Look! Its a whale carcass! NO! It's a GIANT SQUID! errrr WAIT its a 200 foot diameter OCTOPUS! oh wait, nevermind, its just whale blubber like we thought......

        

 St. Augustine is a fantastic place that really epitomizes the “Old Florida” feel with their unique tourist attractions. As the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States at more than 457 years old it has WAY more than its fair share of stories, both factually accurate and otherwise. Maybe we will get to some others another day, but for now we focus on THE BLOB of St. Augustine, or the “St. Augustine Sea Monster” or “Giant Octopus in St. Augustine” or whatever you want to call it. This story from the late 1800s, along with photographic evidence has proven to be an enduring story in cryptozoology, (but curiously not so much for St. Augustine,more on that at the end) and has made a much larger splash that it probably ever should have. 

In the fall of 1896 two young men riding bicycles along the beach south of St. Augustine ran across what they assumed was a rather large carcass from some sort of whale. Being dutiful young men they immediately reported the whale carcass to Dr. Dewitt Webb, a local physician who was also active in the local Historic and Scientific societies. Since he assumed it was just a whale carcass he thought little of it, although he did have plans to recover parts of it for preservation. When Webb eventually made it out to examine the carcass he came to the conclusion that it was not a whale, but instead a giant squid or octopus, sans arms of course. Webb, ever the amateur naturalist dutifully wrote letters to Scientific organizations and individual scientists informing them of his discovery and making note of its record breaking size and positing that it is perhaps a new species?

As with any small town story invvolving a monster you have the one character with somewhat pure intentions, and then you have another local character, who may be more buisness minded, and perhaps more colorful. Dr. Dewitt Webb was a well to do member of the community and member of the Historical and scientific socities. on the other end of the spectrum was Dr. Grant who owned a local hotel. He immediatly began to make plans to sell rent people carraiges who wanted to go see the creature, and also plans to preserve the creature. While Dr. Webb the general practioner and amatuer historian and zoologist tread softly and attempted to notify scientists of the discovery, the medical doctor turned buisness owner was sending word to newspapers and making plans to charge a small fee to let people see the carcass. This put Dr. Grant and Dr. Webb at odds with one another, and that story has been handled better elsewhere. 

One of the Scientists that was notified by Dr. Webb was Addison Emery Verrill, a professor of Zoology at Yale and expert in cephalapods. Upod hearing descriptions from Webb, Verrill, without examing the carcass himself, seeing photos or even examining a sample of the body, published Webb’s report stating he thought it was more likely a squid, not an octopus. Later when he saw a photo of the carcass he backpeddled to an octopus. Webb and Verrill continued to correspond and publish more detailed descriptions of the so called octopus, including tentacle lengths (even though Webb himself had not even seen any supposed tentacles before they were “Lost”.) As one in these situations is sometimes apt to do, Verrill leapt before he looked. Once he finally recieved a sample of the creature from Webb he couldnt back peddle off of his “Octopus/squid” theory fast enough. The material sent to Verrill looked nothing like what an octupus should look like under a microscope, instead, it looked like whale blubber. While Verrill tried to carefully backpedal and sooth his bruised reputation, a Smithsonian Scientist, Frederick Lucas, had this to say “The Substance looks like blubber, smells like blubber, it is blubber. Nothing more or less. The imaginitive eye of the untrained observer can see much that is not visible to anyone else.” As one can imagine, the story quickly faded leaving Verrill to lick his academic wounds.

But that certainly is not the end of the story, otherwise we would not be here. The story saw some revival in the 1950s and 1960s with Dr. Joseph Gennarro and Forrest G. Wood, ressurected the story. Wood was the curator at Marineland and Gennarro was a scientist looking for octopus for an experiment he was working on and contacted Wood figuring that Marineland, Where Wood was working at the time, may be able to provide them. They came across a newspaper clipping about the Gian octopus supposedly found in St. Augustine, which is actually very near to where Marineland sits as well. The two became interested in the supposed creature and began to corresspond about it and conduct their own research on samples that they were able to procure.  By 1971 they published an article about the creature in a publication called “Natural Science” claiming that the St. Augustine Monster, or “Blob” was the remains of a Giant Octopus that would have been 200 FEET in diameter. The article was considered by many people to be a joke, but it got the attention of Cryptozoology enthusiasts. Both Gennaro and Wood would go on to beome involved in the cryptozoological world to varying degrees.  Because of their interest and efforts, a story that should have laid laregley dormant was revived and found new life. 

For the following 30 years the St. Augustine Blob saw mention in several TV shows about the unkown, not to mention books, news articles, etc. Often being cited as an example of how much unknown there is in the world. In 2003 that story unraveled. A blob, that was nearly identical to the St. Augustine Blob washed ashore in Chile. Scientists at the University of South Florida wasted no time and procured samples, and tested them against samples from The St.Augustine Blob, and sampels from other blobs in Bermuda, Nantucket, Massachusetts and Tasmania. All the samples that allowed for DNA retrival showed the same result. All the samples looked the same under a microscope as well, regardless of whetehr DNA could be retrieved. So what were they? Giant Squid? Octopus? Space Alien? None of the above. They were all the remains of whales. Mostl likely the remains of the Spermacetti tank in a Sperm Whales head. A somewhat similtaneously not interesting, and interesting  Explanation after all. 

The moral of the story? The two young men who originally discovered the blob, the ones who should have been most likely to identify it wrong due their youth and lack of education on the topics at hand, were actually right all along. Sometimes, the simple answer is the correct one all along. 

So what did I mean when I said that the Blob story has not really been that big of a deal in St. Augustine? Just that, The town capitlizes on history, pirates, ghosts, etc in a BIG way. I moved to St. Augustine in 2008 as an undergrad at Flagler College and stayed there until 2015 When I started my career as a teacher. In all my time there I never encountered anyone trying to capitalize on the story, or even really telling it. Who knows, maybe the people of St. Augustine arent that excited by Sea monsters, but much more excited by pirates, ghosts and history? Maybe someday there will be a rennasiance for the St. Augustine Blob monster, maybe not, who knows?

*This Post relied heavily on the research conducted by David Goudsword for his book “Sun, Sand and Sea Serpents” availible at amazon.com and anywhere else fine cryptid themed books are sold.