Art for Art's sake (But who is this bloke Art?)

This year our output of press releases is reaching prodigious proportions. OK, that is hyperbole; we have only released three so far with another one (announcing the launch of the publicity drive for the 2009 Weird Weekend) overdue, which will appear when I get around to it!

However, this one, released a few minutes ago, is mildly amusing:

Jonathan Downes, director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, [CFZ] the world's largest mystery animal research group is the last person that one would expect to be part of the radical chic art world. However, on Saturday 17th he will be appearing at The Senate Room in the Royal Academy that was formerly the Museum of Mankind, in London as part of the season called GSK Contemporary (series of contemporary art exhibitions and events), curated by artist Gail Pickering.

Gail wrote: "My response has been rather than present my own work but to use the time more as a discussion with invited guests producing a day of talks/performances/screenings. Taking as a staring point the role of animals within contemporary culture and our relationship to them. I'm viewing this in an expansive sense and focused initially – perhaps inevitably as an artist – on their representation both in art, film and history. It's out of this research that I continually come back to the proposed 'mystery' of animals and the universal desire for observing, locating, producing (in art, science)."

Jon, who as well as being a cryptozoologist and author, is also a composer and musician, will be talking about the relationship between mythology, art and science, as part of a day which includes performance, music and lecture. It promises to be an amazing day, and best of all - it's free. See you there...

Check out the website for this season of events:
HERE

This is probably not the place to note that the late, great John Lennon said that "avant garde" was French for bullshit!

NOTES TO EDITORS



* The Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] is the world’s largest mystery animal research organisation. It was founded in 1992 by British author Jonathan Downes (4 and is a non-profit making (not for profit) organisation registered with H.M. Stamp Office.
* Life-president of the CFZ is Colonel John Blashford-Snell OBE, best known for his groundbreaking youth work organising the ‘Operation Drake’ and ‘Operation Raleigh’ expeditions in the 1970s and 1980s.
* CFZ Director Jonathan Downes is the author and/or editor of over 20 books. Island of Paradise, his first hand account of two expeditions to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico in search of the grotesque vampiric chupacabra, will be published in the next few weeks.
* The CFZ have carried out expeditions across the world including Russia, Sumatra, Mongolia, Guyana, Gambia, Texas, Mexico, Thailand, Puerto Rico, Illinois, Loch Ness, and Loch Morar.
* CFZ Press are the world’s largest publishers of books on mystery animals. They also publish Animals & Men, the world’s only cryptozoology magazine, and Exotic Pets, Britain’s only dedicated magazine on the subject.
* The CFZ produce their own full-length documentaries through their media division called CFZtv www.cfztv.org. One of their films `Lair of the Red Worm` which was released in early 2007 and documents their 2005 Mongolia expedition has now been seen by nearly 50,000 people.
* The CFZ is based in Jon Downes’ old family home in rural North Devon which he shares with his wife Corinna (52). It is also home to various members of the CFZ’s permanent directorate and a collection of exotic animals.
* Jonathan Downes presents a monthly web TV show called On the Track (http://cfzmonthly.blogspot.com/) which covers cryptozoology and work of the CFZ.
* The CFZ are opening a Visitor Centre and Museum in Woolsery, North Devon.
* Following their successful partnership with Capcom www.capcom.com on the 2007 Guyana expedition, the CFZ are looking for more commercial sponsors.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON.....

The newspaper industry never ceases to amaze me. Despite the story being well and truly defunct, (as far as I am concerned at least), the newspapers still seem fascinated by it. I have done three newspaper interviews already this morning, and I would not be surprised if there were more to come.

Our old friend Dr Darren Naish (that's Dr Daz to you) who gave the final verdict on the creature, has written up the affair in full at Tetrapod Zoology, and I was amused to find that it has even been mentioned on David Icke's message board.

Goodness. What a long, strange, trip this is becoming.

In the meantime, thanks to Matty, here is another press clipping, from last week's North Devon Journal...

CONFESSIONS OF AN ALL-ROUND GOOD EGG

Matty looking mean, moody and magnificent.

Unbelievably girls..he's still single!


Poor Matthew Osborne. He works harder than most people at CFZ business, and basically the poor chap ends up being lampooned mercilessly by me, both in writing, verbally, and in our monthly webTV show `On the Track`. However, he was an integral part of the caper last week that saw the intrepid boys of the CFZ go and pinch a decomposing seal skull, and when he saw that both Graham and Oll had written their bit about it, he demanded his say....

Matt (right) and Graham (left) looking furtive

As the mountain of Paperwork once again threatened to engulf our hero, the Hotline rang, “it is J here, mission for you, Body washed up on the beach, we need to deal with this in a suitable manor”, I politely reminded J that he no long had a manor and it would be easier to do it on the beach where it was.

J sighed and asked if I was free, I said I would be free if he sent the Limo to collect me. With the Call over I contacted Home to say I would be late for supper, grabbed Wellies, climbing harness and 2 types of saw, 2 hats, a fleece and a second pair of trousers. and tipped off S there was a mission afoot, and left for the rendezvous.

With in minutes the Mission Wagon Arrived, this was some shock as the last I had heard its engine was on a sunk ship that had been trying to get to Dover.

With the Team all prepared, HawkMan Driving, Super Welsh Boy Filming and me navigating we set off, and very quickly found a chip shop at which to stop, having filled up with chips we set off to the Secret Location, On arrival at Croyde we headed on to the beach, it was deserted apart from the people who were there!

HM and I took the shore line and SWB took pictures of us looking busy, and pointing at random nonexistent things as if we were to be in the next Next Directory.

I headed up to talk to the Group of Young Ladies at the top of the beach, having worked out they did not want to be chatted up I established they had not seen a body lying around, and left them to their Icicle smashing.

I met with HM and head back across the beach to SWB where upon the MatPhone rang
“M this is J, Body is known to be on the rock at Down End”

With which we 3 returned to the car and headed to the other end of the beach, on arriving there I was over heard by a person who knows me as the mild mannered First Aid Trainer Matthew and not as the Super hero Super MattMan, Mr L, who is a great bloke and does the best work for North Devon Tourism you will ever imagine.

HM headed to the sea line which was still going out and would be until 2100 SWB headed north and I headed South, on finding the body I summoned assistance and everyone did what they could do best, HM took pictures, SWB Videoed everything, and I rang my Friend Mr K so as to get my name in the papers again.

With miles of film and plenty of pictures we gained the required samples and headed back to the Wagon.

Wrapping the Sections of suppurating Piniped in Black polyethene we jumped in the Mission Wagon and headed back to Shamwickshire so as to collect the MatMobile.

All we could hope now was that HM and SWB could get the evidence to J and DragonHunter before the smell over came them…

All was well until, the Sun announced the Head STOLEN, I rang J and told him. He advised me to do just 3 things:

1 phone my Lawyer,

2 pack all the burn I could find

and

3 hope I was less pretty than Super Welsh Boy.

I was still doing 3 having failed to do 1 and 2 when the Hotline rang.

“ M, J here. The Police say keep it, you are not going to prison for accessory to decapitating a rotting mammal that no one wants”

And in the end the skulls you take, are equal to the rules you break...

Well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the mystery of the Croyde beach carcass has now been solved once and for all. Zoologist Darren Naish, an old friend of the CFZ, who is probably most familiar to the world at large as the author of Tetrapod Zoology, an embarrassingly popular, and very informative blog which kicks everything we do into a cocked hat popularity wise, has delivered his verdict.

"Hi Jon

Many, many thanks for uploading and linking to the pics - they are excellent, and I'm pleased to see that there are some with a scale. The Daily Mail photos made me think that it might be an otariid, but your photos demonstrate without doubt that it is a Grey seal after all. How do I know this? ...

-- In otariids, the nasals only extend to the anterior margin of the orbit: in phocids, the nasals extend much further posteriorly. Furthermore, otariids have bony lumps on the frontals (termed the supraorbital processes) that project over the orbits. Phocids lack these. The Croyd Beach skull has posteriorly extending nasals and no supraorbital processes. It is thus definitely a phocid (= earless seal). I'm very surprised that some 'experts' said that it was not a phocid skull.

-- The nasal bones are unusually short in the specimen (compared to most phocids) and the nasal cavity is very deep, giving the anterior margin of the snout a steep, sawn-off look. Short nasals and a deep nasal cavity are both characteristic of Halichoerus, the grey seal. The skull definitely belongs to that taxon, case closed."

I can also exclusively reveal that the CFZ 3 are not going to get arrested and dragged away into penal servitude. We had a long and extremely cordial conversation with Sgt Jeff Pearce of Braunton police station. He was very pleased to find out what we had done, and we promised him that we would keep him informed as to the progress of the inquiry.

However, he did give us another germ of information which both intrigues and disturbs us. Two national agencies were quoted in various newspapers as having said that the corpse was not that of a grey seal, but when I telephoned both agencies on Friday afternoon, they both insisted that they had told everybody that it was a grey seal. I had assumed that this was the work of an over eager tabloid newspaper reporter, but Sgt Pearce, who came across as an eminently sensible and reliable bloke gave me the names of the people who he had spoken to at of the aforementioned agencies, who had indeed told him that the corpse was not of a grey seal.

From a personal sense of inquisitiveness, and also from a professional point of view, I would love to know why these people, one of whom was quite a high-ranking expert, said what they did. However, it doesn't really matter, and I will not be pursuing the matter purely because I want to be (if I may misquote the Church of England, book of common prayer) in a state of love and charity with my professional neighbours, and these are people with whom it is quite likely that I shall have to work in the future.

So, the story is solved. It was a seal which may have had slightly abnormal nasal cavities. However, we are now on the position to be able to state this as incontrovertible fact. The CFZ went out and got the skull, and will be keeping it in our museum because of the minor position which it will always hold in the history of cryptozoology. We have got a new friend in Sgt Pearce, and have been able to prove, as if any proof is necessary, that the tabloid press is not necessarily the best source of good scientific evidence.

Case closed.

Messages of support

Good work Jon.

It makes a change to read one of these of these stories in which (a) a Cryptozoological outfit got straight on it, (b) they managed to secure the specimen before it vanished, got lost being sent to a lab,washed away etc.

The CFZ should be congratulated for securing the specimen so that research can establish what it is. Let us not forget that even if it is a dead seal we have the actual specimen, NOT a press cutting, memory of someone's neighbour, recollection of specimen seen 30 years ago etc.

This is what Fortean research is about.The actual carcass preserved and documented on site ,and available to serious researchers, and I am sure if a bigfoot carcass turned up in the USA,Loren would equally be up to bagging and tagging as fast as possible!

Steve Jones


Jon and team.

Congratulations on the find, amazing indeed and it certainly could not be in better hands. I would just like to know with this latest turn towards nefarious activities are we to be issued, as members of the CFC, with ski masks with the CFC logo so we can follow the leadership of your massively daring raid. LOL :)

Joking aside well done on such a magnificent find.

Kindest of regards

Tony Lucas
NZ Cryptozoologist.

CONFESSIONS OF A CRYPTOZOOLOGIST: Graham Inglis

Graham account of 7 Jan 2009 trek to Croyde

News came in that a mystery carcass had been washed up on Croyde beach. Croyde's only around 30 miles from the CFZ: right on our own doorstep, so preparations were swiftly made to set off and have a look.

I hastily gathered a few tools – garden spades, a saw, and a hammer and chisel, and set off with Oll. We collected Matt in Bideford – he was the only one of us equipped with wellies, I noted – and we proceeded to Croyde and found somewhere to park. Not difficult, in early January, with the temperature below 0ºC.

Croyde bay is a west-facing bay. The rocky footpath down to the north end of the beach runs past a display board giving a map of the bay area. The beach is around half a mile long, bracketed at each end by rock strata, strata that have been turned vertical by a previous geological upheaval. The direction of the strata was left-to-right as we looked along the length of the beach, which slowed access to the sands somewhat.

Oll, carrying the cameras, tracked along the strata to hit the beach at its top, whereas Matt and I, conscious that there wasn't much daylight left, cut across the strata formation as a sort of advance party. It was a matter of climbing up a ridge and down; up the next ridge and down.

The carcass had been reported as having been washed up a day or so ago, and Matt told us it was currently high tide (or maybe an hour past high tide); therefore we could expect to find the remains near the water-line that we were now seeing. That simplified the walking aspect, as it meant we could walk on the firm, wet sand near the lapping waves, rather than have to trudge through the soft sand further up the beach.

Halfway along the beach, we found it's split in two by a stream flowing down into the sea. Matt spotted a group of people at the top of the beach, who seemed interested in something – two were crouching down – so he turned upstream to investigate, while I volunteered to check the southern half of the beach that lay beyond the stream.

Jumping the stream presented no difficulties; my lack of wellies didn't matter on this occasion, so I continued south along the seashore, as far as the strata that forms the end of the beach. Nothing of interest found, so I returned, and met Matt. Matt reported that the group of people he'd been to see had been involved in nothing more than icicle-breaking, an unusual occupation for a bunch of visitors to a beach.

We retraced our steps back to meet Oll, and had a discussion. Matt then had a phone call and was told the carcass was in the Downend Rocks area. Damn. If only I'd taken a photo of the information board we'd passed, we could have looked at the map on the digital camera. As it was, I volunteered to nip back and have a look.

It turned out that Downend Rocks was the area beyond the southernmost extent of the beach, so driving there was the best scheme. I waved to my companions and indicated they should join me – in which time I set off to retrieve the car from the car park.

On the road again, it seemed a long drive just to get round a half-mile beach. However, we parked again, and took a footpath down into the rocky area. The general pattern was ridges of rock strata running out into the sea, with clear channels between them, the ridges and gaps both of varying widths. By now, the sun was about to set, so we split up again and Matt found the carcass. As I arrived, the sun was sinking into the sea… a nice sunset, but not ideal conditions for photography and videography of a biological specimen.

Obeying the primary rule of forensics – take photos before disturbing the body – we hastily set about getting pictures and video. The body cavity was open, and a dark pool of liquid could be seen below the ribs. There had been talk of bringing the specimen back to the CFZ intact, but I didn't relish the idea of that stuff sloshing about in the back of the car.

After general discussion with Jon back at base, it was decided to collect the skull and a back leg as samples. Debate about the legal situation followed. If it's private land, presumably jetsam (material washed up that's of a non-floating type, as opposed to flotsam) would belong to the land owners. If one wrenches the head off a body, is that criminal damage? But who will complain about damage to a rotting body? After a few minutes it was decided to go ahead with specimen collection.

The animal's left rear leg came free as easily as the leg of a roast chicken. The head was another matter, being connected by a leathery material and what appeared to be cartilage in addition. A hammer and chisel was deployed to disengage the skull from the rest of the body.

With the light fading fast, and a series of craggy ridges to negotiate, it was time to leave, and the samples were carried away, to be studied back at base.

CONFESSIONS OF A CRYPTOZOOLOGIST: Oll Lewis

The Croyde Carcass

When I walked into the CFZ office this morning I was greeted by Jon who seemed to be in a particularly excited mood.

“What do you make of this!?” he exclaimed and gestured at a photograph on his computer screen.

The photo was of a rotted carcass that had been found on a local beach, and had been emailed to us by the local newspaper. Apparently, the newspaper was concerned that the animal might be a local big cat that had fallen off a cliff and died before its body was washed along the coast.

“Can you zoom in on the dentition?” I asked and Jon obliged.

“Well,” I said looking at the animal’s teeth “It’s definitely a carnivore.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Jon replied.

“Well… If you look at the nasal cavity it looks like it is far too large to be a cat or dog.
The shape of the skull is completely wrong too.”

“Could it be a seal?” asked Jon

“I’d say that’s definitely the most likely candidate.” I said cautiously before I hunted out some photographs of seal skulls just to be sure. The photographs confirmed our suspicions and it was decided it would be a good idea to try to find the carcass so that we could make our own examination and collect samples. Graham and I were to go to Croyde, where the body had washed up, picking up Matt Osborne on the way, and attempt to locate it.

And so for the second time since I joined the Centre for Fortean Zoology I found myself looking for a decayed body on a beach. The first time had been the on Gambia expedition in 2006 where, armed with a map of a burial site and small spades, we had attempted to unearth the body of a sea monster that had supposedly been buried right next to a nightclub owned by the presidents brother. Considering the recent case in Gambia where two British missionaries have been sentenced to one year of hard labour and ordered to pay a £6000 fine for just writing disparaging things about the Gambian president on a postcard, it was quite lucky we were not caught not everyone would have believed we were looking for a sea monster. The conditions could not have been more different this time though. The heat in the Gambia had been stiflingly hot, but on Croyde beach the temperature was colder than zero degrees Celsius.

We gingerly picked our way across the jagged rocks on the west end of the bay, taking care to avoid slipping on the ice or putting our feet though the icy crusts of frozen rock pools. Once we made it across the rocks, without breaking any bones, it seemed our search would be much easier because most of Croyde beach was covered in sand and there would be few nooks and crannies for the carcass to be hiding in. This search proved to be fruitless and as we made it back to the cars Matt phoned Jon to see if he had uncovered any more information that could aid our search. Jon said that he had found out that the carcass had been found in a spot called the ‘Down End rocks’.

We located a map of the beach on a sign near the slipway we had entered the beach from but could not find a place called Down End Rocks, we did find the Down End Road so it was pretty obvious that it was the area to check out. It was the opposite end of the beach.

We drove the car around to that end of the beach and searched for an access point. We found one and scanned the rocks from a vantage point atop the cliffs hoping to spot the carcass. We couldn’t see it so elected to split up to cover a larger area in the hope of finding the body before the light failed. After a while Matt appeared over an outcrop of rock in the far distance and started waving wildly at me. This could only mean one thing; the body had been found!

I clambered over the icy rocks, swearing to myself that if this was a practical joke on Matt’s part then he would be in serious danger, but finally I made it to the outcrop. From the top of this rock I beheld a marvellous sight. Never before had a putrid pinniped looked so good! We examined the corpse took photographs and removed several samples for study back at the Centre for Fortean Zoology (the head and the back right limb) and had to leave the beach quickly as the sun was setting. Icy rocks, incoming tide and darkness do not mix well together.

We drove home though the freezing night with all the windows open to stop the stench from the samples overpowering us and reflected on a good days work. Over the next few days we will be emailing photographs of the skull to several experts for their opinion on what the animal is.