Jonathan Downes, 50, spotted the “creature” thrashing around in one of the Lakes of Killarney in County Kerry, Ireland, while on holiday last week.

His eerie sighting was in the Upper Lake one of three interlinked lakes that make up the area.

The mystery comes just a few years after bizarre unexplained sonar recordings showing a large body were made in the adjoining Muckross Lake.

Along with his wife and friends who also had cameras, Mr Downes, from Crediton, Devon, managed to capture shapes moving across part of the lake.

Mr Downes, who is director at the Centre for Fortean Zoology, said that he had heard of the sonar reading before visiting the lake, but was “ridiculously” lucky to see anything.

He said: “I was actually there with my wife and a friend on holiday.

“All I knew is what I’ve read and having spent an hour on Thursday night looking down on it.

“What we saw was a thing about nine to 10ft long.

“I’d love to say I saw long necks and humps and things but I didn’t.”

Mr Downes, who studies cryptozoology – which investigates unknown species of animals, described seeing what he see described as appearing to be “a long thin eel-like creature appearing about 10ft long”.

“I believe it must be a large eel,” he said. “It was a pale colour.

“What I saw didn’t actually really come out on the picture as well.”

Pat Foley, deputy regional manager of National Park and Wildlife Service, which oversees Killarney National Park, said that there has been some unusual readings taken about six years ago, which indicated an unknown figure in Muckross Lake.

“I think it was about 2003 there was a survey taken,” he said.

“They were getting some sort of strange picture coming back.

“The image was a large and dark blob which I presume, for economic reasons, was described as a monster.”

The Lakes of Killarney have much in common with Loch Ness – home of the world’s most famous monster – just across the Irish Sea in Scotland.

Both are large very deep lakes with similar fish species including Arctic char.

Loch Ness is the deepest lake in Britain, whilst Muckross Lake measures up to 70m deep, is along with Lough Leane, Ireland’s deepest lake.

At the time of the sonar findings in Muckross Lake in Paddy O’Sullivan, Killarney National Park manager for the National Parks and Wildlife Service said: “I am very excited by these findings and am delighted that the ancient fish community of these lakes are being examined by the Irish Char Conservation Group and scientists from around the world.

“These interesting findings can only be good for Killarney from a public awareness and a tourism point of view.

“Whatever the thing turns out to be it will be afforded our fullest protection under EU law as the Muckross forms part of a Special Area of Conservation.”

Source: thesun.uk

]]> http://cryptoreports.com/irelands-killarney-lakes-monster/feed 0 http://cryptoreports.com/vancouver-island-lake-creature-search-begins http://cryptoreports.com/vancouver-island-lake-creature-search-begins#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:43:29 +0000 CryPtoReporter http://cryptoreports.com/?p=196 Brigette Horvath knew she saw something strange in Cameron Lake on Vancouver Island two years ago and a team of researchers say she might be right.

Was it a fish, an eel or some kind of serpent-like creature?

She says she didn’t know. But Horvath grabbed her camera and managed to fire off one shot before the batteries failed.

The researchers who specialize in looking for so-called crytozoological creatures — in other words, monsters — spent Saturday on the lake probing the depths with a sonar-like fish finder.

At first, they picked up a couple of large contacts at the bottom of the lake, about 45 metres deep, then something more pronounced on a second pass.

”Something just went `ping’ on the alarm on the fish finder and we saw this absolutely massive object in the midst of various fish,” said John Kirk, president of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club.

They made four more passes and the contact held stable, making it unlikely that it was a school of fish, which tend to scatter eventually, Kirk said.

”We were quite stunned that there was something that big in the lake and it was in about 60 feet of water, less than 30 yards from shore, it was quite amazing,” he said.

Horvath, who lives in Nanaimo, said she was driving along Highway 4 on July 30, 2007, when she saw a strange semi-circle in the lake.

”You could see like a serpent shape,” said Horvath, who isn’t the only person to report something strange in Cameron Lake.

”It wasn’t logs,” she said. ”It wasn’t waves. There were no boats in the area. It was, like, right there. You could actually see a large fish, (an) object, no, not an object, something alive.”

Kirk, who admits his trip to Cameron Lake is being sponsored by the local Oceanside Tourism Association, said the team accidentally lost its underwater camera and was unable to explore further.

Because the weather will deteriorate in the fall and winter, another search will have to wait until next year, Kirk said.

But the team has narrowed the possibilities.

”Maybe it’s a sturgeon, maybe it’s a giant sterile eel….it could be a massive type of salamander,” Kirk said. ”Or it could be something that we’re completely unaware of at this point.”

However, it’s unlikely the small lake is the home of a mysterious sea monster, Kirk said.

”I’m not going to the extent to say there’s anything exotic down there, there’s just something big.”

Kirk has searched for the Ogopogo in Okanagan Lake in the B.C. interior, looked in coastal B.C. for the Sasquatch, tried to find the sea creature Cadborosaurus off Vancouver Island and has hunted for giant salamanders in swamps.

He’s been to Scotland and the republics of Congo and Cameroon in search of strange dinosaur-like beasts.

But it’s British Columbia waters that provide a fertile hunting ground for animal tales, he said.

Kirk said there are 41 different lakes in British Columbia where strange animal sightings have been reported.

”In B.C., we just seem to have a ton of these lakes where these things have been seen,” he said.

Kirk said Cadborosaurus’ range is not confined to the Victoria area. Reports of a similar animal have come from the Gulf of Alaska to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.

In Oregon, the animal goes by the name Colossal Claude.

But Kirk believes British Columbia is in a class by itself for what he calls crytozoological encounters.

People have actually started to embrace the strange animals to the point where they are showing up in tourism brochures, he said.

”Like Moberly Lake up in the (northeast) area, the First Nations there got in touch with me and told me about the creature that they had been seeing with a horse’s head swimming around in the lake, and now they’ve given it a name,” Kirk said.

”They call it Moberly Dick.”

Source: amherstdaily

A TEAM of investigators will scour Windermere in a hunt for a legendary monster that is claimed to lurk in its deep waters.

The search follows years of reported sightings of a big creature in the lake, the most recent being in July when Lake District hotelier Thomas Noblett was hit by a three-foot wave as he was swimming.

A chartered boat will take to England’s longest lake on September 19 with celebrity and sports psychic Dean Maynard at the helm. He will be joined by Windermere photographer Linden Adams who claims to have seen ‘Bownessie’ – the nickname for the monster – from a viewpoint on Gummers How in 2007.

There will also be people with cameras dotted around the shoreline to capture any unusual activity.

“Linden Adams and I are really geared up and ready for the challenge ahead and we hope to find some concrete evidence something big does exist in the lake,” said Mr Maynard.

In 2006 The Westmorland Gazette reported how Huddersfield University journalism lecturer Steve Burnip, of Hebden Bridge, saw a serpent-like creature emerge from the waters as he stood at Watbarrow Point across from Waterhead.

He described it as being 15 to 20 feet long with a little head and two small humps following in its wake. He said it looked like a giant eel.

“I am absolutely convinced that there is a big creature in the lake,” said Mr Burnip. “I am really pleased that there is a renewed interest in it because I know what I saw.

“I can see it in my head now, this grey lump and the humps breaking the water like you see in the classic Loch Ness pictures. There is something in there, something quite big and elusive.”

Mr Adams, whose picture of the creature was studied by photographic experts after appearing on the front page of the Gazette, said: “I looked at it through binoculars and the naked eye and what I saw was huge.

“A lot of photographic experts have had the opportunity to look at the pictures and they are still baffled.”

Ecology experts have told the Gazette that catfish are sometimes introduced to lakes by anglers. They believe that what could be being seen is the Welsh catfish that originates from mainland Europe.

Source: westmorlandgazette