Dennis Bassboss
Member
What is a Steller's sea cow, you might ask?? Well the real question should be what was a Steller's sea cow, because the lastsea cow was seen in 1767. How did this happen? Once again man!
In 1741 ,Vitus J. Bering's last Arctic expedition was shipwrecked. The sailors saw what they thought were mermaids.As they got closer, they realized that the grey-pink mammals were not cute little mermaids but were 10 metres long and weighed seven tonnes. They were named Steller's sea cows by Georg Steller
( Georg...not our George
) the expedition doctor. He was also the only naturalist to see them alive. They swam like seals and ate seaweed that grew in shallow water. Unfortunately, this feeding habit brought them very close to sailors' harpoons.
The hungry sailors harpooned and brought ashore a sea cow. The red meat was delicious and had a peculiar property of doubling in size when cooked. When melted down, the fat turned into a clear liquid that taste like allmond oil and burned with a smokeless, odourless flame.
Eventually Captain Bering's crew returned home with news of this great new food source. Soon enough, other ships sailed the same waters to hunt for sea cows and fill their ships with meat. One sea cow could feed 30 men for a month, but for every sea cow killed and brought on board, four were wounded and left to die in the ocean. As a result, by 1767 the entire sea cow population had disappeared.
''Text by Bruno Gattuso''
In 1741 ,Vitus J. Bering's last Arctic expedition was shipwrecked. The sailors saw what they thought were mermaids.As they got closer, they realized that the grey-pink mammals were not cute little mermaids but were 10 metres long and weighed seven tonnes. They were named Steller's sea cows by Georg Steller
( Georg...not our George
) the expedition doctor. He was also the only naturalist to see them alive. They swam like seals and ate seaweed that grew in shallow water. Unfortunately, this feeding habit brought them very close to sailors' harpoons.The hungry sailors harpooned and brought ashore a sea cow. The red meat was delicious and had a peculiar property of doubling in size when cooked. When melted down, the fat turned into a clear liquid that taste like allmond oil and burned with a smokeless, odourless flame.
Eventually Captain Bering's crew returned home with news of this great new food source. Soon enough, other ships sailed the same waters to hunt for sea cows and fill their ships with meat. One sea cow could feed 30 men for a month, but for every sea cow killed and brought on board, four were wounded and left to die in the ocean. As a result, by 1767 the entire sea cow population had disappeared.
''Text by Bruno Gattuso''
