You’ve seen the screenshots. In the middle of the freezing, dark waters near Antarctica, a massive, white-water wake churns up from the depths. It looks like a giant squid. Or maybe a plesiosaur that somehow survived the extinction event 66 million years ago. For a few months back in 2016, the google earth sea monster was the only thing the internet wanted to talk about. It was creepy. It was huge. And honestly, it looked totally real if you didn't know how satellite imagery actually works.
The coordinates were $63^{\circ} 2'56.73"S$ $60^{\circ}57'32.38"W$. If you plug those into Google Earth today, you might still see the ghost of the "beast." But what’s wild is how many people—including some legitimate news outlets—jumped straight to Cthulhu instead of looking at a nautical chart.
Why the Internet Lost Its Mind Over a Rock
People love a good mystery. When a UFO enthusiast named Scott C. Waring posted about a 120-meter-long creature swimming off the coast of Deception Island, the story went nuclear. He estimated the size based on the Google Earth ruler tool. 120 meters. That’s longer than a football field. For context, a Giant Squid (Architeuthis dux) only gets to about 12 or 14 meters. We are talking about something ten times larger than the biggest known invertebrate on Earth.
It’s easy to get sucked in. When you zoom in on those specific coordinates, you see a massive disturbance. It’s not just a speck; it’s a distinct, V-shaped wake with a dark mass in the center. In the context of the vast, empty Southern Ocean, it looks like something is moving—fast.
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But here is the thing about the ocean: it's incredibly good at tricking the human eye, especially when viewed from space. Pareidolia is a hell of a drug. We want to see monsters. We want to believe the "The Bloop" was a sentient creature and not just an icequake. So, when a weird shape appears near a place called Deception Island, of all things, the narrative writes itself.
The Boring Truth: Sail Rock
Biologists and geologists didn't take long to chime in, though their voices were a bit quieter than the viral headlines. The google earth sea monster isn't a monster. It’s a rock. Specifically, it is Sail Rock.
Sail Rock is a literal pillar of basalt sticking out of the water. It’s about 30 meters high. If you look at a standard maritime chart of the South Shetland Islands, Sail Rock is right there. It’s a known navigational hazard. It doesn't move. It doesn't eat whales. It just sits there being a rock.
How Satellites Create "Monsters"
Why did it look like it was swimming? That’s the tech side of things. Google Earth isn't a live video feed. It’s a stitched-together quilt of photos taken at different times, often with different lighting and sea states.
When waves hit a stationary object like Sail Rock, they create a "wake" even if the object isn't moving. Think about a rock in a fast-moving river. The water moves around it, creating foam and ripples. From a satellite's perspective, that white foam looks exactly like the splash a giant creature would make while breaching or swimming near the surface.
Also, the "dark mass" people saw was just the rock itself. Because the satellite image was captured at an angle, and the water around the Antarctic is notoriously choppy, the combination of the rock’s shadow and the breaking surf created the perfect optical illusion of a tail or a fin.
Other Famous "Creatures" Found on Google Maps
This wasn't the first time we’ve been fooled, and it won't be the last. The google earth sea monster has several cousins.
- The Oke Bay Serpent: In New Zealand, a long, thin wake was spotted that looked like a massive snake. Turns out? It was the wake of a small boat, but the boat itself was filtered out or moved between image frames, leaving only the trail behind.
- The Loch Ness Satellite Image: In 2014, a "creature" was spotted in Loch Ness. It looked like a giant catfish or a boat. Apple Maps users went wild. It was eventually debunked as the wake of a boat, where the boat's hull was partially obscured by "stitching" artifacts in the map software.
- The Crabzilla of Whitstable: A photo circulated showing a 50-foot crab lurking in a British harbor. This one was a blatant Photoshop job that people wanted to believe was a Google Earth discovery.
The Tech Behind the Glitch
To understand why these "monsters" appear, you have to understand how companies like Maxar or Airbus (who provide the imagery for Google) process data. They use something called "orthorectification." Basically, they take a flat photo and stretch it over a 3D model of the Earth's terrain.
When you do this with water, things get weird. Water is moving. Satellites take images in "strips." If a boat moves across the frame while the satellite is scanning, the boat might disappear, but its wake—which covers a larger area and moves slower—stays in the shot. This creates "ghost" wakes that look like they belong to invisible monsters.
In the case of the google earth sea monster at Sail Rock, the rock is so small and the waves are so big that the automated processing software sometimes struggles to render the edge between "solid ground" and "moving liquid." The result is a blurred, monstrous shape that looks like it's kicking up a storm.
Why We Keep Looking
Ocean exploration is lagging. We’ve mapped more of the Moon and Mars than we have the deep sea floor. That’s a fact. When we look at Google Earth, we’re staring at the 70% of our planet that remains a total mystery.
So, when a weird shape pops up near Antarctica, our brains fill in the gaps with the legends we know. Kraken. Megalodon. Godzilla. It’s more fun than a basalt pillar. But the reality of Deception Island is actually cooler than a fake monster. It’s a flooded caldera of an active volcano. You can literally sail a boat into the middle of a volcano there. That’s way more interesting than a 100-meter squid that would probably collapse under its own weight anyway.
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Fact-Checking Your Own Discoveries
If you find something weird on Google Earth, don't call the tabloids yet. You can actually verify this stuff yourself.
First, check the coordinates on multiple platforms. Does it look the same on Bing Maps or Apple Maps? Usually, it won't, because they use different satellite passes. If the "monster" is gone in a photo taken six months later, it was either a boat, a whale, or a glitch.
Second, look for "stitching" lines. If you see a straight line where the color of the water changes, you’re looking at two different photos joined together. Anything on that seam is going to look distorted.
Third, use a bathymetric map. If your "sea monster" is sitting exactly where a charted rock or shallow reef is located, you’ve found a rock. Sorry.
Actionable Steps for Amateur Map Explorers
If you're serious about finding weird stuff on Google Earth, stop looking for "monsters" and start looking for actual anomalies that scientists care about.
- Look for Archaeological Sites: People have actually found lost Roman villas and ancient settlements by looking at crop marks in fields from satellite views.
- Monitor Environmental Change: Use the "Historical Imagery" tool (the little clock icon in Google Earth Pro on desktop). You can watch glaciers retreat or see how a coastline has shifted over the last 30 years.
- Check the "New" Discoveries: Scientists recently used satellite imagery to find new colonies of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica by looking for guano stains on the ice. That’s a real "monster" discovery—just a lot smellier.
- Verify via Nautical Charts: Use a site like OpenSeaMap to cross-reference any weird ocean sightings. If there's a dot on the chart at your coordinates, it’s a permanent fixture like a buoy, a rock, or a wreck.
The google earth sea monster might have been a bust, but the tool itself is basically a superpower. We are the first generation of humans who can zoom in on almost any square inch of the planet from our couches. Use it to find something real. The actual ocean is plenty weird without us making up giant squids.