No. No they did not.

I awoke this morning to a delightful flood of emails in my inbox pointing to this article: Has a KRAKEN been spotted on Google Earth? Monster hunters claim to have found 120m long giant squid-like creature. In short, while exploring the area around Deception Island on Google Earth, some well-known anomaly hunters found a weird thing.

Google maps is full of weird things. The planet is full of weird things. Weird things are awesome.

Rather than dig just a little bit deeper, they went on to wax poetic about giant squids, busted out some measurement tools to determine that it was 120m long, and promptly alerted the press. Also, another anomaly hunter says it’s a UFO.

If, however, they had pulled up a nautical chart, they would have realized that this is Sail Rock, a well mapped outcropping that, from the sea, looks a bit like a ship under sail.

Update: Since I can’t find an easily-accessible nautical chart of the island online, here’s a high resolution scan showing the rock and its relation to Deception Island.

Sorry, folks, it ain’t a 120 meter long Kraken or an Underwater UFO. It’s a rock.