It was described as a "fish" that outwardly resembled a human monk in his habit. A 2005 paper concluded that the animal was most likely an angelshark. One episode that was written but never filmed for the first half of season 3 would have been an episode called "Mr. Monk Is At Sea". While in the ballast tank, Monk tells Natalie that he doesn't know how to swim. The premise would have been that Monk and Sharona would investigate a murder committed on a cruise ship. Therefore, Mr. Monk Gets on Board is described by Conrad as being the plot of "Mr. Monk Is At Sea," but with some changes: namely, the replacement of Sharona with Natalie, the addition of a subplot involving a book collector named Malcolm Leeds, and a visit to Mexico that includes a meeting with Captain Alameda, the San Macros police captain from season 2's "Mr. Monk Goes to Mexico". Natalie getting kicked out of the game leaving only Monk is a direct reference to Hoosiers where Gene Hackman gets kicked out of the game leaving an unprepared Dennis Hopper. The sea monk (also monk-fish or monkfish) was a sea creature found off the eastern coast of the Danish island of Zealand in 1546. Yet when Stottlemeyer helped Monk fake his death at the end of Monk: Mr. Monk Is on the Run: Part 1, Monk falls into the ocean when Stottlemeyer "shoots" him and he presumably swims to shore. The Monk by the Sea (German: Der Mönch am Meer) is an oil painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It was painted between 1808 and 1810 in Dresden and was first shown together with the painting The Abbey in the Oakwood (Abtei im Eichwald) in …