Saturday 9 March 2019

Hudson River Monster?



The Hudson river is in  New York state and stretches 315 miles to the Atlantic ocean. At its deepest point it is 200 feet deep. It is said there  have been sightings of a monster since 1610. It has been named  Kipsy.
The New York Times published a story on  June 9th 1899
SHARK OR SEA SERPENT?; Bathers in the Hudson River Startled by a Monster That Chased Them from the Water.“It concerns what by some is described as a shark, and by others as a sea serpent, which in some way or other and for reasons best known to itself made is appearance in the Hudson River yesterday morning about 7 o'clock at a point just off Weehawken, N.J.”

Then in 2006 the New York Times reported on another large beast in the river.
“Added to the chronicles of great beasts that have descended upon New York City in the year 2006 is one that is arguably the greatest of them all. A beast, upwards of 1,000 pounds and a cousin to the elephant, which dwarfs the coyote, the deer and the dolphin that preceded it. A beast that, at hundreds of miles north of its natural habitat, has most likely made the longest and most arduous journey among them. A beast, with a pudgy-nosed face and sweet-potato-shaped body, that could even be considered cute: a manatee.”

However a Manatee does not look like a sea serpent or a shark. Some other sightings of a creature  were reported in 2008.This recent article offers another option for the monster.
“The sonar revealed a sturgeon roughly twice as long as anything seen that day—confidently estimated at just over 14 feet from nose to tail tip. That’s a size that, even decades ago, even a century ago, was considered a rarity. But now, it was unimaginable given what this species had endured.“When I first saw it, I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Madsen recalled. But there was no mistaking the image. He and his colleague, Dewayne A. Foxof Delaware State University, have extensively used this sonar system in sturgeon habitat elsewhere along the Atlantic Coast and in the Republic of Georgia.Biologists estimate a sturgeon that length could easily weigh 800 pounds.The species is listed federally as endangered in the New York region and three others and threatened in the Gulf of Maine. Sturgeon have been known to leap from the water on occasion, he said, “but it’s not like spotting the humpback whale that was in the lower Hudson a few years ago. They surface every few minutes.”
So could the infrequent visits of  a large  endangered Sturgeon be Kipsy ? Or is Kipsy something completely different?

No comments: