Believing in Things

During the last five decades the number of men of solid reputation and standing (including some speaking for commercial and scientific institutions) who are willing to be at least open-minded about the sea serpent has steadily grown. And it is very important to fix in one’s mind that these men use the term “sea serpent” with great reluctance and merely as a label, since this happens to be the established name. None of them is willing to believe in a real “serpent,” that is, in a large marine snake (beyond those sea snakes of the Indian Ocean which are in zoology books and aquaria). They all use “sea serpent” to mean something in the seas which is in all probability a large animal, undiscovered and unknown, and probably even of mammalian nature. Willy Ley, The Lungfish, the Dodo, and the Unicorn, pp. 99-100 New York: The Viking Press, 1948.