Two amateur photographers have seen and recorded digitally what appears to be yet another live plesiosaur in a freshwater lake, this one in Lake Windermere in England's Lake District.
The pair, Tom Pickles and Sarah Harrington, were on Lake Windermere in a two-seat kayak, about 300 meters from shore, when they spotted a creature with four hump-like projections (or four coils of a massive snake-like body) as it broke the surface near their craft. Pickles snapped a photograph of it with his cellphone camera, and the creature submerged immediately.
The photograph has now appeared in multiple news organs, but the best-quality copy is hosted at The Daily Mail (London, UK). Other reports have appeared in The Daily Telegraph (London), Channel NineMSN (Australia), and ABC-TV, among other organs.
I thought it was a dog. Then I realised it was much bigger and moving really quickly. Each hump was moving in a rippling motion and it was swimming fast. I could tell it was much bigger underneath from the huge shadow around it.
Its skin was like a seal’s but its shape was abnormal–it’s not like any animal I’ve ever seen before. We saw it for about 20 seconds. It was petrifying. We paddled back to the shore straight away.
Pickles further reported that the creature was swimming at about 10 miles per hour and leaving a definite wake behind.
Photography experts have examined the photograph. According to the various accounts, they say that it appears authentic, but the file size is too small to say for certain that it was not altered. But Paul Harris of The Daily Mail discounts any possibility that either Pickles was perpetrating a hoax, or that someone pulled a hoax on him. According to local tourism authorities, Lake Windermere and the town of Bowness-on-windermere are already far too popular to require a fabricated legend as a tourist draw.
Lake Windermere is 11 miles long and 1 mile wide and has a maximum depth of 220 feet. Local residents of Bowness-on-windemere (hence the nickname "Bownessie" for this creature), and experts actively searching for the creature, have reported incompletely documented sightings for the last five years. (In fact, this latest sighting is very much like one that took place five years earlier.) The Daily Mail says that Pickles' photograph is the best photographic evidence to date of the creature that might be inhabiting the lake.
The sightings, and the latest photograph, are consistent with other sightings and legends of similar creatures inhabiting freshwater, glacier-fed lakes worldwide. The most famous of these is, of course, "Nessie" (Loch Ness, Scotland). Such creatures are not limited to Western Europe; Lake Champlain (New York and Vermont, USA) lays claim to one such creature, as does Lake Okanagan (British Columbia, CA).
These creatures are most likely to be live plesiosaurs, and the behavior that Pickles and Harrington reported is consistent with other plesiosaur sightings in other lakes. The creature that Pickles and Harrington saw is likely a member of a sizeable colony that have probably populated the lake since the Global Flood. They are reptilian, hence air-breathing, so they must break the surface at semi-regular intervals to breathe. They feed entirely on the local fish. Though their size might make them fearsome, they are not aggressive: no plesiosaur has ever attacked a human being. They are by nature shy and elusive. They probably have excellent hearing, which is why Pickles was able to take only one shot before the creature took a dive, and why expeditions in Lake Windermere have not found any creatures. One must assume that they can hear a small submarine or a motorboat from very far away; that Pickles and Harrington could have a creature surface that close to them is probably because a kayak makes very little noise. (Perhaps their eyesight is not as acute as their hearing.)
Sightings of Nessie have declined of late. The likely reason: Loch Ness is, quite simply, polluted, and the pollution is affecting visibility and probably audibility to the point of interfering with the creatures' ability to hunt for their food. Lake Windermere remains clear, and so its plesiosaur colony, if it has one, is better able to survive.
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Comments
I wonder if this is a real dinosaur? seems like there would be lots of them to multiply over the millions of years.
Not millions of years. More like 4400 years. That's how much time has passed since the Flood.
Local flood maybe. Your Global Flood never happened, as has been repeatedly demonstrated. But I just gotta say thanks for this:
---"no plesiosaur has ever attacked a human being."
It made me laugh out loud.
Terry,
For the millionth time: the "Flood" never happened.
Either way Plesiosaur's aren't dinosaurs. They are marine reptiles.
Terry wrote:
Photography experts ... say that it appears authentic, but the file size is too small to say for certain that it was not altered.
####
Geno points out:
Well, the "best" photo of the Loch Ness monster was a hoax that survived for some 60 years.
Link: http://www.unmuseum.org/nesshoax.htm
So you think a "monster" of significant size has hidden in a 11x1 mile lake that is only 220 feet deep???? These guys were able to sneak up on it because they were in kayaks. How about the centuries of row boats? All those modern boats that have fish finding sonar?
There is no reason to consider this "find" any more credible than Nessie.
Yes Gino,the Loch Ness hoax survived 60 years but today it wouldn't survive 60 seconds. While I don't think this photo shows a dinosaur I don't think a creature surviving is implausible. Live fish have been found that scientists thought became extinct millions of years ago.
Karla wrote:
Live fish have been found that scientists thought became extinct millions of years ago.
###
Geno comments:
Not in (relatively) small enclosed lakes.
Besides, with digital cameras and photoshop, photographic evidence isn't what it used to be....
What I find amusing is Terry was so critical of astronomers speculation about a new planet that even they say won't be confirmed for a couple years. Now we see him jump all over this "plesiosaur" even making up traits like: "reptilian ... air-breathing ... feed on local fish ... not aggressive ... excellent hearing ... " on a digital photograph that may be doctored.
Amazing.
I think what these folks spotted in Lake Windermere was just Lady Windermere's fan (Oscar Wilde fans will know what I'm referring to).
;)
interesting, it will be nice to find out what it really is when more investigation has been done
Very interesting news. Maybe some day they will be able to catch it and find out what it is.
It's not interesting, it's ludicrous.
As Oscar Wilde would say, "The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible."
As Richard Feynman said:
"The universe is not only wierder than we imagine it is, it's wierder than we can imagine it is."
@Geno:
Terry stating that "These creatures are most likely to be live plesiosaurs...", with even more details later, is neither amusing nor amazing. People will believe what they want to, dismissing sound science and creating whatever reality they need to in order to justify their belief. It's not a function of intelligence per se, it's a normal phenomenon that is extremely difficult to overcome, and requires true openness to new ideas. For most people it's just easier to keep believing the things they do rather than admit that something they have always held to be true is in fact, not true. Normal. Not amazing. Definitely not amusing.
And yet again, Hurlbut demonstrates his complete ignorance of science in pursuit of his biblical fantasies.
First, a plesiosaur was NOT a dinosaur - it was a marine reptile (although there is some evidence to indicate at least some also lived in or visited fresh water).
Second, that looks a lot like an image from the "Walking with..." television series. I wouldn't be surprised if it is a cell phone photo of a television screen.
Third, the concept of a breeding colony of something that big staying hidden in a body of water that small is ludicrous. I mapped lakes bigger than that back in my college days, 40 years ago - and even then, technology was good enough to pick up anything that big.
Terry,
How can you say something like "Not millions of years. More like 4400 years. That's how much time has passed since the Flood" and ever hope to be taken seriously?
The wake of this "creature" shows it has moved across almost the whole field of vision, surely long enough for several snaps to have been made. Many of the similar photographs made on Loch Ness were thought to have been rotting trees, buoyed up by methane gas. If the photo is genuine, that is what it could be. The escaping gas gently pushes the log across the surface of the water until enough has escaped for the log to sink again.
What's more interesting is that a grown adult still believes in nessy.
Exactly what kind of education did you recieve hurlbut, and why don't you know how to critically evaluate information?
I find it very, very terrifying that people of this kind of intellectual calibre are represented in a country with the world's biggest military - in the same way I'm terrified of a 4 year old with a bazooka.
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