About 180 species of fish live in the Black Sea: 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: porpoise (azovka), bottlenose dolphin and common dolphin. These animals are real old-timers of the sea.

Two types of sharks live in the Black Sea - katran, or prickly shark, it is also called a sea dog; and the small-spotted scyllum shark, otherwise known as the cat shark.

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

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 a gaping vacationer gets it for distribution.

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

AT recent times again there is a legend associated with the appearance of a giant monster off the coast of Crimea (which is also referred to as the Kandahar monster Blackie). 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 cries...

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

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

And if they were brought here by a water stream from the Mediterranean, then these creatures could not survive here.

“New medium-sized representatives of the fauna periodically appear in the sea, but all major scientists have already been studied. And believe me, the described creature does not look like a single inhabitant of the marine fauna studied. It is unlikely, rather unbelievable, that it can exist in reality, ”comments Oksana Kritskaya, Associate Professor of the Department of Marine Geology at the Kuban University.

But the story of the fishermen about the event that occurred on December 7, 1990, makes us wonder if scientists are hiding a terrible truth from us?

“The brigade of fishermen of the Karadag branch of the InBYuM 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 mesh size of 200 mm. It was installed at a depth of 50 meters with coordinates at a distance of 3 miles southeast of Lyagushachya Bay and 7 miles south of the village of Ordzhonikidze.

They arrived at the site around 12 noon and began rebuilding the network from the south end. After 150 meters, the net was broken, and the fishermen decided that during the setting they threw 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 from the other end of the network and continued to check. When they went to the ragged edge, they pulled a dolphin to the surface - a Black Sea bottlenose dolphin about 2.5 meters in size, whose tail was tangled in a net. Pulling up the dolphin, the fishermen found that the dolphin's belly had been bitten off with one bite. The width of the bite along the arc is about 1 meter.

Along the edge of the arc, teeth marks were clearly visible on the skin of the dolphin. The size of the trace from the tooth is about 40 mm. The distance between the teeth marks is about 15-20 mm. In total, there were about 16 teeth marks along the arc. The dolphin's belly was bitten off with ribs, so that the spine was clearly visible. In the area of ​​​​the head, the remnants of the lungs dangled, from which blood flowed when lifting. Traces of teeth were clearly visible on the sides of the clips, and were located symmetrically.

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

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

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

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

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

Do you believe in a sea monster on the Black Sea?
Is it really a giant mutated white shark?

The editors of the Crimean "Komsomolskaya Pravda" and other mass media of the peninsula reported on the tragedy that happened three days ago in the resort village of Ordzhonikidze. According to numerous eyewitnesses, the unknown sea ​​creature attacked a young woman just a few dozen meters from the shore.

Underwater creature bit the stomach of the victim. Summer is running out and calling these messages "another attempt to derail holiday season"It's just stupid.

“The tragedy broke out in the evening, when it was getting dark outside, but there were still people on the beach,” says Moscow eyewitness Dmitry. Two girls decided to swim, they swam not far from the shore. Suddenly one of them sank like a stone. The second managed to grab her friend by the hair and pull her out with a jerk. By some miracle, she did not let the creature drown her prey! ..

In a state of shock, the girls got out of the water. The victim had a large piece of abdominal muscles and viscera torn out near the spleen itself.

An unconscious tourist was taken to the First City Hospital of Feodosia. A few hours later, the girl died. At first, doctors confirmed the shocking information. However, today Chief Physician Viktor Symonenko suddenly began to assert that "nothing happened."

The attack of an unknown cannibal excited resort coast. Among the versions are a crocodile that escaped from the zoo, sharks or the notorious Karadag monster. “Perhaps the wounds were caused by a monk seal, which is very rare in our country, but can grow up to three meters,” suggests the deputy. director of scientific work Institute of Biology of the South Seas Alexander Boltachev.

Last summer, a Nile crocodile actually slipped away from a traveling zoo on the nearby Sea of ​​Azov. This season, no such reports have been recorded. But it is known that the owners of several dozen fashionable estates of the Crimean South Coast keep toothy creatures, and a month ago a large "crocodile house" was solemnly opened in the center of Yalta.

Not everything is so simple and with the optimistic statement that "there were no cases of shark attacks in the Black Sea."

Goblin 2

In the last December broadcasts of 2010, Russian television people gave birth to unprecedented news. Vesti.ru, and then other TV channels vied with each other about the world sensation: on the beam of Sevastopol, fishermen caught a "goblin"!

This is the name of a monster shark with a long beak-shaped muzzle and ugly jaws pushed forward. The skin of this creature is translucent, and the blood vessels show through it. The largest known specimen of the "goblin" reached a length of 3.8 meters and weighed 210 kilograms.

Following the Moscow colleagues, the shark theme became a hit on the central Ukrainian channel 1 + 1 and the Fakty newspaper, the largest national publication in Ukraine.

Until now, it was believed that such a deep-sea shark lives in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan, although even there it is very rare. How the "goblin" ended up in the Black Sea, where the salinity of the water is different, is not clear. For Crimea, the capture of a shark has become a serious emergency. An information ban was imposed on the topic, which only fueled interest in the monster ...

High officials of the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Situations confiscated the prey, the fishermen were forbidden to communicate with the press under the threat of serious administrative repressions.

Scientists have put forward a version that the caught copy of the goblin shark, not the largest of its kind, ended up in the waters of the Black Sea thanks to rich lovers of exotic fauna.

“Perhaps they were taken for a private aquarium. A lot of yachts enter Sevastopol and, most likely, she fell overboard, - believes Yulia Korneichuk, researcher at the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas.- Recently, mainly due to human activity, there has been a huge number of such “migrants”. Many species fall into an unnatural habitat for themselves and live ...

After two weeks of waiting, the Ukrainian authorities issued a categorical denial of the capture of a “mutant shark” near Sevastopol and expressed their “perplexity at the incessant appearance of publications on this topic.”

Personally instructed to refute the deputy for scientific work of the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas National Academy Sciences of Ukraine Oleksandr Boltachev. Through the government news agency UNIAN, he authoritatively stated that the monster shark in Crimea was a "duck".

- This fish was not caught in the Black Sea! Because such trawls are not currently used in the Black Sea. These are typical bottom trawls that are used on Far East Russia, - loudly asserted the deputy. director.

In fact, exactly the same "forbidden" bottom trawls are actively used today throughout the Azov-Black Sea basin.

In addition, for some reason, the scientist clarified that this shark "is not dangerous, because, firstly, it lives at great depths, and secondly, it does not reach large sizes."

The Serpent Returns

...The terrible jaws of the "goblin" guest are quite capable of tearing out the intestines of a tourist from the village of Ordzhonikidze. Although the locals claim that another victim was taken by their own Karadag monster.

Near the village and the elite resort of Koktebel is the famous nature reserve Kara-Dag: a phantasmagorical conglomeration of coastal cliffs and hundreds of underwater caves of an extinct volcano. In Soviet times, the zone was closed - special forces of the Navy were based here and tested secret equipment.

Naturally, all the disappearances of people in such a zone were also classified as "secret". But there is a description of the beginning of the twentieth century, made by another eyewitness, a famous writer Vsevolod Ivanov:"It was up to 30 meters long and as thick as a desk top when turned sideways, and the head - the size of an arm span - resembled a snake."

In August 1921, the Feodosiya city newspaper reported on the next coming of the “sea reptile”, urging them to remain calm and not to lose vigilance. The snake was unsuccessfully caught by a detachment of Red Army soldiers and employees of the Cheka. Koktebel resident Maximilian Voloshin told about the incident to his guest Mikhail Bulgakov. It is believed that it was this story that inspired Mikhail Afanasyevich the plot of the story "Fatal Eggs".

New photos of the 90s, which allegedly depict the Karadag monster, are kept former director of the reserve Petr Semenkov and researcher Vladimir Maltsev. Alas, scientists refuse to provide pictures and discuss the topic for some reason: they say, the topic is completely non-scientific.

At the same time, dolphins were thrown out, to which someone “chopped off” their stomachs with one bite. The width of the bite along the arc recorded by the inspection protocol was almost a meter! Representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian academies Sciences. But in the refrigerator of the reserve, unknown people turned off the light and the dolphin carcasses rotted ...

The storm washes away all traces

Perhaps this is a coincidence, but the next morning after the current attack by an unknown monster, an incredible storm broke out in the Eastern Crimea. The waves roared on the shore and carried everything that stood in their way into the sea.

With such a storm, any attempts to pursue the sea man-eater were excluded.

Only according to official data on the coast between Feodosia and Sudak, three people died, including a child. The fate of eight more people is unknown, their relatives turned to the police for help in the search.

The storm raged the most not far from Kara-Dag in the village of Novy Svet. The riot of nature seemed to be mixed with human insanity. The breakers knocked down, dragged under the water, but the holiday-makers with some maniacal persistence climbed into the sea, the excitement of which was four points.

In fact, they went to swim, realizing that they could die. The beach had to be blocked by a chain.

Meanwhile, reports of disappearances at sea continue to come in. In the Crimean headquarters of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, they declare the simultaneous disappearance of a 26-year-old Muscovite and a young resident of the Kiev region: both guys dived into the storm and did not swim out. They are looking for. Yesterday in Gurzuf, during a 5-point storm, another Russian died. The 44-year-old man went swimming and was unable to return to the rocky shore on his own. Before the eyes of the entire beach, it was smashed against boulders. Rescue sailors pulled the body ashore with a rope.

On Saturday, the 12th International TV and Film Forum "Together" began its work in Yalta. By tradition, the forum participants laid flowers at the monument to the Lady with the Dog on the embankment. Although from here to the surf line several hundred meters, the waves rose so high that the spray covered the guests and spectators at the monument with their heads.

The only one who dared to swim in the raging sea was an actor Alexander Mikhailov. The star of the Soviet movie hit “Love and Doves” was hit hard by the waves on the beach pebbles. He admits that it was only a miracle that he did not die.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nessie in the Black Sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apparently, this is one of the first mentions of the snake, for we are talking about the Janissaries, i.e., troops that could only be called into the Crimea in the Middle Ages, but no later than 1774, i.e. no later than the time of the conclusion of the Kuchuk-Kainarji peace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The beast from the depths confounds zoologists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Iliad, Homer mentions the wall that the Trojans and the goddess Athena erected to protect Hercules from sea ​​monster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E.F. Shnyukov

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

Opuk Serpent

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo - Opuk, meeting place with the Serpent

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

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

The last mystery of the Black Sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sergei Bagrov

Hello friends.

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

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

Someone calls it the Karadag snake, someone considers it to be an extinct reptile that has 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 mention of a strange creature that lives in the Black Sea appeared a very long time ago. The ancient Greeks composed legends about him that have survived to this day. The scholar Herodotus described it as a gigantic serpent with black scales, a horse's head, a long tail, and a crest on its back.

According to ancient legends, floating 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 a terrible place.

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

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

One of the ancient legends "Chershamba" tells about a serpentine place located near the current village of Shchebetovka (the old name is Otuz). According to legend, a large snake lived in a lowland overgrown with reeds, which (curled into a ball) could be confused with a haystack, and if anyone met her crawling, then her length was ten knees or more (a knee is a measure of length equal to 40-50 cm).

To get rid of this misfortune, the local khan specially ordered the Janissaries from Istanbul, who killed the snake, but it is no secret that offspring could remain from it.

Later references

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

Those eyes are opposite...

By decree of Nicholas, an expedition was sent to the Crimea to capture this reptile. The snake itself could not be caught, but an egg weighing 12 kilograms was found, and next to it were the remains of a giant tail. The egg was split, revealing an embryo with clear signs of its “dragon” affiliation. There are rumors that the egg is still stored 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 the Serdolikova Bay (Koktebel region), saw a ball of algae in the sea, which he did not pay attention to at first. special attention. However, after a while I noticed that the ball began to unravel and lengthen on its own, and as a result, it swam towards 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 in all directions.

Cases of attacks by an unknown creature on dolphins in the Black Sea are quite common.

In 1990, a team of fishermen, near the village of Ordzhonikidze, went to sea to check the nets. Checking one of the nets, the fishermen discovered its cliff, at the end of which a dolphin, entangled in its tail, dangled - the Black Sea bottlenose dolphin.

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

Frightened by what they saw, the fishermen, cutting 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 engaged in his favorite sport a few kilometers from the coast, something suddenly threw up his board, causing him to fall into the water. But what surprised him most of all was not this, but the fact that he had fallen on something large, solid and obviously alive.

Having come to his senses, 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 Bentos underwater laboratory, scientists noticed a blurry shadow across the hull of the submarine. Looking more closely, they realized that something huge was swimming near the porthole, resembling a snake in appearance.

It was not possible to photograph it either because of the resulting stupor, or because the creature, sensing something was wrong, quickly went to the depths.

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

According to her, while relaxing on Karadag with their friends, they watched the love games of two sea snakes at once. Huge white bodies with black backs meandered right at the foot of Karadag.

The observation lasted for several hours, and then ... her words simply 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 you? Do not try to capture it on video or photo?

I would probably run to Koktebel for a camera just for the sake of it.

Who are you, Blackie?

What is this animal anyway?

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

Lizard?

Could an ancient lizard of this size survive after the meteorite fall and the ensuing ice age, and exist 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 he had enough cave air, or maybe he has gills at his disposal, it’s hard to say.

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

Serpent?

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

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

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 connected precisely with hydrogen sulfide? In small quantities, it is found in the cells of our body and the body of animals and helps regulate life processes.

Well, just as 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 being formed, it is quite possible that voids could have formed under Karadag and in the nearby bottom layer. This area has been a nature reserve for a long time and is therefore poorly studied.

Here in these voids, and possibly entire networks of caves with huge galleries, life still unknown could well have been preserved. modern science. No wonder 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 tame an unknown little animal.

But seriously, as mentioned above, the area is poorly studied. Animals can be only a few individuals, and due to massive fishing with food, they have serious problems.

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

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

It is not known for certain whether snakes really exist or it is just 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!

Having beaten him to death with stones, they, following old grandmother's recipes, began to cook stew from him, grind the bones into powder for the preparation of 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 the local population. They examined the half-eaten 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.

To believe what is told or not is a purely personal matter. I do not pretend to be the source, therefore I ask you not to hit me hard with sticks. It is better to express your own opinion on this matter.

And that's all I have for today.

Sincerely, Sergey Drozdov.

P. S. If you have any questions after reading the article, feel free to ask in the comments.

P. P. S. You can find the topics that will be revealed in the near future at.

Ancient documents tell about the Black Sea dragon, nicknamed Blackie - either because he lives in the Black Sea, or because of the blackness of the skin (black in English is "black"). In the 20th century, it began to be called the Black Sea Nessie for its resemblance to the similar monster of Loch Ness.

We called him Porphyry

This huge sea animal is already described by the ancient Greeks, Romans and Byzantines. Back in the 5th century BC, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus spoke of a monster living in Pontus Euxinus (as the Black Sea was then called).

The monster was black, with a gigantic writhing body about 30 meters long, with clawed paws and an incredibly large mouth with two rows of frightening teeth. It is reported that the monster moved at tremendous speed, easily overtaking the fastest ships of the time.

And here is a quote from the surviving records of the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, who lived in the 6th century: “A vile monster was caught, which we called Porphyry. This beast tyrannized Byzantium and its environs for more than half a century. The monster, with its unexpected attack, sank many ships and people on them. Emperor Justinian ordered to catch the monster, but no one succeeded ...

How did it happen to catch the beast, I'll tell you. It happened that on that day the sea was absolutely calm, without waves. A large flock of dolphins swam near the mouth of the Euxine Pontus, but when they saw the monster, they scattered in different directions. Catching some, the monster immediately swallowed them, and then continued to pursue the rest, until, in excitement, it swam too close to the shore. Having got stuck near the coast in deep silt, the animal began to fight to get away, but could not budge. When the fishermen saw this, they gathered everyone local residents and they began to beat the monster with whatever they could, after which he, already dead, was dragged ashore with the help of ropes. Putting the beast on carts, they determined that its length was thirty cubits, and its width was ten (one cubit is approximately 45 centimeters.) ... With the death of the sea beast, the seaside population was delivered from many of the troubles it created.

Parallel course

Later, Turkish sailors repeatedly informed the Sultan about the attacks on the ships of the Black Sea monster. Russian sailors from the squadron of Admiral Ushakov also saw him, which was later reported to Emperor Nicholas I. He was very surprised and even equipped a special expedition to the Crimea to catch and study the unknown beast. The team of scientists did not find the monster itself, but found its huge egg, which weighed a little less than a pound.

A lizard-like fetus shone through the shell. The scientific discussions and research that had begun were stopped by the Crimean War that hit the peninsula. Where the egg went, no one knows.

The next few decades were reduced to rare stories of random eyewitnesses, isolated testimonies of fishermen and sailors about the monster, and a huge number of implausible stories. They decided that the rumbling iron steamers that appeared in the waters simply frightened the beast and he hid.

However, it was during the fighting of the First World War that the monster reappeared. This was reported by the captain of the German submarine, who saw a huge animal moving almost inaudibly under water parallel to their course. It was a full moon, and the officer clearly examined the monster through binoculars. The idea arose to shoot him from a bow gun, but he, fearing a collision with this hulk, ordered to urgently go into the depths ...

During World War II, the captain of another German submarine named Max Hegen also saw the monster, but in the afternoon. The naval officer was so amazed that he immediately reported this to Admiral Karl Dönitz.

Dog head!

The presence of a giant monster in the Black Sea was mentioned in his memoirs by the poet Maximilian Voloshin. He reported the meeting to Mikhail Bulgakov, who used this strange plot in his fantastic story The Fatal Eggs.

AT Soviet time many stories were told when a sea serpent attacked holidaymakers and even sank small ships, after which local fishermen for a long time afraid to go to sea. In the end, the authorities, tired of numerous requests and complaints, sent a company of Red Army soldiers to the Karadag region to find and destroy the monster, but by that time it had literally sunk into the water. Despite the fact that the targeted search for the creature turned up nothing, it continued to terrorize and frighten the local population from time to time, showing itself out of the water at the most unexpected moments.

In 1938, a Tatar fisherman from the village of Kuchuk-Lambat (now Kiparisnoye) faced a monster head-on among the rocks near the shore. The monster did not touch him, but the fisherman had apoplexy from fear. When the poor fellow was found, he repeated: “Dog head! Dog head! The fisherman died two months later.

From the notebook of Vsevolod Ivanov

In 1952, being near Feodosia, the famous Soviet prose writer Vsevolod Ivanov observed the Black Sea Blackie for more than half an hour. Admiring the frolicking dolphins, he suddenly noticed not far from them a strange, as it seemed to him, stone more than 10 meters in circumference, all covered with algae. He had never seen this before. Surprised by the find, he continued to observe, but the stone suddenly stirred, turning into a hideous monster of gigantic proportions. Here is what he later noted in his notebook: “This creature swam with undulating movements to the place where the dolphins were, that is, to the left side of the bay. It was large, very large, 25-30 meters, and as thick as the top of a desk, if you turn it sideways. It was half a meter or a meter under water, and I think it was flat. The lower part of it was apparently white, as far as the depth of the water would allow, and the upper part was dark brown, which led me to take it for a seaweed. The monster, writhing in the same way as swimming snakes, slowly swam towards the dolphins. They immediately fled. Not having caught up with the dolphins, and perhaps not even thinking of chasing them, the monster curled up into a ball, and the current carried him again to the right. It again began to look like a brown stone, overgrown with algae.

Carried to the middle of the bay, just to the place or approximately to the place where I saw it for the first time, the monster turned around again and, turning towards the dolphins, suddenly raised its head above the water. The head, the size of the span of the arms, was similar to that of a snake. For some reason I couldn't see my eye, from which we can conclude that they were small. After holding its head above the water for about two minutes - large drops of water flowed from it - the monster turned sharply, lowered its head into the water and quickly swam away behind the rocks that closed the Carnelian Bay ... "

In the 90s of the last century, local fishermen several times found dead dolphin carcasses with strange injuries in the nets. So, for example, the belly of one dolphin turned out to be completely torn out, and the width of the mutilation was at least one meter, and traces of huge teeth clearly loomed along the edge. None of the known marine predators, including sharks, could have come from mediterranean sea was unable to do so...

However, more accurate information regarding this sea monster has not yet been received, as a result of which the very existence of Blackie, despite numerous eyewitness accounts, is questioned by scientists. The only video footage of the creature supposedly showing something gigantic floating on the Black Sea is an amateur footage taken by the Gusarenko couple in the fall of 2009.