A long-running sea monster tale from South Africa appears to have a far less mysterious explanation. The creature, later nicknamed Trunko, was reportedly seen off Margate in 1924, where witnesses said a huge white animal battled two killer whales near shore for hours.
According to the account, the strange figure seemed to use its tail in the fight and raised part of its body above the water, helping fuel comparisons to a giant furry beast or even a "polar bear" of the sea. With no captured specimen and only secondhand descriptions for decades, the story became part of cryptid lore.
The modern explanation points instead to whale remains. As highlighted by later reporting and photographs that surfaced in 2010, the supposed monster was most likely a mass of decayed whale collagen, sometimes called a globster, rather than an unknown marine species.
That shift turns Trunko from a legendary sea creature into a case study in how unusual carcasses can inspire monster sightings. What looked like a bizarre white beast fighting whales in 1924 now fits a more ordinary, if still striking, natural explanation tied to decomposing whale tissue.
