Chessie

I spent a weekend in Calvert County, Maryland recently. I have been there many times and find it to be a fascinating area. I am especially drawn to the Calvert Cliffs which hold vast deposits of fossilized fauna from the Miocene epoch (about 23–5 million years ago). Well, that and Chessie, the Chesapeake Bay Monster. But more on Chessie later. Let's talk fossils first. 

Calvert Cliffs Fossils

According to the website fossilguy.com:

The fossil bearing Calvert Cliffs of Maryland is part of a large collection of fossiliferous exposures, called the Chesapeake Group. The Chesapeake Group encompasses exposures around the Chesapeake Bay, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. These exposures were created by sediment accumulation in the Salisbury Embayment, an area encompassing the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia coastal plains which is often covered by the ocean (Kent, 1994, p.111). 

The Calvert Cliffs run for roughly 24 miles from near Chesapeake Beach to Drum Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland in Calvert County. These cliffs contain an amazing Miocene fauna. More than 600 species of fossil plants and animals have been found here (Glaser, 1979, p.56). Among these countless species, are a wide variety of marine animals such as porpoises, whales, seals, sea turtles, sea cows, and crocodiles. Also, parts of land mammals are occasionally found, the most common being the peccary; a pig like animal. However, more interesting creatures have been found, such as mastodons, wooly rhinos, and camels. Also, the cliffs boast an extremely diverse sea life, from countless genera of sharks and rays (including C. megalodon), to many kinds of fish. Most of these fossils are found as bone fragments, and isolated teeth.

Around this time in the early to middle Miocene, the Salisbury Embayment was a shallow sea. It is thought to have been used as a calving ground for many species of early dolphins and whales. Since there were so many marine mammals here, the largest of prehistoric sharks, the Megatooth sharks (including C. megalodon), spent a lot of time feeding here. The climate was warmer than it is now, so on the shore, a diversity of plants grew here, from Cyprus trees to Oak trees.

https://www.fossilguy.com/sites/calvert/index.htm

Fossil Hunting

There are several beaches in Calvert County ideal for fossil hunting. In fact, over the years, I have found thousands of shark, crocodile, and porpoise teeth; ray dental plates; whale bones, including ear bones; and various other fossils.

Various fossils I have found along the shores of the Calvert Cliffs.

In at least one of the beaches, locally known as Brownie’s Beach, almost every scoop into the sand at the edge of the water will yield a dozen or more fossils. The cliffs themselves (extremely dangerous to dig in!), have given up entire dolphin skulls and other large finds.

It is an understatement to say that I love coming to this area to hunt fossils! That’s not all. I love catching (and later steaming and eating) blue crabs; I enjoy kayaking in the Chesapeake Bay or taking a boat ride along the tidal Patuxent. Those things are all great, but even better are the tales of Chessie, the Chesapeake Bay Monster.

Chessie Sightings

Chessie is serpent-like in appearance, and between twenty-five and forty  feet in length. Some reports state that Chessie has flippers attached to its body, while other accounts indicate that Chessie has a featureless body. Some have claimed that the movements of the animal in the water resembles a sine curve. 

Chessie reports have been around since at least the 1800s, but Chessie’s heyday was undoubtedly the late-1970s and the early-1980s. In fact, Chessie would become a household name around the bay, and received attention from newspapers nationwide. In 1978, by the month of June, about thirty people had reportedly witnessed some sort of long creature in the bay.1One of the most often-cited reports occurred in 1978 when Donald Kyker and his neighbors reportedly saw four creatures that match Chessie descriptions about seventy-five yards from shore.2

On Memorial Day, 1982, video evidence for the existence of the Chesapeake Bay Monster was obtained by Robert Frew. Frew captured about five minutes of film, two of which show a snake-like creature approximately thirty feet in length. At the request of Mike Frizzell of the Enigma Project, who had been engaged in the study and investigation of the Chessie phenomenon, scientists from the Smithsonian Institute viewed the tape. Unsurprisingly, they were intrigued, but very noncommittal in reaching conclusions. Later, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory graphically enhanced the footage. Unfortunately, though, funding for the project dried up and work on the tape ceased.3

A Chessie drawing by the Richmond Times Dispatch staff (1980).

What is the Chesapeake Bay Monster?

Dr. Joseph Cooney, former director of the University of Maryland’s marine biology laboratory on Solomon’s Island, spoke about Chessie in a 1978 interview. Cooney said that he does not doubt that folks are spotting something in the Chesapeake Bay. However, he said the existence of a cryptid is highly unlikely. Instead, he prefers a mundane explanation such as otters or porpoises causing the sightings.4 In the same article, former director of the Calvert Marine Museum, Dr. Ralph Eshelman, had an interesting take on the Chessie phenomenon. He said that some sightings might actually be rays: “I’ve seen 50 rays with their tails raised stirring up a boil in the water and it looks very strange.”5

Perhaps the most reasonable theory to explain sightings of mysterious creatures in the Chesapeake, is to blame wayward manatees. Although Florida is their home, manatees do frequent the Chesapeake fairly regularly during the summer months and feed on the bay's abundance of aquatic grasses. Manatees, also called sea cows, eat up to 10 percent of their body weight in a day.

Manatees

A manatee named Chessie visited the Chesapeake Bay several times over two decades; the first recorded sighting took place in 1994. The manatee had a distinctive scar, over twelve inches in length, which ran along its left side making it easy to identify. Biologists captured Chessie and outfitted it a radio transmitter; the device enabled the biologists to track its movements. Folks feared Chessie had died after the last sighting occurred in Virginia waters in 2001. However, after a lengthy absence, Chessie reappeared in Calvert County, Maryland in 2011.6

As recently as July 2015, witnesses spotted a manatee in southern Maryland. The sighting occurred in St. Mary’s County, near St. George Island. Eyewitnesses posted pictures of the manatee online and several local media outlets covered the story.7

I wrote about the Chesapeake Bay Monster in my books People are Seeing Something: A Survey of Lake Monsters in the United States and Canada, Detours Into the Paranormal: Atlantic City Road Trip, and Strange Tales from Virginia's Foothills to the Coast. I hope you’ll read more in the books! 

Notes

1. Richard Lyons. “Chessie Sightings Are a Monster of a Claim.” St. Petersburg Times, October 21, 1978.

2. Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe. The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. (New York, N.Y.: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2003).

3. Matthew Lake. “Bizarre Beasts.” In Weird Maryland: Your Travel Guide to Maryland's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, edited by Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran. (New York: Sterling Pub., 2006), 68-69.

4. Lyons, “Chessie Sightings Are a Monster of a Claim.”

5. Ibid.

6.http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-07-15/features/bs-gr-manatee-20110715_1_florida-manatee-chessie-manatee-first 

7.http://wtop.com/maryland/2015/07/manatee-spotted-in-marylands-chesapeake-bay/

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