Wednesday 27 February 2019

Strange tracks found in underwater sinkhole


A groundbreaking mission to the bottom of the Great Blue Hole in Central America has uncovered a mysterious find along the ocean’s seabed.
The groundbreaking voyage kicked off in December 2018, and saw the group descend to the bottom of the 125 metre hole to find out exactly what lives inside.The Great Blue Hole is a large underwater sinkhole off the coast of Belize.It lies near the centre of Lighthouse Reef, a small atoll 62 miles from the mainland of Belize City and is part of the larger Barrier Reef Reserve System, a UNESCO heritage site.
The Blue Hole is thought to have once been a huge cave on dry land around 100,000 years ago but as the ocean rose again, the cave flooded.Using two submarines, the group hoped to discover what sat at the bottom of the mysterious hole,which was discovered in 1971 by underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau.
Despite uncovering various features in the murky waters, some discoveries were unable to be identified, including a set of strange tracks at the bottom of the hole and seemed to show little human impact. 
Read rest see video here:
https://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/central-america/richard-branson-and-a-group-of-scientists-make-exciting-discovery-inside-great-blue-hole/news-story/59b215ed4576862030866dfc12d4338b

Strange prints from an unknown creature perhaps?

Descendants of Dragons?


Bukumirsko Lake is one of the legendary lakes in Montenegro. It is surrounded by  mountains and is located 1443m above sea level. It is a glacial lake like many other lakes that are said to hold monsters.
The Lake is 210 metres long,130 metres wide, and approximately 16 metres deep. Tritorus  montenegrinus is a unique endemic lizard triton living near the lake. It is believed that it is a descendant of the dragons that  lived in this lake.
The Bukumirsko tribes from Romania set up home on the lake shores. They could not go about at night as the dragons would come out of the lake and attack them. The tribes had to do something so they heated large rocks, set rocks on fire and hurled them into the lake. The dragons fled from the fire but cursed the tribes people that they would die fighting each other.
The curse came true and the tribes died out but that may be more to marrying other nationalities than war.
So could the lizards be a descendant of the dragons? Birds are said to be descended from dinosaurs so who knows?

Sunday 24 February 2019

Over a million!

Just noticed today the blog has had over 1 million views! It is also 10 years old this month. Considering I had to semi abandon the blog due to severe ill health for over two years that is amazing.
I am trying to get my life back together despite the disabilities the illnesses left me with, on top of the illnesses and am hoping to keep the blog going as long as I possibly can.
All I can say is Thank You to all the readers  xxx

Thursday 21 February 2019

Brosnya the lake monster or Brosno Dragon.


Had a couple of requests in the comments about this creature so re-posting this. 

The Brosno dragon or lake monster


The Brosno dragon or Brosnya is a creature believed to reside in Lake Brosno which is situated, in the Tver region, near the town of Andreapol in Russia It is a deep lake with a maximum depth, as discovered recently of 160 meters .Stories about a giant creature living in Lake Brosno have been around for centuries. . One of the legends says that the lake monster scared to death the Tatar-Mongol army that headed for Novgorod in the 13th century. Batu Khan stopped the troops to rest on the sides of Lake Brosno, when horses came down to the lake, a huge creature emerged from the water roaring and started devouring horses and soldiers. The Batu-khan troops were so terrified that they turned back, and Novgorod was saved. Old legends say that some enormous mouth devoured fishermen. Chronicles mention some "sand mountain" that emerged above the lake surface from time to time. Once, Varangians (Swedish mercenaries) wanted to hide stolen treasures in the lake. But when they approached the small island, a dragon came to the surface from the lake and swallowed the small island up.
The thought of the monster became fixed in people's minds over the 18th - 19th centuries. It was rumoured that the creature emerged on the lake surface in the evenings, but immediately submerged when people approached. Supposedly during WWII the beast swallowed up a German airplane. Numerous witnesses say that they have seen a head above water that looked like a dinosaur or a dragon head with a long thin tail. Other people said that the creature was covered with scales like a reptile .
In November 1996, the Karavan weekly (A Russian magazine) started an expedition to Lake Brosno in the Tver Region. The expedition consisted of writer and journalist from Tver Yeugeny Novikov, head of the Tver Regional Legislative Assembly's press-service Nikolay Ishchuk, journalist Marina Gavrishenko, photographer Anaida Jilavyan and editor-in-chief of the Karavan newspaper Gennady Klimov.

Gennady Klimov says: "The lake actually keeps some secret. When the depth of Lake Brosno was measured, it turned out that in some parts it was 120-160 meters deep. It means that Lake Brosno is the deepest in Europe. What is more, the lake belongs to the preglacial epoch that is why mysterious phenomena are quite possible in it. As for me, my concerns about the whole of the story are quite particular. The nature here in the Tver Region is wonderful and pure. There is a unique technology of making and using myths. These technologies will be extremely important in the future."

Marina Gavrishenko, the journalist who took part in the expedition says: "At first sight, the whole of the monster story looks like a fairytale. After the expedition to Lake Brosno, I do believe that the place is actually mysterious. Stories told by witnesses prove this opinion. We met with local people who were perfectly sane and adequate. What is more, all legends about the mysterious monster trace the roots back to the old times. I am sure that legends and rumours cannot arise from nothing."

Nikolay Ishchuk, the head of the Tver Regional Legislative Assembly press-service says: "I do not believe in wonders. What we chanced to see at Lake Brosno is actually mysterious and incomprehensible. If the phenomenon can be explained with the laws of the planet's life, I believe this is a miracle indeed. I recollect our expedition to Lake Brosno and our attempts to take pictures of the creature as a wonderful journey. This is wonderful that people may have such interesting adventures. May it be so that the expedition actually came across some miracle? Inexplicable things must exist in this world. When people do not understand some things they want to know more and reveal more new facts."
A tourist took a photo of something in the Lake in 1996 but it was blurry and inconclusive.

Experts of the Kosmopoisk research association went on an expedition to Lake Brosno together with Karavan in the summer of 2002 and did echo deep sounding. Vadim Chernobrov, the Kosmopoisk coordinator said in an interview to the Moscownewspaper Argumenty i Facty (Arguments and Facts): "Echo deep sounding registered an anomaly. There was a huge jelly-like mass of a railway car size , five meters above the bottom. The mass stood motionless. We waited for some time and then decided to make it move: we threw an underwater petard, a low capacity explosive device. When the device blew up, the creature started slowly going up. We starred at the water, and it was clear; there was nothing resembling a monster, however something unusual was still felt in the lake water."

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
14Dec96 RUSSIARUSSIA'S "NESSIE" FRIGHTENS VILLAGERS.
By Nikolai Pavlov BENYOK, Russia, Dec 14 (Reuter) - Near the bottom of Lake Brosno, or perhaps deep in the recesses of man's imagination, a monster of huge proportions lurks. The evidence, much like that of Scotland's Loch Ness monster, is based on a single photograph and a few alleged sightings. The picture shows a panoramic view of Lake Brosno with an object floating in the foreground. As with the Scottish "Nessie," it is not clear whether the object is a large log -- or something more ominous from the deep. "I'm afraid," said one elderly woman, Varya, who lives in the small lakeside village of Benyok about 400 km (250 miles) northwest of Moscow. "I do not feel comfortable staying in this place. The monster could crawl into my house any day."
"It was big like this," said Tanya, another grandmotherly type who believes the creature hides from humans near the lake bottom. "I saw a head, like a fish -- and big." She sketched a snake-like head rising from the water with a large eye on the side. Tourists from Moscowcamping near the lake added to the legend by taking a photograph after their seven-year-old son shouted out that he had seen a dragon monster. A newspaper in Tver, the nearest major town, recently published the photo, and the story was picked up in the local media. "It is completely possible that the creature which you see in this photo is a relative of the famous Loch Ness monster," wrote the newspaper, Caravan-1. Locals who believe in the monster -- and there are certainly a fair number of sceptics -- say it is much like a serpent, and one report estimated its length at five metres (16 feet).The alleged sightings are not prompting scientists to rush to the attractive lake surrounded by trees to conduct tests however ."It sounds like a country fairy tale, the kind of story told over the years in the countryside," said Lyudmila Bolshakova, an expert at Moscow's Institute of Paleontology. Regional media said there are written reports of sightings of the monster dating back to the 19th century, and the legend is even older. But a group of journalists visiting the lake this week saw no sign of the monster. Source:(c) Reuters Limited 1996

And more from Tanya:
Babushka Tanya (Grandmother Tanya) and her husband, whose house is metres away from the shore, claim to have seen the monster on more than one occasion. Tanya took a Reuters Television camera crew to the lakeshore site from where she claims to have seen the monster. "I only saw a head of this creature, so I was not scared at all," she said while trying to draw the beast. "It is now on the bottom of the lake, deep, and it is hiding from the winter cold", she explained. Local press reports describe a creature about five metres (16 feet) long living in Lake Brosno, 80 km (50 miles) northwest of the Russian capital, and have published photographs, though they are too indistinct to be convincing according to some experts. Natalya Istratova, Professor of Biology at Moscow State Zoo, says it is "absolutely impossible" to say what kind of animal the monster might be without examining it. However one Lake Brosno resident, Baba Nadya (Grandmother Nadya), is terrified of the beast fearing it will crawl out of the lake and into her house "any day." A local press report describes a creature about five metres long. It quoted a local palaeontologist, Nikolai Dikov, as saying the creature's alleged shape suggests an extinct order of reptiles with teeth like mammals. Recent palaeontological excavations at Russia's old lakes of the tectonic origin, like Lake Brosno, are reported to have provided evidence to a theory linking the Brosno monster to pre-historic dinosaurs. Near the Siberian lake of Shestakovo, palaeontologists are said have found the bones of a pre-historic creature, quite similar to the descriptions of Brosno's babushkas. source :

However, some people are sceptical and say that the creature may be a mutant beaver or a giant pike possibly 100-150 years old . Maybe it is a sturgeon? I am surprised no one brought that one up. The descriptions vary from fish to dragon but anyone with experience of eye witness testimony knows it is unreliable and what looks like a fish to one person looks like a fowl to another! It’s a wonderful story though and I would love to see some serious investigation there with a mini sub or diving bell. Certainly the legend has been around almost as long as the story of Nessie and should be investigated in two strands, one on the folklore and one on the biology of the lake.

Kazakhstan lake monsters

Lake Koskol and lake Kok-Kol Monsters .


Lake Koskol, in the former Russian province of Kazakhstan, was reported to hold a plesiosaur-like, Lake Monster .The first account of the creature to reach western ears was reportedly broadcast on a Soviet radio program in 1977. These reports suggested that the animal was most likely prehistoric in origin.

'Nature' magazine carried an article in 1977,( just after Sir Peter Scott had given a scientific genre name to 'Nessie' ),that 'Koskolteras Rhombopterix' might have been seen in Lake Kos Kol in Kazakhstan. The monster was 15 metres long with a large, 2m x 1m head. It quoted an unnamed commentator on Moscow radio observing that since several "extinct" species had been recently rediscovered to be still surviving, it was possible that "unknown creatures of the kind reported in both these lakes" might, indeed, exist.
I could find nothing since then that had been reported about the monster.

This is not to be confused with Aidakhar the monster of Lake Kok-Kol.
Kok-Kol lake lies in the Kazakhstan area Dzambul.. The report of a creature seen in the lake said that the body reached fifteen metres in length and that the head was a metre and eighty centimetres in size. During the seventies and early eighties Soviet scientists took a great interest in the lake. In 1986, an expedition went to the area to research the evidence but didn’t come back with any proof.. One of the characteristic attributes of the monster, was said to be its call. However, in January 1986 a report in the Soviet press agency Tass, (and also later in Western newspapers),by the team of the Soviet Academy of Sciences concluded, that after studying the findings of the expedition, the sounds were caused by noise of air being sucked into the cracks connecting the deep lake with underwater caves. The reports of turbulence in the lake were also attributed to these air ducts. Despite the official explanation, however, locals still believe in the monsters.

I translated with the help of google and a dictionary , the little information there was on these two creatures , so I apologise for any errors. 

Friday 15 February 2019

Sea serpent sighting not what it seems and re emergence of prehistoric predator.


'It looked like a big condom': Diver is stunned as bizarre-looking 30-foot 'sea serpent' appears in front of him off of New Zealand
Ben Laurie came across the creature while diving at Cape Brett in New Zealand.He said he had never seen a 30-foot sea creature like it in his years as a diver .In a video of the dive the creature floats underwater surrounded by smaller fish.Ben Laurie, 21, encountered the 30-foot creature while diving near Cape Brett on New Zealand's North Island. 
Despite his years of diving experience he said he had no idea what it was and had never seen one before. In a video of the dive, the creature - which he compared to a condom - floats underwater surrounded by much smaller marine life.
In fact it is believed to be a pyrosome, a floating colony made up of thousands of sea squirts which feeds by filtering microscopic plant cells out of the sea.   Each squirt draws in water from outside the pyrosome and then releases the filtered water inside the colony. 'Apparently they only come from depths of 2,000 metres, so it's quite rare for them to be up in the shallows like that,' said the diver, from Kerikeri.

Disappearing great whites see elusive ‘living fossil’ shark species re-emerge in South African waters
‘In 18-plus years of working at Seal Island, we had never seen sevengill sharks in our surveys,’ says naturalist Chris Fallows.The disappearance of great white sharks from a major hunting ground off the coast of South Africa has allowed a species of “living fossil” predators to re-emerge and take over the top of the food chain, scientists have said.A two-decade shark monitoring project around Seal Island in False Bay, South Africa – where great whites are renowned for flying out of the water to catch fur seals – has recorded a mysterious collapse in great white shark sightings since 2015.But the vacuum has resulted in a rise in sightings of ancient sevengill sharks, which are unique among sharks for retaining the seven gill slits seen on their prehistoric ancestors – rather than the five slits in modern species.
“In 18-plus years of working at Seal Island, we had never seen sevengill sharks in our surveys,” said Chris Fallows, co-author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday.“Following the disappearance of white sharks in 2017, sevengill began to show up for the first time and have been increasing in number ever since.”
Read rest here :

As some species fade back could more ancient species re-emerge ? We may yet hear of more ancient sea creatures appearing.


Wednesday 6 February 2019

Swan or Russian Nessie?


2017 sighting
Forget Nessie...it's Ness-ski! Nature lovers spot Loch Ness monster in a Russian lake
Nature lovers claim they have found the Russian version of the legendary Scottish Loch Ness monster.
The supposed Russian Nessie - the mythical sea creature - was captured on camera in photographs showing what appears to be a white head and part of a body of a sea monster coming from the water.The photographs were taken at Lake Khanto in the city of Noyabrsk in north-central Russia's Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug region by a man out for his morning run.Dmitry Kim was exercising at the picturesque spot when something caught his eye.
He said he spotted the weird object sticking out of the water and quickly grabbed his phone to take a picture.He said: 'I understand it very well, that this is impossible, but the silhouette of this creature reminded me of the Loch Ness monster. 
'It was standing there and wasn't moving.'
The supposed creature looks similar to reported sightings of the Scottish beast with what looks like a long neck poking out from the water.Mr Kim added that according to regional legends Lake Khanto used to have swans but said it looked nothing like the bird.
See photo here:

The town didn’t exist until 1975 when a landing party arrived by helicopter  on the ice of the Itu-Yakha River to start developing Kholmogorskoye oil field.On October 26, 1977, the settlement of Noyabrsk, which grew around the railway station of Noyabrskaya, was officially registered. It was decided to choose the name of "Noyabrsk" instead of the other proposal"Khanto". The settlement was granted the status of a town on April 28, 1982. 
The lake is popular in summer for walks, picnics etc. However I could find no history of a monster in the lake nor in the nearby lakes Svetloye and Szemchuzhnoye. Swans are known to visit the lakes. So as there have been no further sightings was it simply a swan?