Row over Nessie

Row over existence of Loch Ness breaks out among tourist bosses

A row has broken out among tourist centre bosses in Scotland over the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, with one accusing another of selling fake photographs of the creature.

Read rest here :http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10120313/Row-over-existence-of-Loch-Ness-breaks-out-among-tourist-bosses.html

 

freaky fish in the news

Scientists amazed by 'fish with abs'

Ancient fossilised fish with abdominal muscles have been found in the remote Kimberley region.An international team of scientists has found 380-million-year-old fossilised fish with abdominal muscles, in the remote Kimberley region.The palaeontologists said it was rare for the soft tissue in the placoderm fossils to be so well preserved and it allowed them to map the muscular structure of the fish. Placoderms had a type of armour plating and were often compared with sharks.

Read rest here :http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2013-06-14/scientists-amazed-by-fish-with-abs/1145868

Freak 11-STONE halibut (that's 3 times bigger than usual and will feed 300) caught with a fishing rod off Shetland coast and sold to restaurant for £1,000

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2341179/Freak-11-STONE-halibut-thats-3-times-bigger-usual-caught-fishing-rod-Shetland-coast-sold-restaurant-1-000.html#ixzz2WBMHXA8y

Mystery Fish Baffles Fishermen

Mystery' fish with 'square' body baffles fishermen

No head, no tail on prize catch has anglers wondering

By     Correspondent

 Fishermen in the Kayankeni area of Batticaloa district in Sri Lanka have caught a fish with a square body and no tail, according to the Tamil news web site Tamilwin. S I M Imthiyaz, a specialist in sea fish, said they have not seen a fish such as this one before.People flocked to see the strange 65kg fish when it was brought to the Ottamavadi fish market.

See photo here : http://www.emirates247.com/news/mystery-fish-with-square-body-baffles-fishermen-2013-06-11-1.509828

The Utah Lake Creature story

Utah Lake, is a body of water in north-central Utah, of approximately 150 square miles. The indigenous natives, The Ute told legends about the evil dwarfs or water babies living in the waters of the lake that lured mortals into the water where they drowned They also told settlers of a creature so large it was able to swallow a man whole.

Then in 1864, Isaac Fox said he saw a 25 foot long aquatic creature whilst hunting near the lake's north shore. The beast was described as having fierce dark eyes and a hound-shaped head. It chased Fox to shore and almost caught him . Fox said the creature then swam back to join a second creature in the water perhaps its mate. Henry Walker of Lehi was in Utah Lake in 1864 when "to his fear and surprise, he saw what looked like a large snake . . . with the head of a greyhound." In the later 1860s, two men reported they heard splashing at the Lake. They spotted a creature with a head shaped like a greyhound with "wicked-looking black eyes.".The sightings continued when in 1866, two men cutting hay saw a yellow animal with black spots that repeatedly displayed a forked red tongue. Needless to say, the two men fled before making more detailed observations. In 1870, it was said that fishers from Springville discovered the skull of a large creature with a 5-inch tusk protruding from its jaw, but what happened to the evidence isn’t clear.
It was taken more seriously when LDS Bishop William Price of Goshen and two fellow travellers spotted the serpent on the west shore of Utah Lake in 1871. He said it stood about 6 feet out of the water like a giant snake, and that the beast's 60-foot-long body looked like a section of stovepipe.
Two youngsters ,Willie Roberts and George Scott ,saw it in June 1880. Far out in the lake, a small animal resembling a dog or beaver approached them. They thought nothing about it until the creature roared like a lion, raised its huge head out of the water and revealed four legs, each about a yard long. The head boasted alligator-like jaws about 3 feet long. The critter chased them, making "savage gestures." The boys' "terrified countenances" and consistent reports convinced their parents and English traveller Phil Robinson they had met the "great snake" of Utah Lake. "Does the Smithsonian know of this terror?" Robinson asked.
There was another sighting of the creature in 1921, followed by a brief flurry of sightings. Then there was a report in 1946 by a local Scout master who said he had seen the bizarre creature appear on the surface of the lake. The account was widely regarded to be so detailed and accurate that it shouldn’t be doubted.( however eye witness testimony is considered unreliable and as mistaken identity is common so there will still have been sceptical discussion about the report)
There appear to have been no sightings reported since. Article on the monster:

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/article_4adacc44-6721-541d-bca1-b7edca69069f.html?mode=story

So what is or was in Utah lake? It sounds like a large ferocious eel. There have been reports of giant snakes that ruled the world 10 million years ago, so there are always possibilities of some surviving one presumes. As it has not been seen for some time it could have been a giant eel now died out. However some think the story of the boys seeing feet points to a giant beaver. Again it is always possible some may be surviving from the ice age. But that is cryptozoology for you.....full of possibles!

waiting to be discovered

What else may be found in the jungle besides dolphins( see previous post)? Maybe this bigfoot.

Scientists to investigate Bigfoot sighting in India
Indian authorities promise further study into dubious claims
mongabay.com
June 10, 2007

Indian authorities will conduct a "scientific study" to examine claims by villagers of Indo-Asian News Service

Villagers in the jungles of the Indian northeastern state of Meghalaya claim to have evidence of Bigfoot or Sasquatch, reports the Indo-Asian News Service. Government authorities said they will conduct a "scientific study" to examine the purported sightings near the border with Bangladesh.
'A team of wildlife officials and other experts would conduct a study to find out if there is any truth in claims made by locals about sighting some hairy giants similar to the elusive Bigfoot,' Samphat Kumar, the district magistrate of West Garo Hills, told IANS.
IANS reports that half-a-dozen Garo villagers claim to have seen the beast in separate sightings over the past three weeks.
'The sight was frightening - two adults and two smaller ones, huge and bulky, furry, heads looked as if they were wearing caps, and their colour was somewhat blackish brown,' IANS quoted Wallen Sangma, a 40-year-old farmer, as saying. Sangma claims to have seen hour of the creatures "in a thickly forested area near village Rongcekgre, about 350 km from the state capital Shillong" while looking for firewood. Known locally as the Mande Burung (jungle man), Bigfoot figures widely in rural fork lore around the world: Sasquatch in North America, Yeti in the Himalayas, Yowie in Australia, and Hantu jarang gigi in southeast Asia. While most scientists dismiss reported sightings, saying that it would be nearly impossible for such a such creature to avoid wider detection, the efforts to ascertain the existence of such a creature are not the first time a government in the region has acted on behalf of a cryptozoological entity. Bhutan created Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary—650 square kilometers of temperate rhododendron and pine forests in the eastern part of the country—specifically to protect the habitat of the yeti, better known as "Bigfoot" or "Sasquatch" in other parts of the world. Nevertheless, Bigfoot sightings often crop up when areas are looking to promote tourism, as was the case in early 2006 in Malaysia, when teams of scientists were sent into the rainforests of Johor state Malaysia in search of the mythical beast. Following the trend, the latest sightings in India are being looking into by the Achik Tourism Society

'We have taken photographs and video images of the footprints of the creature and their nesting. The footprints we shot were as big as 13 to 15 inches long,' Dipu Marak, general secretary of the Achik Tourism Society, told the Indo-Asian News Service.

'Prima facie, the descriptions given by people who saw the creatures point to Mande Burung. There is no trace of any gorilla or unidentified animals inhabiting this region,' said T.K. Marak, president of the Achik Tourism Society and a zoology lecturer at the Tura government college in West Garo Hills.
Achik Tourism Society says the "mystical monster" feeds on "wild berries, bananas, plantain tree shoots, barks and roots" and construct "a nest kind of thing using thatch and leaves with no roofs-just walls", according to Dipu Marak.

See whole story here:

http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0610-bigfoot.html

Rare creature discovered in deep jungle

Rare dolphins discovered deep in jungle

By Saeed Ahmed

(CNN) -- The Irrawaddy, one of the world's rarest species of freshwater dolphins, have been found in surprisingly large numbers deep in the waterlogged jungles of Bangladesh.Conservationists thought the Irrawaddy had dwindled in number to just a few hundred, but they have now counted almost 6,000 of them in the Sundarban mangrove forests and the adjacent waters of the Bay of Bengal.The forests of the Sundarban -- Bengali for "beautiful forest" -- lie at the delta of the Ganges and two other rivers on the Bay of Bengal. Until now, little mammal research had taken place in the area."Every time we had done a study to look into the population (elsewhere), they came out critically endangered," said Brian Smith of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, who led the study. "It was a very pleasant surprise and a shock to find that Bangladesh supports such a large number (of dolphins)."The discovery is noteworthy because scientists do not know how many Irrawaddy dolphins remain.The next step, they say, is to ensure the mammal's survival. One rare dolphin species -- the Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji -- is extinct. Another, the Ganges River dolphin, is critically endangered.

Read rest here : http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/04/01/dolphins.irrawaddy.delta.bangladesh/index.html

What else is waiting to be discovered in our jungles ?

Living Fossil Sturgeons Evolving

For those who think sturgeons are the explanation for lake monsters , here is the latest research.

Study: 'Living Fossil' Sturgeons Evolving At Rapid Pace; 'They're Kind Of An Outlier'

by Underwatertimes.com News Service

ANN ARBOR, Michigan -- Efforts to restore sturgeon in the Great Lakes region have received a lot of attention in recent years, and many of the news stories note that the prehistoric-looking fish are "living fossils" virtually unchanged for millions of years.But a new study by University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues reveals that in at least one measure of evolutionary change—changes in body size over time—sturgeon have been one of the fastest-evolving fish on the planet.

Read rest here: http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=96100213754

Maine researchers tell tale of catching 7-foot sturgeon

‘Sturzilla’ put up a fight before being captured by a research team from the University of New England.By JOE LAWLOR

See full story and pics here http://www.pressherald.com/maine-researchers-tell-tale-of-catching-7-foot-sturgeon_2013-06-06.html