FILMS, PRESS, AND RADIO ON THE EXPEDITION 



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and its predecessors, its objects and provisional results, and about the 

 country which had sponsored it. We also intended to lecture and show 

 films about Denmark, and to endeavour to interest local broadcasting 

 services not only in the expedition but also in our country, in the hope 

 that our visits would be of lasting benefit to Danish interests. 



My part in it began in 1 94 1 , when my imagination was fired by a news- 

 paper report given by Dr. Bruun. Who would not be stimulated by 

 his quiet statement that the Great Sea Serpent might be more than 

 just a sailor's yarn, that it might be capable of scientific explanation? 

 The Dana Expedition had found eel larvae of an unprecedented size — ■ 

 nearly two metres long. If the development of such giants was at all com- 

 mensurate with that of the larvas of our European eels it is conceivable 

 that the adults might reach the enormous length of 25 metres — ■ quite 

 long enough, in fact, to corroborate the accounts of deep-sea monsters 

 recorded by the mariners of old. 



Known species of eel live close to the bottom, also in the deep sea, and 

 they will not rise to the surface when they die. Here then is a possible 

 explanation of why no dead sea serpents had ever been reported, either 

 on the sea or as having been washed ashore. A more than usually strong 



The cameraman in close collaboration with scientists on Dassen Island, 

 a small penguin island off South Africa. 



