In 2006 researchers using a Humminbird Piranha MAX 215 Portable fish-finder also claimed to have found something lurking in the lake. One researcher, who did not want to be named told the Siberian Times of his findings.
"I switched off the 'Fish ID' and we watched just pure scanning. Soon we registered a shadow some 15-17 meters under our boat, it was about 6.5 meters long. It was pretty clear, it was not a fish and not a tree. There cannot be fish that big, and a log would have been registered in a different way. How can it swim under the water?”
In Febuary 2013 Russian divers, led by Dmitry Shiller reached the bottom of the lake for the first time. In the same report it was stated that the team, using an underwater scanner had ucovered the jaws and skeleton of a huge animal.
Lake Vorota, mentioned above lies twelve miles from Labynkyr. It too has a monster tradition. In July 1953 a prospecting party led by Geologist VA Tverdokhelbov travelled to the Sorongnakh Plateau. His diary of the trip was published by a Soviet magazine eight years later. They visited both lakes. In Tverdokhelbov’s own word’s…
“30 May.We left Tomtor village, went 70 kilometres up the Kuidusun Valley, turned left and got to the large Sordonnokhskoe plateau. Ahead of us there is Lake Labynkyr where there is storage with food and equipment.
'There are many legends about this Lake Labynkyr. In the evenings sitting by the fire our old guide told us that a 'devil' lived in this lake. He is so big that the distance between his eyes, as Varfolomey said, 'is wider than a fisherman's raft made of ten logs'.
'I heard about this 'devil' before and many times. In Ust-Ner, I heard that the devil ate a dog. The dog swam to bring the shot duck to the hunter, then huge jaws raised from the water and the dog just disappeared in a moment.
'One of the Tomtor villagers told me that one day he found a huge bone on the shore of Lake Labynkyr. It was like the devil's jaw - if you put it vertically, you could ride on a horse through it like under an arch. He said this jaw bone remained near the fishermen house on the shore.
'I heard legends how a whole caravan perished going under the ice of Labynkyr. It was spoken that people saw a big horn stuck out of the ice. People gathered around it on ice and tried to take it out but suddenly the ice broke and many people and reindeer died'.
'5 June:Early in the morning we got to the shore of Lake Labynkyr and reached the storage. Comfortable tents with wooden beds and floor and table awaited us.
'7 June:We are having a rest. Lake Labynkyr is a square, 15 km long and 3 km wide. I found the ruined fisherman's house on the shore, carefully explored the house and all around it but did not find any 'jaw bone'.
He did not witness anything untoward in Labynkyr but went on with his expedition.
28 July:Now we stopped at the shore of Lake Vorota. Mikhail made a raft and went to measure the depth. It is 60 meters as in Labynkyr. But the lake itself is much smaller.
30 July:This is what happened today. It was sunny friendly morning, Boris Bashkatov and I went on a walking trip around Lake Vorota. We had to climb rocks on the way - about 11 am the way became dangerous and we decided to go down a bit, closer to the water. Looking at the water from the rock, I clearly saw a terrace under the water with a huge white spot on it. But when I looked at the terrace again a minute later there was no white spot there. 'Maybe sunshine is joking with me', I thought. But suddenly Boris shouted 'Look! What is there, in the middle?' We stopped. Some 300-400 meters away on the water there was clearly seen some white object, shining under the sunlight. 'A barrel', said Boris, 'made of tin.' 'Maybe a horse got into the lake,' I said.
Truly, the object was swimming, and fast enough. It was something alive, some animal. It was making an arch - first along the lake, then right towards us. As it was getting closer, a strange coldness like a stupor was growing inside me. Above the water there was big dark grey body, the white colour has gone. On this dark grey background there were clearly visible two symmetrical light spots looking like eyes and there was just stick in the body - maybe a fin? Or a harpoon of an unlucky fisherman?
'We saw just a part of the animal but we could guess its much bigger, massive body was under the water. We could guess this looking how the monster was moving - raising from the water, it threw its body forward then fully went under the water. At this time the waves were going away from its head, waves originating under the water. 'Flapping its mouth, catching fish', I guessed.
The animal was obviously swimming towards us and the waves made by the animal reached our legs. We looked at each other and immediately began to climb up the rock. What if 'it' goes out of the water? We witnessed a predator, no doubt, one of the strongest predators in this world: such indomitable, merciless and some sensible fierceness was in every his movement, in all its looks.
'The animal stopped some 100 meters away from the shore. Suddenly it began to beat against the water, waves went all ways, we could not understand what was going on. Maybe it lasted just a minute and then the animal was gone, dived. It was only then when I thought about a camera.
'We stood for another 10-20 minutes, it was quiet. We went further.
'There was no doubt, we saw the 'devil' - the legendary monster of this area. The Yakut fisherman was right, the animal had dark grey skin and the distance between its eyes was surely not less than a raft of 10 logs. But he saw it in Labynkyr and we saw it in Vorota lake. They are 20 km away from each other - and they are not connected.
'I recalled that white spot under the water. Obviously, the animal was hunting at that underwater terrace and we scared it when shouted going down the rocks.”
Tverdokhelbov had visited Lake Vorota before in 1945 hand had seen a strange animal whilst swimming.
“We turned around and some 30 metres away in the water we saw a huge dark grey body with two light spots and a fin above them. The animal was looking at us as if it was choosing who to start with.”
There have been suggestions that the Labynkyr and Vorota creatures are huge huso sturgeon. These giant fish can reach 24 feet long and weigh 3640lbs.But these are bottom feeding fish and are not known to be aggressive towards humans. Their diet consists mainly of small fish and invertebrates. Moreover the lakes in question are outside of the know distribution of the huso sturgeon.
The wels catfish can reach 16 feet and has been known to swallow whole dogs but once again these lakes are far beyond its known range.
Others suggested killer whales but the lakes are many miles inland and these air breathing, marine mammals would be seen breeching by anyone who spent any amount of time at the lakes.
Anatoly Sidorenkot, a Ukranian archeologist who was a member of our team on the 2008 CFZ almasty expedition in the Caucasus told us some interesting cryptozoological snippets. Some years ago a friend of his was on a boat in the Lena River in Siberia when he encountered a strange creature. It had a black humped back and a 2 metre tall fin. It reminded him of a killer whale, but they were thousands of miles inland at the time. A man on the boat took two shots at the beast with a rifle. It turned and swam at speed towards the boat. The man pumped three more bullets into the creature and it dived under the boat and swam away. The description recalls creatures described from Lake Vorota. The beasts here are up to ten metres long, have a dorsal fin and a wide head. Could they be some form of colossal fish?
The lake monsters of Siberia are one of the cyptozoological mysteries that I would most like to investigate. Given the resources, time and bait I think his is a riddle we could solve.