From the book...
Each year more than a hundred new species are discovered in the world’s oceans. It’s true that many of these new species are tiny (yet big enough to see without a microscope). But some newly discovered species are considerably larger. In fact, a new species larger than about six feet long is discovered every five years or so in the oceans...
We recognize that it would be easiest to sell the existence of Sea Serpents to the public and to science if it involved just one type of creature yet unrecognized. But the sea, lakes, and rivers are a diverse environment, and reality demands otherwise. Nature has never been known for its simplicity.
In producing this field guide, we have reviewed all past efforts at classifying the world’s marine and freshwater unknowns. The efforts of Antoon Oudemans, Rupert Gould, Ivan Sanderson, and Bernard Heuvelmans have been particularly influential. But while relying heavily on the work of others, we believe that our new fourteen-part classification system manages to introduce some new concepts that we feel best encompasses all the evidence available to date. Perhaps even more significant, ours is the first attempt at classifying not only sea serpents, but lake monsters as well, a topic that even our predecessors have largely shied away from.
