‘People have found monsters?’ Lopez asked, prodding the fire with a stick.
‘Sure they have,’ Dana replied. ‘It happens surprisingly often, believe it or not. Scientists working in remote areas on unrelated projects hear about local legends of creatures out in the wild, so in their spare time they go wandering about looking for them.’
‘Such as?’ Ethan challenged.
‘Well,’ Proctor said, ‘there are two main types: living fossils, animals believed to have been extinct that are later found: and then there are species believed to be the product of myth that then turn out to be either real or based on real observations of undiscovered species.’
‘Probably the most famous living fossil in history is the coelacanth,’ Dana Ford explained. ‘It’s a large fish, fossils of which had been found fairly regularly dating back some three hundred and sixty million years. Other, more recent fossils revealed later species some eighty million years old. But nothing had been found dating after the extinction of the dinosaurs during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, so quite understandably science believed the species to have died out.’
‘Until 1938,’ Proctor said, ‘when one was found swimming happily along off the coast of South Africa. It wasn’t until 1998 that a live specimen was actually caught, off Indonesia. Point is, these things are quite large and have been present off the East African coast for the past sixty-five million years, yet we’ve only just caught a live specimen. Think what else could be out there. Seventy-five per cent of our planet is ocean, and the same percentage of that ocean is utterly unknown to us. We have absolutely no idea what’s down there.’
Ethan shrugged.
‘Finding a fish isn’t exactly going to rock the world, Proctor,’ he said.
Dana Ford smiled faintly and set her mug down at her feet as she wrapped her arms around her knees and leaned forward, her face flickering in the snapping light of the fire.
‘There is a place, out in the Pacific Ocean, west of the southern tip of South America, where in the sixties the United States Navy laid an array of hydrophones to monitor the passing of Soviet submarines. The network was called SOSUS, an acronym for Sound Surveillance System. The phones lie far below the ocean surface in what’s known as the “deep sound channel”, where temperature and pressure allow sound waves to keep traveling and not become scattered.’ Dana leaned forward even further, her eyes fixed on Ethan’s. ‘In 1997 the sensors detected a sound that freaked out just about everybody who ever heard it. The varying frequency of the call bore the hallmark of a marine animal and was confirmed as a biological species by marine biologists who examined the recording. The call rose rapidly in frequency over a period of one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be detected on multiple sensors.’
Lopez raised an eyebrow. ‘So?’
‘The sensors were more than five thousand kilometres apart,’ Dana replied. ‘The frequency of the sound means that the living creature that made the call would possess a mass five times greater than that of the blue whale.’
A silence descended around the camp as everybody pictured in their mind’s eye a creature that would dwarf even the largest of the dinosaurs.
‘It’s not the only time it’s happened,’ Proctor confirmed. ‘The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have even given names to the occasional but disturbing sounds they have detected, calling them things like Train, Whistle, Upsweep and Slow Down. Upsweep turned out to be an undersea volcano. But the 1997 sound was confirmed as biological, and they named it the Bloop. Likewise, Slow Down was recorded in the same area as the Bloop, lasted for seven minutes and was powerful enough to be detected on sensors two thousand kilometres apart.’
‘Every other possible cause of the noises has been eliminated,’ Dana continued. ‘Ice floes calving in Antarctica, submarine earthquakes, volcanoes and man-made events. Whatever made those noises is alive and five times larger than a blue whale, and it’s living in the deep ocean right now.’
Proctor stared into the flames as he spoke.
‘Sailors from around the world have reported tales of huge monsters of the deep for thousands of years. For the most part it was always dismissed as the effects of embellishment and alcohol, but those same sailors would also speak of rogue waves a hundred feet high that would rear up and swallow vessels whole. Science dismissed those tales too, until an orbiting satellite detected rogue waves all across the world’s oceans and large vessels started filming their encounters with them.’
Ethan, mesmerised by the tales, looked at Dana.
‘So you’re saying that the Kraken might actually exist?’
‘No,’ Dana smiled. ‘We’re saying that sailors’ tales of a gigantic sea creature able to take down large vessels were born of encounters with something very real. Dead giant squid have been washed ashore that were sixty feet long, but there is no theoretical limit to the maximum size for a cephalopod.’
Kurt Agry snorted as he leaned back against his bergen and swilled a mouthful of coffee around his mouth.
‘Big fish in the vastness of the ocean is a bit different to a ten-foot-tall ape in the mountains of Idaho,’ he said. ‘People have been looking for sasquatch for decades, yet nobody has ever found a single bone, let alone solid evidence of its existence.’
Dana Ford rocked her head from side to side as the soldier spoke and then casually wafted his comments aside with a swipe from one hand.
‘Same old story,’ she said. ‘No evidence, so therefore it can’t be true. But have you ever thought about it for a moment, about what people are trying to find out here? For a start, it’s likely that we’re looking at a fairly small population living in the largest wilderness anywhere on earth.’
‘The USA?’ Lopez asked in surprise. ‘I thought the largest wilderness would be Africa or something.’
‘So do most people,’ Proctor said, ‘but in fact in this country we have the greatest proportion of land classed as wilderness in the world, with most of it entirely unoccupied. And where we’re sitting, the Gospel Hump Wilderness, is the largest continuous tract of forest in all of North America. That’s more than enough room for a population to live virtually unobserved for millennia.’
‘A small population would not have enough genetic diversity to survive,’ Lopez pointed out as she warmed her hands near the fire. ‘I’ve read about it. Without enough variability, breeding becomes impossible and the species goes extinct.’
‘Absolutely true,’ Dana replied. ‘And how many do you need to maintain a healthy population?’
Lopez blinked. ‘I don’t know. A few hundred?’
‘Thirty or so,’ Proctor replied with a smile that was surprisingly bright in the firelight, ‘provided those thirty individuals come from a varied enough pool themselves. There are probably thirty to forty Amur leopards living out in the snowfields of Siberia. They rarely meet, and breed even less, but they’re considered surprisingly genetically healthy. Large numbers are not required, just the genetic diversity itself.’
‘No bones or remains have been found,’ Ethan challenged. ‘Odd, if this species of animal has been living here for tens of thousands of years.’
‘How often do people find bear remains?’ Dana replied. ‘Not that often, given the large numbers of bears living out here. In the wild a large carcass can be completely consumed within five to seven days, even less in warm weather. Carnivorous scavengers break up the larger bones and chunks of flesh, birds and small mammals strip the smaller remains and bacterial action breaks down the rest. That’s without the tendency of many species to find a hiding place in which to curl up and die, if the moment of their passing is not due to an accident or predation. They literally find somewhere they won’t be disturbed and die there completely concealed.’