In Thurso, the most northerly town on the British mainland, midsummer evenings stay light until around midnight. On June 15, 2026, between ten and eleven at night, a local resident walked along the town beach to the end of the pier to photograph the sky, which was an unusual colour and reflecting off the sea.
While taking photos, the walker saw something push up out of the water roughly 10 to 15 metres away. The first thought was a seal. Grey seals are everywhere in the bay and the town river, and this walker sees them all the time. But this animal's body was much longer than a seal's, which runs about five to eight feet. The head looked seal-like at first, but the snout was longer and heavier. The best comparison that came to mind, oddly, was a hippo.
It stayed up for about five seconds. By the time the camera was pointed at it, the animal was almost fully under, so the one photo shows very little. There were no fins, which rules out the orcas and dolphins that visit those waters, and it was clearly an animal, not a floating log. The walker waited for it to come up again, but it never did.
Afterwards, the witness went looking for answers. As far as they could find, the north coast has no cryptid of its own, only creatures from local folklore. The best ordinary explanation turned up was a young walrus: Arctic walruses very occasionally wander into northern Scottish waters, maybe once a decade, and a walrus would explain the heavy, hippo-like head. But a walrus off Thurso would normally make the local news, and there was no sign of one.
The witness doesn't claim to have seen a sea serpent. Only that it was not a seal, and that it is the closest thing to a cryptid sighting they have ever had.
