The remains of a mysterious orange seabeast has confounded experts after being found washing up on a UK beach.
Gregg Jenkinson, 36, and his son, Tyler, were holidaying in Scotland when they discovered the bizarre creature in Keiss, Caithness.
He said: “We were up there on holiday, driving to John O’Groats, and on the way we were just exploring harbours because they are beautiful.
“We stumbled upon this one, so went down to take a look. My son spotted it first – he said ‘look, an octopus tentacle’ as that’s what it looked like from a distance.
“As we got closer, we could clearly see it was a fish, but no idea what sort. It looked kind of fatty and it was when we touched it with a stick. I felt intrigued as it’s something you never see in Stoke-on-Trent where we are from.”
Mr Jenkinson said the mysterious creature was around three feet from top to tail.
Images taken of the beast shows it has a long, orange body, stained black in places, with no obvious face or other identifying features.
Looking for answers, Gregg shared the video on his DroneHub Facebook page, where he showcases his aerial photography.
One viewer likened it to the chestburster, a creature which fatally bursts out of John Hurt’s torso in the 1979 horror film, Alien.
“It’s a male water haggis,” joked another.
Serious suggestions, meanwhile, included a koi, a goldfish, a porpoise, and a whale foetus.
One person commented: “I am a fisherman, and I can tell you categorically: I’ve no idea.”
Even the experts at the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) have also struggled to identify the bizarre creature.
Project manager Rob Deaville said: “Looks like the decomposed remains of some kind of small cetacean to me.
“I can see a folded over dorsal fin and the maxilla of the skull protruding from the melon/head at the front. As to species, that’s difficult to say from this alone.”
Nick Davison, who heads up Scottish strandings for CSIP, was similarly puzzled.
He said: “I agree with Rob – it would appear to be the remains of a small cetacean, but we’d need better images to be sure.
“We did have a common dolphin about a mile south of the harbour the day before, but this isn’t that animal.”
Gregg still isn’t sure what he found – but he’s got an idea of how it got there.
“Nobody is really sure,” he said. “But this was just after Scotland was hit by the storm, so it had obviously been washed up on the stony beach from that.”
