A Real Lake "Monster"?

[Borodog]

Watching the History Channel's "Monster Quest", which I fully expected to completely, totally, utterly suck, and be exactly like a thousand other "cryptozoology" shows (an hour of footage of goofballs finding nothing). I was pleasantly surprised to see them, in the process of talking about "Champ", the supposed "lake monster" in Lake Champlain, show actual *evidence* of an unknown animal, pretty convincing evidence. It was a recording of very obvious echolocation clicks, much like killer whale echolocation clicks. They had ten minutes of echolocation from three different times and places in the lake.

Haven't finished watching the show, but seems very interesting. Lake Champlain was at one time connected to the Atlantic as part of the "Champlain Sea" before becoming landlocked. It's also a damn big lake, and doesn't suffer the problem of Loch Ness, that there isn't enough food to support a large animal. Seems to me there is probably some sort of cetacean species still living in Lake Champlain, which would be pretty cool.

The only other option that I could see would be that the echolocation recordings are a hoax.

Neat stuff. Anyone know anything more about the topic?

[Hopey]

[ QUOTE ]
Watching the History Channel's "Monster Quest", which I fully expected to completely, totally, utterly suck, and be exactly like a thousand other "cryptozoology" shows (an hour of footage of goofballs finding nothing). I was pleasantly surprised to see them, in the process of talking about "Champ", the supposed "lake monster" in Lake Champlain, show actual *evidence* of an unknown animal, pretty convincing evidence. It was a recording of very obvious echolocation clicks, much like killer whale echolocation clicks. They had ten minutes of echolocation from three different times and places in the lake.

Haven't finished watching the show, but seems very interesting. Lake Champlain was at one time connected to the Atlantic as part of the "Champlain Sea" before becoming landlocked. It's also a damn big lake, and doesn't suffer the problem of Loch Ness, that there isn't enough food to support a large animal. Seems to me there is probably some sort of cetacean species still living in Lake Champlain, which would be pretty cool.

The only other option that I could see would be that the echolocation recordings are a hoax.

Neat stuff. Anyone know anything more about the topic?

[/ QUOTE ]

I used to live fairly close to that area, and had heard the stories about "Champ". You'd figure that with all of the people who visit lake Champlain each and every year, someone would have taken a picture of one of the creatures, or caught one while fishing, or discovered a dead one washed up on shore. You're right, though, Lake Champlain is a huge lake. It's just hard to believe that a creature of that size would go undetected all of these years.

I have no opinion on the eco-location stuff. Is it possible that other large fish species that live in that lake use eco-location as well? Or maybe they were detecting a "fish-finder" from a fishing boat nearby?

[vhawk01]

Is this like that time you solved a Rubik's Cube?

[Borodog]

The echolocation is the only part about the show that turned out to be interesting. The rest was your typical weirdo looking bearded guys finding nothing.

But as far as the echolocation went, it was definitely biological; sounded just like cetacean biosonar. And if it is a fish species that echolocates, it will be the first known in the world. The only aquatic species known to echolocate are the cetaceans, the whales and dolphins.

For a brief listen and some more information, try here:

http://www.animalvoice.com/lakechamplain.htm

I'm still 50-50 whether it's an actual lake-locked cetacean (there are fossil baluga whales all over the Lake Champlain area that date to as recent as 10-20,000 years ago) or a hoax.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
The echolocation is the only part about the show that turned out to be interesting. The rest was your typical weirdo looking bearded guys finding nothing.

But as far as the echolocation went, it was definitely biological; sounded just like cetacean biosonar. And if it is a fish species that echolocates, it will be the first known in the world. The only aquatic species known to echolocate are the cetaceans, the whales and dolphins.

For a brief listen and some more information, try here:

http://www.animalvoice.com/lakechamplain.htm

I'm still 50-50 whether it's an actual lake-locked cetacean (there are fossil baluga whales all over the Lake Champlain area that date to as recent as 10-20,000 years ago) or a hoax.

[/ QUOTE ]

So it IS like that time you solved a Rubiks Cube.

[Borodog]

It was a Sudoku cube, thank you very much.

[Ajahn]

Loch Ness was an inside job.

[Borodog]

I lolled.