The sea monsters are coming to tell us how little we know of nature | Philip Hoare

Even eco-protesters show by their actions the disconnection between humanity and the rest of the animate world - which just wants us to leave it alone

This spring is proving to be spectacular when it comes to its quota of sea monsters. As if reports of a sea serpent in the Thames and the Loch Ness monster being "found" weren't enough, reality bites back with some true-life beasts beyond all expectation.

A bizarre beaked whale washes up on an Australian beach like a primeval message from prehistory. A narwhal, complete with spiralling tusk out of some medieval bestiary, turns up in a Dutch estuary. And last Sunday a bowhead whale - an animal that may reach 300 years in age, and which surpasses all description with its huge, arching mouth filled with plates of fibrous baleen four metres long - surfaced off Cornwall, 1,000 miles and an ocean away from its designated domain.

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