During the 1930s, Dr. Jean-Paul Gassé was a member of a special team of French biologists sent to Egypt by the French government. During that time, Dr. Gassé was determined to research a creature that was an "omnipotent messenger of the gods" among the ruins of the Third Dynasty. In March 1932, in the city of Alexandria, Dr. Gassé met a local resident, who, while fishing, caught a Seaman. Dr. Gassé obtained a sample of some of the Seaman eggs, and went back to France with the egg samples in his possession.

When Dr. Gassé returned to France, he attempted to raise the eggs, but the Seamen died in his care. Shortly after this, he published a thesis of his work. His hypothesis suggested that the Seaman was responsible for transferring knowledge that increased during the Third Dynasty across oceans and other lands. Leading academics, however, dismissed him and his work as a PR stunt, leveraging the complaint against him that he lacked the proper evidence to support these outlandish findings. As a result, the work was ignored, and no one believed him. Despite its controversy, his theory became the basis for "anthro-bio-archaeology", a highly valued field of study.

Shortly after publishing his thesis, Dr. Gassé was fired from his post. After his dismissal, news of Gassé’s whereabouts and activities were unknown, and details during those times were sketchy. Rumors began circulating that Dr. Gassé's trail traced to some remote islands in Southeast Asia. It is known, however, that he escaped the horrors of World War II and met up with his Japanese colleague, Kimo Masuda. It became clear that sometime during these years they were able to conduct further research on the Seaman's evolution, quite possibly even up to the creature walking on all fours. Unfortunately, there was very little hard data or evidence that substantiated these findings.

In March 1996, the French government established the Anthro-Bio-Archeological Research Institute (ABARI), headquartered in Paris. The institute is based on the work of Dr. Gassé, and most of the modern day research of the Seaman specimens has taken place there. In 1997, the ABARI announced there was a strong possibility that these Seaman species were closely related to the origins of ancient civilizations in Egypt. On October 6, 1998, one of Gassé’s formaldehyde specimens is discovered at the University of Paris.

On February 15, 1999, parts of Gassé's journal and note entries were found in the Masuda family storehouse in the city of Matsusaka in Mie Prefecture, Japan. Professor Kendare Takahashi, who was directing the Japanese branch of the ABARI, successfully managed to breed Seaman eggs in captivity in July the same year. Soon after, Seamen were presented in aquariums across Japan. In July 2000, an expedition team embarked for Egypt in the first major research of Seamen in the wild.