The Lusca is a sea monster of the Bahamas, said to lurk in the islands’ famous blue holes, deep water-filled sinkholes in the limestone, and to drag swimmers, fishermen and even boats down with its long arms. Local tradition sometimes describes it as half shark and half octopus, but most reports, especially from fishermen, describe a giant octopus, known locally as a “giant scuttle.” The name itself is usually explained as a shortened form of Mollusca, the group that includes octopuses and squid. No giant octopus has ever been found in the Caribbean, but the legend sits on top of a real and genuinely dangerous environment.[1][2]
| Other names | Giant scuttle, “Him of the Hands,” “Him of the Hairy Hands” |
|---|---|
| Region | The Bahamas, especially Andros; similar reports from the Turks and Caicos, Cuba, Belize and Mexico |
| Habitat in the stories | Marine blue holes and brackish inland “banana holes” |
| Reported size | Arm spans of 60–80 ft are commonly claimed, with some stories reaching 200 ft |
| Typical description | A giant octopus; in some folklore, part octopus, part shark |
| Key early sources | J. S. George (1872); Bruce S. Wright (1967); George J. Benjamin, National Geographic (1970) |
| Physical evidence | None confirmed |
The blue holes
To understand the Lusca you have to understand its home. Blue holes are vertical caves and sinkholes in the limestone of the Bahamas and similar carbonate platforms. They formed during the ice ages, when sea level was some 100 to 120 meters lower than today and rainwater dissolved great shafts and caverns in the exposed rock. When the sea rose again, the holes flooded. Seen from above, they are startling circles of deep, dark blue in otherwise shallow, pale water. Dean’s Blue Hole off Long Island in the Bahamas plunges about 202 meters, making it one of the deepest in the world.[3]
Many blue holes connect to the open sea or to other holes through flooded passages, and many on Andros connect to inland pools, which local people call “banana holes.” Because they are tidally influenced, water can flow into and out of them with the tides, sometimes strongly enough to create currents and swirling water at the surface. Deeper down, many holes have layers of water with no oxygen and toxic hydrogen sulfide. In other words, these are places where a swimmer can be pulled under, a diver can be lost in the dark, and a fisherman’s line can be snatched by an unseen force. A creature that reaches up and grabs people is a natural way to explain all of that.[1][3]
Early reports
Stories of huge octopuses in the Bahamas go back to the nineteenth century. The French writer Bénédict-Henry Révoil claimed in 1863 that an American captain had told him his ship was attacked by a “kraken” in the Bahamas in 1836, losing two sailors, and that the severed arm was displayed at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York, a place better known for fakes such as the Fiji mermaid. In 1872 J. S. George of Nassau wrote to the journal American Naturalist that giant octopuses were “known here, traditionally of immense size,” though rare, and described one found dead on a beach, about ten feet long with five-foot arms.[2]
In 1956 the marine biologist Forrest G. Wood, surveying Grand Bahama, collected local stories of “giant scuttles” with arms said to reach 75 feet. A fishing guide told him they were dangerous only if they could seize a boat while still anchored to the sea floor, and that they appeared in shallow water only when dying. The island’s commissioner told Wood that as a boy, around 1925, he had seen a huge octopus cling to a fishing line in 600 feet of water and briefly grab the bottom of the boat. A 1957 magazine article on Grand Bahama repeated tales of scuttles with arms of 60 to 200 feet.[2]
The Lusca of Andros
The name “lusca” first appears in print through Bruce S. Wright, a Canadian marine biologist who visited Andros. In a 1967 article, “The Lusca of Andros,” he reported that a local guide had told him the limestone caverns beneath a lake were home to a monster called the lusca, which had sucker-tipped arms and lived in the banana holes and blue holes. The guide had never seen one himself. A fisherman later told Wright he had seen a dead “big scuttle,” longer than his 18-foot boat, floating at sea the year before.[2]
In 1970 the Toronto diver George J. Benjamin, who spent years exploring Andros’s blue holes, described the lusca in National Geographic. One of his guides had warned him that the lusca, “Him of the Hands,” would kill him if he dived into the oceanic blue holes, and told stories of the creature sinking ships and grabbing fishermen. Benjamin never encountered it. Jacques Cousteau later wrote about sport fishermen between Florida and the Bahamas whose lines had been torn by large, squid-like animals, and about a 1964 expedition near Bimini that photographed only “an undefined stretch of brown flesh.”[1][2]
The St. Augustine “giant octopus”
The Lusca is often linked to a famous carcass from Florida. On 30 November 1896 two boys found a huge mass of tissue on the beach at Anastasia Island near St. Augustine. A local physician, DeWitt Webb, believed it was a gigantic octopus, and in 1897 the Yale cephalopod expert Addison Verrill named it Octopus giganteus, before changing his mind after examining samples and concluding that it was part of a whale. In 1971 a cell biologist re-examined preserved samples and argued they looked more like octopus tissue, reviving the idea. But detailed biochemical and microscopic studies in 1995 and 2004 found the material was almost pure collagen from a warm-blooded animal, most likely whale blubber, and found “no evidence to support the existence of Octopus giganteus.”[4]
Television searches
The Lusca has attracted several TV expeditions. In 2009 Josh Gates’s Destination Truth visited Andros and filmed something large splashing at the surface of a blue hole, but the footage could not show what it was. In 2016 the angler and biologist Jeremy Wade investigated for River Monsters, in an episode called “Terror in Paradise,” and concluded that a large octopus was the most likely explanation for reported Lusca attacks. Neither found evidence of an animal larger than known species.[1][2]
How big do octopuses get?
No known octopus comes close to the Lusca’s claimed size. The largest species, the giant Pacific octopus, lives in the cold North Pacific, not the Caribbean, and adults typically weigh around 15 kg with arm spans up to about 4 meters. Caribbean octopuses are much smaller. Even the deep-sea giant squid, the real animal behind the Kraken, reaches perhaps 12 to 13 meters in total length, far short of the 60- to 200-foot arm spans in Bahamian stories.[1][5]
That does not rule out a large, poorly known octopus in the deep waters around the Bahamas. Large cephalopods are hard to study, and the deep sea still yields new species. But a population of octopuses big enough to sink boats, living in water shallow enough to bother swimmers and fishermen, would be very difficult to miss.
What lies behind the Lusca?
- Dangerous water. Tidal currents, swirling water and confusing passages in blue holes have caused real deaths. A monster gives those dangers a face.
- Real octopuses and squid. Ordinary octopuses live in Bahamian reefs and holes, and squid and octopuses do take baited lines. A large one, seen in clear water or felt on a line, can easily grow in the telling.[1]
- Sharks. Sharks enter blue holes and even brackish inland pools through underwater connections, and they are the most plausible source of the “half shark” in the folklore.[2]
- Dead whales and blubber. Rotting whale remains, like the St. Augustine carcass, can look like the body of a giant octopus.[4]
The Lusca in culture
The Lusca has a lively modern life. It has appeared in video games such as Stranded Deep and City of Heroes, in an episode of the TV series Death in Paradise, and gave its name to the Lusca Fantastic Film Fest in Puerto Rico.[1]
Our assessment
The Lusca is a genuine Bahamian tradition about real and dangerous places, filtered through fishermen’s stories, a few journalists and divers, and a famous misidentified carcass. The evidence points to ordinary octopuses, sharks, and the blue holes themselves, not to a giant unknown animal. It remains one of the most atmospheric sea-monster legends in the world, and a reminder to treat blue holes with real caution.
References
- “Lusca,” Wikipedia.
- “Lusca,” Encyclopaedia of Cryptozoology (Cryptid Archives wiki), citing J. S. George, “A Colossal Octopus,” American Naturalist 6 (1872); B. S. Wright, “The Lusca of Andros,” Atlantic Advocate (June 1967); G. J. Benjamin, “Diving into the Blue Holes of the Bahamas,” National Geographic 138, no. 3 (September 1970); F. G. Wood and J. G. Gennaro, “An Octopus Trilogy,” Natural History (March 1971); and M. Raynal, “The Case for the Giant Octopus,” Fortean Studies 1 (1994).
- “Blue hole,” Wikipedia.
- “St. Augustine Monster,” Wikipedia, citing S. K. Pierce et al., “Microscopic, biochemical, and molecular characteristics of the Chilean Blob and a comparison with the remains of other sea monsters,” Biological Bulletin 206 (2004).
- “Giant Pacific octopus,” Wikipedia.
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from documented sources, replacing an earlier general description that included unsourced claims about color-changing and 200-foot animals presented as established folklore. The illustration above is an artistic impression.