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RESEARCH ARTICLE Ethnobiology and Conservation 2019, 8:12 (12 October 2019) doi:10.15451/ec2019-10-8.12-1-31 ISSN 2238­4782 ethnobioconservation.com Ethnobiology and Shifting Baselines: An Example Reinterpreting the British Isles’ Most Detailed Account of a Sea Serpent Sighting as Early Evidence for Pre­Plastic Entanglement of Basking Sharks Robert L. France ABSTRACT Recognizing shifts in baseline conditions is necessary for understanding long­term changes in populations as a prelude to implementing present­day management actions and setting future restoration goals for anthropogenically­altered marine ecosystems. Examining historical information contained within anecdotal accounts from non­traditional sources has previously proven useful in this regard. Herein, I scrutinize eyewitness accounts and accompanying illustrations published in nineteenth­century natural history journals which together comprise the most detailed description of sighting a purported sea serpent in the British Isles. I then reinterpret this anecdote (as well as complementary evidence offered by cryptozooloogists in its support obtained from other published journal articles of similarly described unidentified marine objects), suggesting it to provide one of the earliest reports of the non­lethal entanglement of an animal—in this case what I believe to have been a basking shark—in European waters. The present work suggests that the entanglement of sharks in fishing gear or hunting equipment has a much longer environmental history than is commonly believed, and provides another example of how ethnozoological studies can contribute toward recognizing past fishing­related pressures and baseline shifts in affected populations. Sharks, it seems, have been subjected to the impacts of not just direct fishery exploitation but also through becoming by­catch, long before the advent and widespread use of plastic in the middle of the twentieth century. Keywords: Scotland, 19th­Century; Sea Serpents; Non­Lethal Entanglement; Basking Sharks Ocean Research Group, Department of Plants, Food and Environmental Science, Dalhousie University, PO Box 550, Truro, Nova Scotia Canada, B2N 4P8, * Corresponding author. E­mail address: [email protected] INTRODUCTION practice and proscriptions being incomplete, conservation biology needs to expand its Ecosystems are very much shaped by historical perspective (Crumley 1994; Meine both past actions and corresponding societal 1999). For example, the abundance and attitudes (e.g. Cronon and McDonnell 1993; biodiversity of marine fauna in the north France 2007; Szabo and Hedl 2010). In Atlantic has been seriously altered through consequence, and in order to avoid its human actions (e.g. Lotze et al. 2006). Much 1 France 2019. Ethnobiology and Shifting Baselines: An Example Reinterpreting the British Isles’ Most Detailed Account of a Sea Serpent Sighting as Early Evidence for Pre­Plastic Entanglement of Basking Sharks Ethnobio Conserv 8:12 of the recognition for this has come from for example, suggested that folkloric tales of quantitative reanalyses of historical fishery sea monsters, in particular those from records. Mowat (1999), however, provides Scotland, home to a rich panoply of such equally valuable evidence for such declines (Hamilton 2003), may provide antecedent based on the qualitative (i.e. textural) information useful for interpreting historical examination of historical accounts from changes in biogeography. Re­examining the eyewitnesses. The scholarly process of “data” (sensu Paxton 2009) imbedded in studying dynamic relationships between historical anecdotes of sea monster people, biota, and their environment in both encounters can indeed yield ethnobiological present as well as past times falls within the insights (Paxton and Naish 2019). Not bailiwick of ethnobiology (Anderson et al. without reason, therefore, did Bolster 2011). (2012:91) state that “no marine One way for ethnobiology to contribute to environmental historian worth his or her salt the discipline of historical ecology is through can afford to ignore…nineteenth­century sea the use of anecdotal information, often serpents.” compiled from a wide variety of non­ In this paper, I explore another example standard sources (da Silva et al. 2014). of how the use of non­standard documentary Such information (e.g. Al­Abdulrazzak et al. sources can provide insight about historical 2012; McClenachan et al. 2012; Saenz­ baseline conditions for important species of Arroyo et al. 2005, 2006) can be used to marine fauna. Specifically, the aim of the help to address the conundrum facing investigation was to carefully parse conservation biologists posed by the “shifting eyewitness descriptions and to scrutinize baseline syndrome” (sensu Pauly 1995), illustrations of the sighting made from the wherein each generation successively vessel Leda in the Scottish Hebrides in 1872 redefines what is deemed “natural” of an unidentified marine object (UMO), according to its own temporally truncated identified at the time as being a sea serpent. view of an increasingly depauperate and I then, by way of the literary conceit of a biodiversity­impoverished world. hypothetical moot court case, examine and Understanding pre­anthropogenic baseline reinterpret this anecdote, suggesting it to conditions is deemed essential for designing provide some of the first evidence for the effective present­day management activities non­lethal pre­plastic entanglement of a as well as for setting future restoration goals marine animal in European waters. The in complex social­ecological systems (e.g. supposition is of course that: (a) sea Pitcher 2005; Narchi et al. 2013). serpents do not now, and never have, Ethnozoology entails the ecological, existed in the form commonly perceived in cognitive, and symbolic study of fauna modern cryptozoological lore; and (b) that (Alves and Albuquerque 2017), irrespective almost all sightings of sea serpents can be of whether those animals are real or explained by natural phenomena (France imaginary (e.g. Tidermann and Gosler 2010; 2019; Loxton and Prothero 2015). It is hoped Da Silva Vieira et al. 2017; Leclercq­Marx that this work will demonstrate the 2018). Then there are the intriguing in­ importance to conservation biology in between cases of actual animals recognizing the utility of such qualitative misinterpreted as mythological ones historical ethnobiology research, such as (McGowan­Hartman 2013). Parsons (2004), originally proposed by Paul (1995) and as 2 France 2019. Ethnobiology and Shifting Baselines: An Example Reinterpreting the British Isles’ Most Detailed Account of a Sea Serpent Sighting as Early Evidence for Pre­Plastic Entanglement of Basking Sharks Ethnobio Conserv 8:12 purposely reiterated by an anonymous 2019). In terms of the latter, conservation reviewer of the present manuscript. biology­themed, illation for an UMO, the During the nineteenth century, sea Leda “sea serpent” therefore serves as the serpents were considered by many, singular Old World equivalent to the much including a cadre of the world’s leading more famous Gloucester or “Great New natural scientists (Lyons 1999; McGowan­ England Sea Serpent” (O’Neill 1999); one Hartman 2013; France 2019), to be real set of sightings occurring near the beginning, animals meritorious of study. Today, with the and the other toward the end, of the exception of cryptozoologists who continue nineteenth­century, both I propose, being believe in such (Dendle 2006; Rossi 2016), anthropogenic by­products of the rapid and despite all evidence to the contrary (Loxton rapacious expansion of fishing and hunting and Prothero 2015; Williams 2015; France pressure on marine fauna during that time. 2019), the benefit of greater scientific knowledge has resulted in aquatic monsters being parsimoniously explained (i.e. MATERIAL AND METHODS “Occam’s Razor” – Das 2009) by either known and at­the­time unrecognized animals The Leda Account, its Times and (Brongersma 1968; Paxton and Holland Significance 2005; Paxton et al. 2005; Brink­Roby 2008; Woodley et al. 2011; Galbreath 2015), Throughout the nineteenth century, and natural phenomena (Lehn 1979; Lehan and during the Victorian Age in particular, middle­ Schroeder 1981; Binns 1984), or and upper­class Britons occupied their anthropogenic accretions (France 2016a,b, leisure by enthusiastically engaging in 2017, 2018, 2019). natural history pursuits. Naturalist social There is a good case to be made for clubs and avocational societies flourished, focusing in on the particulars of the 1872 lecture series were frequent, and trips to the Leda incident, as it has been referred to as countryside and seashore for collecting being the “most detailed account of a sea specimens were de rigueur. There was serpent encounter” in the British Isles hardly a drawing­room that did not contain a (Harrison 2001:153). Indeed, of all the curiosity cabinet, fern­case, shell collection, hundreds of reports about sea serpents from or live aquarium in which to display the Europe (Oudemans 1892; Heuvelmans results of one’s personal gleanings and 1968), that pertaining to the Leda encounter study (Barber 1980; Mason 2017). Natural comes closest, in terms of the number and history became an obsession, with books nature of the eyewitness observations, to about such outselling novels from the likes of matching those for the ”Gloucester Sea Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, and Hardy in the Serpent” of New England and New York latter decades of the century. (Soini 2010), which remains the most Imagine

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