled around full of curiosity but made no attempt to attack. I kept wondering how far down he would go. He was still hanging around some thirty feet from me, and about twenty feet higher, when I reached a ledge below which was a great, black chasm of enormous depth. It being dangerous to venture farther, I stood looking into the chasm while the shark waited for my next move.
Suddenly the water became distinctly colder. While the temperature continued to drop with surprising rapidity, I saw a black mass rising from the darkness of the chasm. It floated upwards very slowly. As at last light reached it I could see that it was of dull brown colour and tremendous size, a flat ragged edged thing about one acre in extent. It pulsated sluggishly and I knew that it was alive despite its lack of visible limbs or eyes. Still pulsating, this frightful vision floated past my level, by which time the coldness had become most intense. The shark now hung completely motionless, paralyzed either by cold or fear. While I watched fascinated, the enormous brown thing reached the shark, contacted him with its upper surface. The shark gave a convulsive shiver and was drawn unresisting into the substance of the monster. I stood perfectly still, not daring to move, while the brown thing sank back into the chasm as slowly as it had emerged. Darkness swallowed it and the water started to regain some warmth. God knows what this thing was, but I had no doubt that it had been born of the primeval slime countless fathoms below.
Bermuda Jellyfish[]
The Bermuda Jellyfish's sketch
In 1969, divers Richard Winer and Pat Boatwright saw a jellyfish 50-100 feet in diameter that was slowly swimming up towards them, but eventually gave up. They said it was deep purple with a pink rim. They encountered this invertebrate southwest of Bermuda.
Kuranda Jellyfish[]
The Kuranda Jellyfish
Another sighting occurred in 1973 where a ship known as the Kuranda collided with one such jellyfish. Although it was removed using a hose it had stung one of the sailors who died from his wounds. An examination of the slime it left on the ship proved it was a Lion's Mane Jellyfish, which is massive, but not nearly as big as the supposed cryptid giant jellyfish.
Miscellaneous Sightings[]
The brown mass type of giant jellyfish was also allegedly sighted in Chile in 1968 and Thailand in 2005.
There have been reports of jellyfish bigger than people in Japan. A young man once called the police because he said a jellyfish the size of a car ate his family when he was swimming in shallow ocean waters. He was put in jail for murder because the cops thought he was just lying to avoid getting caught for the crime that he may have committed. Then when he was released from jail, a polygraph test performed on him showed he did not seem to be lying. It is highly likely that he bluffed the test or simply did not kill his family, but some speculate that he actually saw a huge, new species of jellyfish capable of eating humans.
Explanation?[]
A Lion' Mane Jelly. The largest jelly species in the world. Or is it?
There are possibly larger and more dangerous jellyfish elsewhere. It has been said that due to global warming, jellyfish species are rapidly growing - but it may be that some of these species are growing in size rather than number.
Another explanation could be a Lion's Mane that grew to gargantuan sizes. The biggest Lion’s Mane jellyfish ever recorded to this date was discovered on the shores of Massachusetts Bay in 1870, its body measured at a diameter of 7 feet 6 inches (2.29 m) and tentacles 160 feet (46m) long, which is longer than a blue whale, the world's largest known animal.
The enormous brown mass seen by Christopher Loeb
However, these jellies tend to be long rather than wide, so the reports could be of long jellyfish instead of wide jellyfish. It could be a new species of jellyfish with a genetic structure that allows it to grow to massive sizes.
Descriptions of the flat, gelatinous blob type of giant jellyfish bear a resemblance to the Deepstaria enigmatica species of jellyfish, and might be related to them. The medusa seen by Christopher Loeb also bears a resemblance to the Stygiomedusa gigantea, excluding the fact that it seems to be flatter and much bigger.
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