Summary: <p>This week we’re looking at the confusing and mysterious Canvey Island Monster! Is it really a monster? Is it just a fish, and if so what kind? And who’s telling the truth about what washed up when and where?</p> <p>The initial article in a Canvey Island newspaper, from <a href="http://canveyisland.org/page_id__164_path__0p2p13p75p.aspx">CanveyIsland.org</a>.</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-339" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/canveyislandmonsterclipping-134x300.png" alt="" width="134" height="300"></p> <p>The photo shown on many sites, with the implication or statement that it accompanied the article above:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-340" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/02-monster_s.jpg" alt="" width="275" height="198"></p> <p>The photo found by Garth Haslam of <a href="http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1954-august-11-canvey-island-monsters">Anomoly</a> (highly recommended reading at that link!). Note the enormous difference in font between this newspaper text and the clipping above:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-341" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Canvey_Monster_or_What_4709a2ddc35b6-300x94.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="94"></p> <p>A monkfish:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-342" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Monk_Fish_grande-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200"></p> <p>See also the <a href="http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2012/02/canvey-island-monster-non-cryptid.html">Frontiers of Zoology</a> page (and scroll way down for the full text of the “mermaid” description).</p> <p>Show transcript:</p> <p>Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.</p> <p>We’re getting closer and closer to Halloween. Things are getting weird. This week we’re going to learn about something called the Canvey Island Monster.</p> <p>Canvey is a seven square mile, or 18 ½ square km, island off the southern coast of England not far from London. It’s barely above sea level and on Jan 31, 1953, a tidal surge overtopped the sea wall in the night and drowned 58 people. Its marshes are home to lots of plants and animals, including some insects that at one point were thought extinct. It was also a fashionable vacation area in Victorian times and can claim lots of ghost, such as one story told by night fishermen who sometimes see a Viking standing on the mudflats staring out to sea. He supposedly drowned while waiting for his ship to return. But Canvey Island’s big claim to fame these days is something that happened late in the same year of the big flood, 1953.</p> <p>This is the story as reported pretty much everywhere. Some time in November of 1953, a body washed ashore. We don’t know exactly what day it was or who found it. It was lying in shallow water, and its finders pulled it farther ashore and covered it with seaweed, presumably so nothing would bother it and it wouldn’t wash back out with the tide. They went for the police, but the police had no idea what they were looking at. They called “the government” who sent two zoologists to identify t</p>
