The Karadag snake is the most interesting blog post. Karadag monster in the Black Sea in Crimea: real evidence that an ancient monster exists Snake in the Black Sea 40 meters

BEAN IN LOVE salad

LOVE BEANS SALAD

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 into slices Bell pepper(0.5kg).

6. Mix all these wonderful vegetables and add 2.5 tablespoons to them. salt, 1.5 cups sugar, 0.5 l 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 in a good mood, lay out your salad in sterilized jars and close and wrap it up for 12 hours. Cool down - for storage on the shelf.

taken from the internet

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

Crimean Alexander Georgievich Paraskevidi has a tooth at home (alas, it was not possible to find his photo) 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. The Turkish ichthyologist Arif Hakim, after examining and analyzing the strange find, believed that the tooth belongs to an animal unknown to science.

A DEEP COMMITMENT TO THE OLD

Official science does not recognize existence 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 in the Black Sea lived several hundred and even thousands of years ago. Even 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, the captains of Turkish warships and merchant ships repeatedly reported on their encounters with the Black Sea dragon. Sometimes the monster even chased small boats. The Don Cossacks and officers who served under Admiral Ushakov who went on long sea voyages also met with him.

In 1828, the Yevpatoria police chief reported to the 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 members of the expedition never found the snake, but they found an egg weighing 12 kg, in which there was an embryo that looked like a fairy dragon with a comb on its head. Nearby, they found the skeleton of a giant tail with an armored structure. Then, in the scientific community, disputes even arose: can a sea snake throw off 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 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, Chief Lieutenant Gunther Prufner, the commander of a 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 another 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 Serdolikovaya Bay. Watching dolphins hunting mullet, he saw a large, about ten meters in circumference, stone, overgrown with brown algae.

The writer had previously visited this place several times, but this was the first time he saw this stone. Looking closely, the writer noted that the "stone" is moving slowly. Assuming it was algae, he continued his observation. After a while, the "ball of algae" turned around and stretched out.

“The creature swam in 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: is this not a hallucination? I took out my watch. It was 12:18 pm. The reality of what I saw was hampered by the distance, 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 turned sideways. It was under water and I think it was flat. The lower part of it is white, as far as the blue of the water made it possible, 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 at Kazantip. The shepherd noticed under a bush of thorns something shiny, similar to a ram's skull polished by rains and winds, and just like that, out of nothing to do, he hit with a gerlyga (a long staff with a wooden hook at the end) on this skull.

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

He saw only this cloud of dust, and in it his own, as if mad, shepherd dogs and something huge, wriggling with monstrous strength and speed. When the shepherd came to his senses, one dog was killed, and two survivors furiously tore 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, the shepherd, they say, died. "

MONSTERS ATTACK

In 1961, another shocking encounter with a sea serpent took place in Crimea. Once the local fisherman MI Kondratyev, the director of the Krymskoe 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 in the direction of the Golden Gate, when suddenly, fifty meters away, they saw an incomprehensible brown spot under the water. When trying to get closer to it, the stain began to disappear. When they managed to catch up with him, it became clear that there was something eerie and very impressive in size under the water.

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

When people saw the small eyes of the monster, they were literally numb with horror. Mikhail Kondratyev still managed to quickly recover, and he, turning the boat, to full speed rushed to the shore. Amazingly, the monster chased after them. Its speed was very high, and it stopped pursuing only near the coast, after which it headed into the open sea.

On August 12, 1992, a similar story happened to an employee of the Feodosia City Council V.M.Belsky. 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, from whose mane water was flowing. Belsky even managed to make out the skin and gray corneous plates on the head and neck. The sea monster's eyes were small and the body was dark gray with a lighter underside. 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.

NESSY BLACK SEA

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

In October 2009, the Gusarenko spouses seem to have succeeded, and quite by accident. Filming is no different good quality, since it was made from a long distance, but it is still possible to consider a huge serpentine body moving rapidly in the water.

In the early 1990s, Crimean fishermen found dead dolphins with huge lacerations. In one of the dolphins, the stomach was literally ripped out along with the entrails. The size of the bite along the arc was about a meter, and the depth reached the spine. Along the edge of the arch, the dolphin's skin showed the marks of sixteen large teeth.

Several years ago, a dolphin, bitten in half by some monster, was also taken out of the water by the neighbors in the region - Turkish fishermen. Scientists at Istanbul University 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, praised 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, E. Rud, a lawyer at the branch of a scientific biological station on the territory of the Karadag reserve, received shocking videos 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 a video or even a screen from him) On board the pleasure boat, huddled in a bunch, people were screaming in fear. The ship rocked strongly, although there was no storm or wind, the sun was shining brightly. 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, writhing in the water, swiftly pounced on the dolphins, immediately devouring them in front of the amazed audience. These shots were supplemented by others, shot from above by tourists who ascended on that clear day to the top of Karadag in order to survey the endless blue expanses. Well, it was not a massive hallucination ?! In addition, there were many different eyewitnesses. There was a stir around the Karadag snake, the problem demanded a scientific word, since a rare visitor to the reserve does not ask a question about the monster.

Red Army men and Janissaries against the Karadag reptile The gigantic serpent-like bloodthirsty creature that lives in the waters of the Eastern Crimea is mentioned in ancient myths and legends. It was included in the annals under the name "Karadag reptile". Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Yevgeniy Shnyukov says: “Having rummaged through the legends of the Crimea, I found such a description of how somewhere in the area of the Otuzka River there was some kind of snake, which the locals were afraid of and to eliminate which even the Janissaries from Central Europe had to be summoned. Judging by the events, this was even before the Crimea became part of Russia. " In 1921, Maximilian Voloshin sent a clipping from the local Feodosia district newspaper to Mikhail Bulgakov in Moscow. The note said: the peasants of the village of Koktebel complain that a certain serpent appeared on the Karadag mountain, which comes out of the sea and devours their sheep, and therefore a company of Red Army men was sent to Karadag to capture him. Attempts to find and "ratribunalize the giant reptile" were not crowned with success: they managed to find 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". After the war, the writer Vsevolod Ivanov said that on May 14, 1952, during his vacation in Crimea, he went for a walk to Serdolikovaya Bay, where he saw something resembling a ball of seaweed. Suddenly this something began to unfold and lengthen. Finally, a huge snake with a meter 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 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. In the hope of seeing the monster, they dived in neighboring bays. The water in the underwater cave - the supposed place of the monster's exit - 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 ... Later, information about the mysterious snake, personally participating in his search, was collected for the program "Club of Film Travelers" Yuri Senkevich. He was convinced that it was a relic of an ancient fauna.

A dog's head is deadly

In May 1961, a fisherman from the village of Kurortnoye M. Kondratyev with two companions went to sea in the morning to fish. Having sailed from the biological station pier, the boat turned in the direction of the Golden Gate. 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 above the water three meters, covered with coats 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 gazed at them, their gaze horrified. Recovering himself, Kondratyev managed to turn the boat around and give the boat at top speed. The monster chased after, however, a hundred meters from the coast, it stopped and went into the open sea. The boat, at full speed, jumped ashore, and the would-be fishermen, screaming, rushed towards the biological station. Seven years later, Kondratyev "was lucky to meet an old friend again." Approaching the boat, he saw a large brown spot 30 meters from the shore. The water seethed, the head of the monster barely appeared - and immediately disappeared under the water, leaving behind a whirlpool with a funnel 10 meters in diameter and about two deep. Taught by bitter experience, the fisherman 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, got off 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 at a height of two meters above the water, two eyes shone. The artist, unable to miss their eyes, turned to stone. Barely regaining consciousness, he jumped up and rushed to the shore. For a long time he was tormented by terrible dreams. In 1992, V.M. 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 under the water and swam 40 meters at a fairly great depth. Looking around, to my right, I saw that "handsome". I was not afraid. I got a good look at it. It was a smooth snake, with a body volume of more than half a meter, without any ridges, more than 15 m in length. He saw me, arched his neck up, looked and rushed to me. I realized that I had to run away and broke all existing swimming records. Having jumped ashore, I was amazed to see that the head of my pursuer looked out at the point from which I began to flee. He scanned the distance exactly! His head rose more than half a meter above the water (it looked like a horse), and he, like me, began to look around. I realized that there was no time for jokes here, and began to hastily retire. " Occasionally, scientists were accidentally lucky. In the late 1980s, the BENTOS deep-sea underwater laboratory operated off the coast of Crimea. During one of the dives, the researchers saw something huge, about two meters in diameter, swam 8-10 meters across the BENTOS course. 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 up for catching Black Sea rays at a depth of 40 meters in the area of Serdolikovaya Bay, a few miles off the coast of Karadag. When the nets were pulled up, they pulled out a dolphin with a devoured belly - 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. How big was the mouth if the teeth were the size of a glass ?! And what kind of marine predators could they belong to? Is that a representative of the Mesozoic era ... Scientists were at a loss. Later, another prey dolphin was removed from the nets - it was as if its head had been sucked out. Despite all attempts to find out the truth, one can only guess who the senior researcher of the biological station V. Machkevsky met at sea quite recently. at night he went with his friends in a kayak to put his net behind the ready-made plug-in seine. Having completed the business and sailed a little, they saw from the coast, against the background of Karadag, that very snake. “... A full moon has risen in the sky, and it very well illuminated what was happening. The surface of the water was absolutely smooth as glass. Suddenly I heard a splash to my left. He turned his head and ... saw in the halo of foam the rolling body of a rather large animal. On its back there was no fin characteristic of a dolphin, there was no reflex inhalation-exhalation characteristic of dolphins. The back of the unknown creature was smooth and much larger than a dolphin. It may have had a scaly surface, but in the night light it was rather 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 back of the animal with the paddle. It all looked like a huge snake and a car camera, this creature is impossible to describe. "

Vulnerable Keddy

So who swam in the Crimean waters? They talked about a cloak-like 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 North and Mediterranean Seas ... Maybe some lizard has survived 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 not be this majestic mountain 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 layering, the formation of underwater caves, unknown passages and tunnels. Having settled in Koktebel, Voloshin, who possessed 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 the "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 has yet been found. In addition, the Crimean hydronautics is now completely collapsed, the deep-water equipment was handed over for scrap. It is known that such studies are being successfully continued in their territories by North American zoologists. 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 "Amphipa Tsifika" described the discovered in the fjords of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast Canada, a large animal species new to science - cadborosaurus. They attributed it to the plesiosaurs - a group of highly specialized marine reptiles that became extinct in Mesozoic era... This "saur" got its name from the name of the sea bay of Cadborough, where it was most often observed. The message caused a sensation in the media. The newspapers immediately gave the creature the nickname Keddi, and local environmentalists demanded that the government immediately ensure the protection of such a rare and, obviously, vulnerable species. According to eyewitness accounts, the cadborosaurus, by the way, has been mentioned since ancient times in Indian folklore, as two drops of water looks like a Black Sea snake, but feeds on fish, sometimes trying to hunt seabirds. For scientists, there is no doubt that the depths of the oceans keep many unexplored secrets. But they need facts. However, so far not a single high-quality picture has been taken - neither in our country, nor in theirs. 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 must be studied and protected in all its manifestations, especially in unique ones. Nina Yakhontova

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 riddles, for which no one has yet found an explanation. 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 of Euxine, there is a huge monster that catches up with the waves moving. The Karadag snake has repeatedly appeared to sailors. So, the Turks, who regularly sailed to the Crimea and Azov region, 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 ridge fluttering on its back, reminiscent of a horse's mane. Her movement was impetuous, she easily left the fastest ships behind, and the wave she created was like the one that occurs during a storm. The people who inhabited the coastal zone were also familiar with the sea reptile firsthand, 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 Yevpatoria police chief 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, having learned about the Black Sea monster, ordered scientists to be sent to Crimea so that they could find and capture him.
Since the evidence of the observation 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 dragon with a comb on its head. Nearby, the remains of a rather impressive tail were found, which was characterized by a scaly-carapace structure.

The Soviet writer saw a monster!

For several millennia, residents and guests of the peninsula claim that in 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 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 hoaxes and inventions.
In 1952, the Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov happened to see the monster from a cliff in Serdolikovaya 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 turned sideways." He had a snake head "in the size of the arms span" 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. MS Voloshina told him that in 1921 a small note flashed in the Feodosia newspaper, which reported that a "huge bastard" had appeared in the region of Mount Karadag, and a company of Red Army men had been sent to capture it. As far as we know, the "reptile" was not caught then, but her husband, the famous Russian poet and artist MA 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 Voloshin, managed to learn about the fact of a meeting with a monster of one collective farmer, who stumbled upon a monster resting on the shore, collecting fin for firewood.

Real proof? Please!

The Karadag snake leaves quite real traces of its existence. Several years ago, Turkish fishermen pulled out a dolphin from the sea, which was bitten in half by some monster. The dolphin's remains were urgently taken 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. Crimean fishermen saw the same dead dolphins with huge wounds and even traces of 16 large teeth in 1990 and 1991, and one of them was even taken to the Karadag reserve.

By the way, the Crimean resident Alexander Paraskevidi has even more material evidence of the existence of the monster - his tooth. Six centimeters long, reddish-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 snake

In May 1961, a rather shocking encounter with a monster took place in Crimea. The local fisherman M. I. Kondratyev, the director of the Krymskoe Primorye sanatorium A. Mozhaisky and the chief accountant of this enterprise V. Vostokov went fishing one morning by 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 the 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 there was something very impressive and creepy under the water. At 2-3 meters under the 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 hairs, resembling algae in their appearance. Behind the head, on the body of the monster, horn plates were visible. A characteristic mane swayed in the water at the top of the head and back. The monster's belly 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 Kondratyev quickly managed to recover, he turned the boat around and at full speed sent it to the shore. Amazingly, the monster chased after them! Its speed was quite high, but at 100 meters from the coast it stopped its pursuit and headed for 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. In the twentieth century, a resting Grigory Tabunov happened to meet a monster. Here is what he recalls: “I lived in Nikita, quickly went down to the sea, undressed and plunged into the water. I swam about two hundred meters, lay on my back, rested and was just about to swim back, when I noticed some dark spot in the waves nearby. Dolphin, probably - thought. What a dolphin is there! A huge head appeared over the water. Out of fear, I yelled as hard 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, flat ... "

On August 12, 1992, an employee of the Feodosia City Council, V.M.Belsky, collided with the monster. He swam in the sea, dived until, emerging, 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, from whose mane water was flowing. Belsky managed to make out even the skin and gray horny plates on the head and neck. The monster's eyes 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 kilometers from the shore, when suddenly someone from below tossed 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 made it to 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, arranged a hunt for dolphins.
Submariners also saw the Karadag monster. This happened during the immersion of "Bentos-300" - a laboratory working at depth. Having reached a submersion level of 100 meters, the hydronaut saw an indistinct shadow on the right side of the ship. A giant snake swam up to the window, slowly wriggling, as if studying people with its small eyes. However, as soon as the scientists decided to photograph it, the monster, as if having read their thoughts, rushed into the depths.

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 shoot it on video or 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 are still firmly keeping their secrets - 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 should be several of them - mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother, etc. But neither the remains nor the clutch of eggs of these creatures has yet been found. In addition, the Crimean hydronautics is now completely collapsed, the deep-water equipment was handed over for scrap.
It is known that such studies are being successfully continued in their territories by North American zoologists. 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 "Amphipa Tsifika" described the discovered in the fjords of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast Canada, a large animal species new to science - cadborosaurus.
They attributed it to the plesiosaurs - a group of highly specialized marine reptiles that became extinct in the Mesozoic era. This "saur" got its name from the name of the sea bay of Cadborough, where it was most often observed.

The message caused a sensation in the media. The newspapers immediately gave the creature the nickname Keddi, and local environmentalists demanded that the government immediately ensure the protection of such a rare and, obviously, vulnerable species.
According to eyewitness accounts, the cadborosaurus, by the way, has been mentioned since ancient times in Indian folklore, as two drops of water looks like a Black Sea snake, but feeds on fish, sometimes trying to hunt seabirds.

For scientists, there is no doubt that the depths of the oceans keep many unexplored secrets. But they need facts. However, so far not a single high-quality picture has been taken - neither in our country, nor in theirs.
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 must be studied and protected in all its manifestations, especially in unique ones.

It is readily rewritten by the Ukrainian media, as if they are trying to intimidate holiday-makers by publishing headlines like “After this, no one will go to Crimea”. Although people are more curious than scared.

The current hype around the mysterious reptile unfolded when a June video made from the window of a coastal hotel appeared on the network. A young tourist, a native of the Moscow region, allegedly noticed how the sea froth, after which a huge creature attacked the dolphin and dragged the victim to the bottom. The video is of very poor quality and the plot of the attack is more likely to be learned from the girl's words than to notice something specific in the waves, which really boiled for some unknown reason.

The second "phenomenon at the well-known coast" happened just the other day. Facebook users share their impressions: “This something came up to the shore about 10-15 meters. It became clear that this was not a man. Firstly, two times more, and secondly, the nature of the movement. Then he went to the right. Fishermen were sitting there. We go to them. It seems like there are lanterns. They shone inward, but still the ray of light did not reach. " Then curious vacationers began to throw stones at "something". When they hit - "the sound was entertaining, dull, as if hitting a very large leather ball."

They immediately recalled a recent video on YouTube, which posted footage of a sea monster made from a quadcopter in Veselovskaya Bay. It is not far from the resort Sudak, behind the Karaul-Oba mountain. There is also last year's evidence of the appearance of the creature at the Meganom Cape of Sudak. These points are located very close to the Karadag nature reserve.

The extinct volcano Kara-Dag is one of the most majestic and at the same time mysterious Crimean spaces. Black rocks of fantastic beauty, hundreds of unexplored underwater caves, sharp jumps in depth, a lot of fish and dolphins. Tourists in the reserve can appear only on two eco-trails: walking and sea. Plus, until recently, the surrounding area was considered a closed military zone, secret tests were carried out here. torpedo weapons etc.

All in all, better place for a monstrous reptile on the Black Sea, it is simply not possible to find. Over the centuries, many seafarers have witnessed the appearance of the Karadag serpent. The first evidence is an antique ring from the collection of the Bosporan Kingdom, where a sea monster is depicted surrounded by local fish species. The ring was made by the jewelers of Panticopeia - ancient Kerch in the 4th century BC. Meanwhile, the Hellenes never had a dragon cult.

The medieval Turks of Feodosia-Kaffa even sent complaints to Istanbul about the "Black Sea relative of the Kraken." The letters are still kept by the Sultan's archive. In the summer of 1921, an article about a mysterious sea reptile appeared in the city newspaper of Feodosia, with an appeal to remain calm and not to lose vigilance. The Chekists and Red Army men unsuccessfully tried to catch the monster. Maximilian Voloshin, who lived in Crimea, shared an incredible story with Mikhail Bulgakov. It is believed that it was she who inspired Mikhail Afanasyevich with the plot of the trash story "Fatal Eggs". And this is how the writer Vsevolod Ivanov saw the legendary monster already in the fifties of the last century: “It was up to 30 meters long and as thick as a desk top if turned sideways, and the head, the size of the arms span, resembled a snake one”. The writer observed a snake in the Carnelian Bay near Koktebel and dedicated his story to this.

Summer of 1990, article in the "Geological Journal". The director of the Karadag reserve, Pyotr Semenkov, writes how a team of local fishermen pulled out a net with a dead dolphin, whose belly was bitten out by one bite. The width of the bite along the arc was about a meter, with clearly visible teeth marks. The dolphin's head seems to have been flattened by uniform compression on all sides, as if an unfortunate mammal was being pulled into a narrow hole.

In the spring of the following year, Karadag fishermen brought the body of another dolphin to the shore, which showed almost identical injuries. The mutilated corpse was kept as proof of the existence of the Karadag snake, but scientists did not give an unambiguous verdict who could bite the dolphins in this way. Alas, at the end of 1991 the refrigerating chamber broke down and the "material evidence" simply rotted away.

They say that in the Ukraine, at the Karadag scientific station, they conducted a special expedition to search for an unknown reptile. Moreover, the territory of the volcanic massif is the home of the largest snakes of the Crimea. We managed to find an egg weighing 20 kg. Experts have suggested that this was not the only embryo. Research has ceased due to lack of funding. The Ukrainian authorities kept the Crimean biologists on starvation rations, there was not enough money even for a meager salary.

All that was left was to console myself with photographs taken several years ago: tourists were filming a flock of dolphins - and the Karadag snake got into the frame! Now the Crimean public is divided into two camps. Some are firmly convinced of the existence of an underwater monster, others completely deny its existence.

If he was the way he was described, he would not be able to satisfy his appetites in the Black Sea, - says professor of the Department of Biology and Zoology of Krymsky federal university Sergey Ivanov . - In addition, the monster, in principle, is unlikely to be able to survive because of the hydrogen sulfide layer at the bottom of the Black Sea - " dead water"Where there is no oxygen. I am not against the existence of a legend. But what people saw cannot be any kind of serpent. It may be something else, but in order to find out what exactly, facts and real confirmation are needed, - said Professor Ivanov.

Personally, I can say that once, when I was on Opuka, I saw a picture that shook the imagination: I stood on a cliff and saw a sea serpent in the sea! And then the huntsmen explained to me that this is just a school of small fish, tulka, which stretches in length - but from a height it really is perceived as a sea monster. The huntsmen laughed then, they say, that is how stories about the Karadag monster are born, - the famous Crimean ethnographer and guide Vyacheslav Khachaturyan told reporters.

Both statements are quite logical. Yet people ask their equally reasonable questions. For example, why would a creature dive 300 meters into an oxygen-free zone of hydrogen sulfide, when all the fish and its main grub, dolphins, walk on the surface of the water? With the food supply, everything is really in order - it is not for nothing that the most common dolphin breed is Black and Azov seas called "porpoises".

A similar skepticism is heard on the Internet about the authoritative remark of the local historian Khachaturian. Perhaps at Cape Opuk, he mistook the fish school for a sea monster. By the way, it is a stone's throw from Opuk to Kara-Dag. But why are "serpentine" schools not noticed in Balaklava or in the western Tarkhankut? Why did such allusions become possible only here, in the east of Crimea?

Meanwhile, the excitement around the Karadag snake is growing. The number of witnesses is increasing every month. Some guests on the coast from Koktebel to Sudak are seriously thinking about changing their vacation spot. To others, on the contrary, the current situation is only high. There are already guides who are recruiting holiday teams to "go in search of a man-eating snake." The main feature of the excursion is that each participant signs a paper that he voluntarily goes to sea and understands that a voyage to the caves of Kara-Dag can cost his life.

Russian news: Smolensk mushroom picker survived in a fight with a bear

“Nature is not for all eyes
Raises its secret veil.
We read in it anyway,
But who, reading, understands? "

D.V.Venevetinov (1805 - 1827)

Our story about Karadag will be dry and overly scientific if we do not touch upon the theme of "sea serpent" that is exciting the minds of many generations of romantics.

Strictly speaking, cryptozoology (from the Greek "kryptos" - "hidden, secret"), the task of which is to collect information about such legendary creatures, and the subject is their study, is a non-academic direction in science, and on Karadag, cryptozoological studies have never been carried out and not planned. However, it is also impossible to get around the theme of the sea serpent. The fact is that the Karadag reserve, by the will of fate, was involved in its search. The areola of academicism inherent in Karadag, in this case, did a disservice. An unhealthy excitement arose around the topic, and one "ethnographer" recently published even a thousandth edition of a book about the "Black Sea snake" and ... mermaids in Crimea (!) confirm a priori the authenticity of the remaining listed "facts" (on the verge of a clinic). That is why we considered it possible to express ourselves on the pages of the guidebook on the merits of the issue, approaching the problem from a scientific point of view. Moreover, the unknown worries the Karadag people just like all other citizens, and a rare visitor to the reserve does not ask the attendants a question about the state of health of the “Karadag monster”.

Indeed, a kind of gigantic snake-like creature that lives in washing Eastern Crimea waters and feeding on dolphins, is mentioned not only in ancient myths and legends, but also in historical documents. It entered the annals under the name of "Karadag reptile". It turns out, however, that if we discard the testimonies of impressionable writers and citizens eager for sensations, only a few facts worth mentioning remain. So, in 1921, the Feodosia newspaper wrote that a huge snake appeared in the Karadag region, and a Red Army company was sent to capture it. Attempts to find and "ratribunal" the giant reptile, however, were not crowned with success. MA Voloshin sent a clipping from the newspaper to MA Bulgakov. It is believed that it is this curious episode of Bulgakov's feat of writing the story "Fatal Eggs", which, however, is about completely different bastards.

Also in the local history literature, two finds of bottlenose dolphins with strange injuries in bottom nets, established several miles from the banks of the Karadag, dating back to the end of 1990 and the beginning of 1991, are widely replicated. In one case, the impression was that the dolphin's belly was torn out along with the ribs by one bite - the spine was visible through the terrible wound, in the second - on the head of the deceased individual there were semicircular notches resembling the marks of the jaws of a predator.

General form dolphin (after: P.G. Semenkov, 1994). The drawing was made according to the words of the fishermen by the artist S. Kvetkov, a resident of the village of the Karadag reserve.

The head of the last “victim of the sea serpent”, kept in the cold room of the Karadag branch of the Institute of Biology of the South Seas, by the way, was seen in early August 1991 by the famous Crimean geographer A.V. Yen, who made sketches and curious diary entries. According to his calculations, the width of the mouth of the hypothetical predator reached only 15 cm, so it cannot be ruled out that the dolphin's corpse was eaten by small Black Sea sharks - katrans. Another version is also valid - the animal simply fell under the propeller of a motor boat. The smooth edges of the wounds suggest these reflections. The times were harsh, the electricity was turned off, the refrigerator once went out of order, which naturally led to the death of the aforementioned artifact for science, which did not wait for oceanologists to become interested in it ... Information about these strange finds was published by the former director of the Karadag branch of the Institute of Biology of the South Seas P.G. Semenkov in the first issue of the "Geological Journal" for 1994

Page of the field diary of A.V. Yena with a sketch of a dolphin head (courtesy of A.V. Yena)

We cannot say anything definite about the first eerie find. But the nature of the injury makes us recall the rare cases of entry from Mediterranean Sea dangerous predators - blue sharks and hammerheads. And this still happens, although it is difficult to comprehend. Who is now capable of believing, for example, that an exotic swordfish was celebrated near the shores of Karadag and even its eggs were found? Meanwhile, this is a scientific fact.

However, North American zoologists have gone even further. 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 Amphipatsifika described from the fjords of British Columbia (Pacific coast of Canada) a new science is a large animal species - cadborosaurus, which was attributed to plesiosaurs (a group of highly specialized marine reptiles that became extinct in the Mesozoic era). Zavr got its name from the name of the sea bay of Cadborough, where it was allegedly observed most often. The message caused a sensation in the media. In the newspapers that picked up the sensation, the creature was immediately frivolously dubbed "Keddi", and local environmentalists demanded that the government take immediate measures to ensure proper protection of such a rare and obviously vulnerable species. Cadborosaurus, according to eyewitness accounts, is like two drops of water similar to the Black Sea "snake", but eats, unlike our "dolphin eater", fish, although it is indicated that there were apparently also attempts to hunt seabirds. As a basis for the description, in addition to Indian folklore and numerous eyewitness accounts who allegedly were "lucky" to meet this creature, photographs of a skeleton (presumably belonging to a young individual Keddi) were taken, recovered by whalers from the stomach of a sperm whale harpooned near the Queen Charlotte Islands in July 1937.

The first page of the cadborosaurus description (above) and an example of the reaction of the scientific community to this publication (below). Sources are kindly provided at our disposal by A.M. Bauer (USA)

Alas, herpetologists cannot share the optimism of their Canadian fellow merry fellows. The description of the cadborosaurus was made with gross violations of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the observance of which is strictly obligatory when describing new taxa. A photograph that is not supported by a museum piece cannot be used as a type specimen when describing new form life. The main snag in our case is the lack of material evidence that unequivocally confirms the existence of a living dinosaur. The skeleton of a strange animal, preserved by the whaling company for three weeks, then disappeared without a trace! Despite the fact that employees of several museums showed interest in him, he was not included in museum collections and was not included in their catalogs. The quality of old photographs leaves much to be desired, and you can interpret what is captured on them in any way ... According to the great American herpetologist Aaron Bauer and the Canadian zoologist Anthony Russell, who discovered many absurdities in Caddy's description, in reality the whalers were dealing with half-digested remains of a giant shark - a harmless gigantic plankotonophage, common in high latitudes.

"Keddy" is a large marine cryptid. Above - a drawing of the skeleton of an unknown creature, made from a photograph by G.V. Boorman; below - reconstruction (cited from: Bousfield E.L. & LeBlond P.Y., 1995).

Let us summarize the above. The critical attitude of official science to such "discoveries" is not a manifestation of scientific snobbery or an attempt to silence the real facts. There is no doubt that the depths of the World Ocean continue to keep many secrets. The author would be glad to be among the first to support Keddy enthusiasts. However, unequivocal facts are needed to confirm its existence. Best of all - a whole specimen or at least a part of the body. At first, a high-quality picture would have been enough (which in the era of digital photography seems to be not so difficult). But they simply do not exist! The creature appears and disappears so suddenly that no one has time to click the shutter ...

Legends and myths by themselves cannot become a solid basis for scientific conclusions, although it must be admitted that in some cases the main method of cryptozoologists works. Here are some recent examples. In 1987, the largest (the size of a small cat!) Species of gecko lizard, previously known only from Maori folklore, was described from New Zealand. When analyzing the old collections of the Museum of Natural History in Marseille, an excellently preserved stuffed animal of this lizard was found, which to this day remains the only one (unfortunately, the giant gecko by this time had already become extinct, among other representatives of the unique New Zealand fauna). Two new large species of ungulates were described from small Vietnam in the early 1990s, and one of them - a spiral-horned bull - is still known from one skull, in the bones of which DNA was preserved, which made the description quite reliable. And in 2010, a new large species of monkeys was found in Nyanmar. Also recently, in 2009, in the Philippines, a two-meter herbivorous (!) Monitor lizard was discovered, which still managed not to be seen by researchers, but is well known to local hunters. Its close relative, the Komodos monitor lizard, was also found relatively recently - in 1914. This largest living lizard, attacking buffaloes, was discovered by accident by a Dutch aviator who made an emergency landing on Komodo Island. The confused stories of the pilot, as usual, were not believed at first, considering it to be nonsense caused by the shock he had experienced. Meanwhile, the dragons of the Sunda Islands were well known to medieval Chinese and Arab sailors and are mentioned in the Travels of Sinbad the Sailor. In 1998, also in Indonesia, near the island of Sulawesi was opened the new kind cross-finned fish (coelacanth) - 10 thousand kilometers from the Comoros, where this "living fossil", the discovery of which led to a revolution in paleontology, was first found half a century before. Indonesian fishermen have been fishing for coelacanth for centuries, and the idea that it is still unknown to science, if it did arise, did not spoil anyone's appetite.

However, human fantasy is truly unstoppable, and evolution does not keep pace with it. Getting acquainted with folklore sources, one usually still has to make allowances for the symbolism of the thinking of peoples at a certain stage of development. After all, it never occurs to anyone to look for a biological correspondence to the Minotaur or the griffin - allegories that exist only in the human imagination ...

As for the stories about huge land snakes that are running in the southern regions of Russia and Ukraine, including the Crimea, their roots are obvious to us, and the origin does not raise a shadow of doubt. In this case, we can only talk about very large representatives known species reptiles. The main candidate for the giant "boas" is a large and aggressive yellow-bellied snake. In our country, it reaches a total length of 1.9 - 2.2 m, and in the south of Europe, almost three-meter snakes were also hunted. The influence of the increasing anthropogenic pressure on reptile populations is manifested primarily in a decrease in the average and maximum sizes of animals. For reptiles, whose life is already full of dangers, the chances of living to old age are simply reduced - they will inevitably be crushed or killed ... And the snake diet these days is probably not as complete as in past years. But under favorable conditions, long-lived species of reptiles can reach impressive sizes, significantly exceeding the "standard". Indeed, unlike mammals, growth in cold-blooded animals continues throughout life. Let's give one example. In 2002, a young herpetologist Yelena Sviridenko in a vacant lot near Alushta caught a snake-like lizard, a yellow-bellied lizard with a body length of more than 80 cm, which is 2 times higher than the norm! The body of the animal (as thick as a man's wrist) was completely covered with scars - traces of encounters with predators or with humans; as a result of a long-standing blow, the skull was deformed, part of the tail was missing. If the tail remained intact, the total length of the lizard would exceed 2 m! It must be said that this individual, whose age, undoubtedly, was estimated at several tens of years, made a qualitatively different impression than its less successful fellow tribesmen. And it was a yellow-bellied animal - a gentle and even shy animal. But it is not hard to imagine what a shock the sudden appearance of an almost three-meter runner can cause, moving at high speed towards a person and rushing into his face with a hissing hiss! Nowadays, individuals of this size are extremely rare - one in several thousand. But in the old days, when the Crimea was relatively little developed, there were certainly more of them, and they caught our eye more often, striking terror into the souls of local residents and giving rise to legends. Nowadays, zoologists can only hope that such "monsters" could survive in the most remote, uncrowded corners, for example, in some places on the Kerch Peninsula and the eastern part of the Mountainous Crimea.

Is there even the slightest hope of discovering a new species of animals in such a densely populated area as Crimea or near its shores? Undoubtedly. Our knowledge of the world around us is not final and never will be. This fully applies to the so-called "thoroughly studied" territories. The history of stationary scientific research in Karadag goes back more than a century. But the point in the study of this small area has not been set. As before, Karadag continues to delight researchers with discoveries. Every year, scientists discover on Karadag new for the Crimea, and sometimes for science, species of fungi, plants and animals - primarily ticks, spiders, insects ... But what has been said fully applies to relatively large, vertebrate animals. Some species, being in stressful environmental conditions (for example, on the periphery of their ranges), lead a lifestyle so secretive that they can only be detected by a very lucky professional. In addition, their numbers are often subject to significant fluctuations from year to year, and at times dwindle to a few. And the close framework of one's own ideas and a kind of self-hypnosis that inevitably arises when the authoritative statements of eminent predecessors are heard are always very hindering the work. An example is the garlic frog. While treatises were written about the reasons for its extinction in Crimea, it calmly continued to spawn right in the village of the reserve, and those relatively short periods in the middle of summer, when drying ponds literally turn into soup from giant tadpoles, for some reason remained unnoticed. The outstanding herpetologist NN Shcherbak wrote in 1960: "Rumors about the habitation of a gecko in the oak-juniper forests of the Crimea, most likely, do not correspond to reality." And only 40 years later it became clear that this vociferous lizard in some areas of the South Coast is the most numerous species of reptiles, and in Karadag it lives in considerable numbers within a five-minute walk from the buildings of the reserve. Suddenly, like a devil out of a snuff-box, a small snake, a copperhead, "jumped out" in the bleak steppes near Feodosia, was not noted by any zoologist in more than two hundred years of history of studying the Crimean fauna in this area. The largest two-legged centipede of the fauna of Ukraine, apparently, arrived in Tavrika as a "hare" from Asia Minor in ancient times, became known to scientists only in 2007, and before that it "hid" within the boundaries of Sevastopol, not far from the city center. And there are many such examples! But the tiny Crimea, it would seem, has been traversed by generations of naturalists far and wide ... Far from all species have been discovered, not all natural laws have been discovered by science. Relief, climate, landscapes, vegetation cover, fauna - everything is involved in a continuous series of changes. All the more shaky are the scientific concepts that explain the processes occurring in nature. Perhaps the only thing that raises no doubts is that the most exciting discoveries lie ahead for those who come after.

Hello friends.

Many of us know that the world is full of secrets and mysteries. Let us recall at least the famous Nessie, who has been seen more than once in Loch Ness, or whose giant octopuses are from time to time lifted from the depths by fishing boats. Every year there are more and more such messages.

Believe in their existence or not, everyone decides for himself. Today I want to talk about a mysterious animal supposedly living in the Black Sea at the foot of an ancient volcano.

Someone calls it the Karadag snake, someone considers it an extinct reptile that somehow survived to this day, someone - the spirit of Mount Karadag.

The locals even gave him a name - Blackie.

But first things first.

The first mentions of a strange creature living in the Black Sea appeared a long time ago. The ancient Greeks composed legends about him that have survived to this day. The scientist Herodotus described it as a giant snake with black scales, a horse's head, long tail and a comb on the back.

According to ancient legends, ascending to the surface, the creature foamed the water, raising large waves that could sink a small boat. The look of terrible red eyes made the sailors numb with horror and discouraged any desire to approach the terrible place.

This was also confirmed by Turkish sailors. In their reports to the Sultan, they talked about a terrible monster that sank ships and devoured their crew alive.

Locals also added fuel to the fire, frightening travelers with stories of snake attacks on coastal villages.

In one of the ancient legends "Chershamba" is told about a snake place located not far from the present village of Schebetovka (the old name is Otuz). In a lowland overgrown with reeds, according to legend, there lived a large snake which (curled up in a ball) could be confused with a shock of hay, and if someone met it crawling, then its length was ten knees or more (a knee is a measure of length equal to 40-50 cm).

To get rid of this scourge, the local khan specially ordered the janissaries from Istanbul, who killed the snake, but it's no secret that offspring could remain from it.

Later mentions

In the 19th century, the Yevpatoria police chief (a representative of the authorities) wrote in his report to Emperor Nicholas 1 about the appearance in the vicinity of a huge serpent with a hare's head and a horse's mane, which attacked sheep and drank their blood.

These eyes are opposite ...

By order of Nicholas, an expedition was sent to Crimea to capture this reptile. The snake itself was not caught, but an egg weighing 12 kilograms was found, and next to it was the remains of a giant tail. The egg was split, revealing there an embryo with clear signs of its "dragon" belonging. Rumor has it that the egg is still kept somewhere in the storerooms of the Kherson Museum of Nature.

At the beginning of the last century, a note appeared in the Feodosia newspaper that a huge snake appeared in the region of Mount Karadag, and a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to capture it. Arriving in Koktebel and exploring the surroundings, the military found only a trace of a mighty body going into the sea.

In 1952, the writer Vsevolod Ivanov, walking in Serdolikovaya Bay (Koktebel region), saw a ball of algae in the sea, which at first did not pay much attention to. However, after a while, I noticed that the ball began to unravel and lengthen on its own, and as a result swam to a flock of dolphins that appeared not far away.

The length of the creature was about 30 meters and it moved like a snake, in waves. Dolphins, sensing danger, rushed scatteringly.

Cases of an unknown creature attacking dolphins are quite common in the Black Sea.

In 1990, a brigade of fishermen, near the village of Ordzhonikidze, went to sea to check the nets. While checking one of the nets, the fishermen discovered its cliff, at the end of which a dolphin, a Black Sea bottlenose dolphin, tangled in its tail, dangled.

The animal's belly, along with the ribs, was bitten out in one piece, and the width of the bite was about a meter. The edge of the bite was framed by teeth marks up to 4 cm in size.

Frightened by what they saw, the fishermen, having cut off the net, threw the remains of the dolphin into the water, and they themselves quickly left this place.

What modernity says

According to one of the windsurfers, who was doing his favorite sport a few kilometers from the shore, suddenly something threw his board, causing him to fall into the water. But it was not this that surprised him most of all, but the fact that he fell on something large, solid and clearly alive.

Having regained consciousness, he rushed to the shore with the speed of a bullet and fortunately "something" did not pursue him.

During one of the dives of the underwater laboratory "Bentos", scientists noticed a blurred shadow across the hull of the submarine. Looking more closely, they realized that something huge was floating next to the window, in appearance resembling a snake.

It was not possible to film it either because of the stupor that arose, or because the creature, sensing something was wrong, quickly went into the depths.

An equally interesting case happened quite recently in 2004 and was described on her website by Tatyana Karatsuba Seid-Burkhan.

In her words, while resting on Karadag with their friends, they watched the love games of two sea snakes at once. Huge white bodies with black backs wriggled right at the foot of the Karadag.

The observation lasted for several hours, and then ... her words just amazed me:

- Tired of looking, we retired to the cave !?

As for me, a strange statement! Can you get tired of looking at a creature that no one has seen before? Don't try to film it or take a photo?

I would probably just run to Koktebel for a camera just for this.

Who are you, Blackie?

What kind of animal is it?

Based on the descriptions of eyewitnesses, Blackie can either be a large representative of the lizards that dominated the planet millions of years ago, or a snake that somehow grew to a huge size. Or maybe it's just two different kinds animals.

Lizard?

Could an ancient lizard of this size survive after the fall of the meteorite and the subsequent ice age, and survive for millions of years almost unnoticed?

If we assume that he lived in underwater caves near Karadag, where at that time it was probably warm from the close occurrence of magma, then it is possible.

What he ate all this time, whether he could breathe on the surface, or whether he had enough air from the caves, or maybe he has gills at his disposal, is difficult to say.

One thing is certain: in order to survive for so long, he needed to breed, which means there must be at least two animals.

A snake?

If this is still a sea serpent, which appeared much later than the fall of the meteorite, then how did it reach such dimensions? To date, the largest famous science the snake is an anaconda, but its size does not exceed 12 meters.

What did this snake eat to grow up like that? Dolphins? With their dexterity, this is not an easy prey.

Plankton? Fish? As you know, the Black Sea is a closed sea, and due to the presence of a hydrogen sulfide zone, it is also practically lifeless at depths of more than 200 meters. There are clearly no such huge migrations of fish and plankton as in the oceans.

Or maybe gigantism is associated with hydrogen sulfide? It is found in small amounts in the cells of our body and the body of animals and helps to regulate life processes.

Well, just like in the first case, there must be at least two individuals of different sexes.

Where do you live?

During the period of active movement of earth layers, when the appearance of the Southern Crimea was forming, it is quite possible that voids could have formed under the Karadag and in the nearby bottom layer. This area is already long time is a reserve and therefore poorly studied.

It is in these voids, and possibly entire networks of caves with huge galleries, that life that has not yet been known to modern science could have survived. It is not for nothing that every year scientists discover new species of animals and plants.

Why do you meet so rarely?

Well, they do not like people with their wild desire to necessarily tame an unknown animal.

But seriously, as mentioned above, the area is poorly studied. There can be only a few animals and because of the massive fishing with food they have serious problems.

There can be many options, and there is no definite answer to this question yet.

Nevertheless, some environmental activists are trying to protect the unknown marine reptile and are asking the government to take measures to preserve the habitat of the Karadag snake.

It is not known for certain that a snake actually exists or is it just a figment of a fantasy, however, for example, the Scottish authorities still keep the question of the existence of Nessie open on the agenda, and are doing their best to keep her habitat intact.

Interesting fact?)

About 20 years ago, the inhabitants of a distant Chinese village killed and ate a real sea dragon!

After stoning him to death, they, following old grandmother's recipes, began to cook stew from it, grind bones into powder for making medicinal potions, and sell the meat at the local market.

The dragon in China is a sacred and magical creature, and therefore the villagers decided to use it for its intended purpose.

When information about this reached civilization, scientists decided to reassure local population... Conducted an examination of the leftovers and ... almost went crazy!

The remains belonged to a plesiosaur!

This is how science has lost living proof of the existence of dinosaurs in our time.

Believe it or not is a purely personal matter. I do not pretend to be the original source, therefore I ask you not to beat me with sticks. It is better to express your own opinion on this matter.

And I have everything for today.

Best regards, Sergey Drozdov.

P. S... If you have any questions after reading the article, do not hesitate to ask in the comments.

P. P. S... You can familiarize yourself with the topics that will be revealed in the near future at.