In the beginning of mankind, there was fear—fear of the unknown, the unseen. What began in our hunter-gatherer ancestors as a basic survival instinct became a chronic phobia—anything not like us or our tribe we declared our enemy. And as our civilization increasingly set out to explore the seas, whispers began to spread from one sailor to another. Whispers became tales, and the tales took life as an independent mythos—the Leviathan.

The Sea has always represented humanity's terror of the unpredictable, uncontrollable, oceanic unknown. It remains today mankind's final frontier—even as we launch men, telescopes, and probes further and deeper into Outer Space, over 95% of our own planet's waters remain unexplored. The Leviathan is the sum our fear towards the Sea, taking on a variety of forms—from a squid-like Kraken to a gargantuan whale to the popular image of a serpentine sea dragon. And this creation of our fears has now become the object of our hatred. Instinctively, we demonize the unfamiliar, the "other," calling for its complete extermination. So often, we seek to annihilate what we do not understand.

But what if we could see through different eyes? What if, instead of inciting fear and hatred, the unknown became a symbol of veiled beauty, awaiting discovery and appreciation? Perhaps then the Leviathan could be understood not as a lurking monster, a hated "other", but as a majestic and sublime force of nature living its own story, its own song. Would that not make its extermination not a triumph, but... a tragedy?