Sea Bishop

This is a sea monster, a particular type of fish-man also known as the Sea Monk, which answers to a wide variety of descriptions.

Around the middle of the sixteenth century, a French naturalist, Guillaume Rondelet, recounts that, following a great storm, a specimen of the Sea Bishop was caught in the Norwegian Sea. According to his description, it possesses a deformed human face, a shaved and smooth head, and a monk’s hood over its shoulders. It has two long fins as upper limbs and an enormous tail.

Konrad von Gesner, another naturalist of the same century, describes it as a creature of fierce expression, with two bodies, long ears, human arms, and the body of a fish.

The maritime accounts of the era report sightings of this monster with human features, and it is believed that conviction in its existence persisted until the nineteenth century.