Monday, February 25, 2013

Sea Monsters of the Lake… Not Just for Oceans Anymore.


There are many stories of monsters that roam the seven seas as told by the sailors who venture out in those waters. The tales of mega sharks, giant squid, mermaids and even temptress sirens of the sea that date all the way back to Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. The sea is a vast amount of water and is not easily explored both on the surface and most especially below. Most of the world’s oceans have yet to be explored and identified and that’s just the surface if we go below then there might just in fact be those sea monsters of legend and lore. Now that makes total and complete sense for the oceans of the world, but what about lakes?

It seas that lakes go through the same amount of legend and lore in relation to sea monsters as the oceans do. Through out the world there are reports of many lake monsters. Some of these lake monsters are more famous than others, but they still all come down to the same thing, monsters in a lake.

Some of the most commonly known lake monsters are tow in particular one being the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland and then Champ located in Lake Champlain near New York. Loch Ness is truly the granddaddy of all lake monsters and thrives in tourism just from its legendary status. Now there have been expeditions of the lake to try and hunt down the elusive creature. If you look at all the experiments that have taken place to find the Loch Ness Monsters I think you would have to agree that the chances of us finding something in there is slim to none. Well through all the experiments they have found nothing, and people to this day are still spotting the great lake monster. Could all these people be lying or could their eyes be playing tricks on them? In a world where everyone wants that 15 minutes of fame I would venture to guess that a fair bit of them are lying and the rest have seen something that looked odd, but can easily be explained.

A lesser known lake monster is that located in Pennsylvania and is billed as PAs own loch ness monster. The lake is located in Raystown Pennsylvania and in the Raystown lake is said to exist a lake monster. Now being from PA I am particularly drawn to this because there haven’t been all that many sightings and they are all fairly recent. Now being the scuba diver that I am would love to venture into the lake and take a look for myself, but I highly doubt I would find anything.

The exploration of lake and the eco system that live within them should be a fairly easy task to accomplish. So long as there are no rivers or underwater lines to other bodies of water there should be no reason why we couldn’t drop a side-scan sonar, comb the lake and find these supposed monsters? One reason is because nobody wants to waste the time, effort and money on such an expedition because it is chasing a legend that doesn’t exist. Are there things living in lakes that people don’t know about? Sure there are and we find things everyday but if we can find the smallest of items in a lake then why wouldn’t we be able to find a giant lake monster? Do you think the lake monster is smarter than us and messing with us? If you do then I feel bad for you, there are no such things as lake monsters as for sea monsters I would be willing to believe that much more easily.

Be safe and don’t feed the lake monsters,

Jon Bolton @JohnCannonTBS



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