• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Mysterious Organic Mass In Irish Lake

A

Anonymous

Guest
This was recently posted on cryptozoology.com... the poster there who found it found it on a Christian fundamentalist/creationist site, so i won't directly link to that site, but that site claims the source was a Yahoo news report from last July...
Mysterious Mass Discovered In Lake
by Jonathan Drake
S: Yahoo News (8-18-03)

It's a gigantic mysterious mass, and it's about the size of a whale. Even stranger, it was found, not lying in the shallows of some ocean, but rather about 30 feet down in one of Ireland's deepest lakes.

How deep? About 250 feet (75m). Muckross Lake, as it's commonly known, seems to have been the home of some large animal. The huge mass was found during an acoustic survey of stocks of arctic char. Paddy O'Sullivan, National Parks and Wildlife Service regional manager, said a group of international scientists were studying the char using very sophisticated equipment to take soundings when they found ... well ... it.

What was it doing? Apparently just floating about 10 meters down. Interestingly, its shape tapers off at either end.

"They found something very unusual. A large mass within the lake," said O'Sullivan. "At first I thought it might be a seal but they said it was much, much bigger than that -- it was as big as the biggest whale."

Unfortunately, the mystery mass may not be solved for awhile as cutbacks in research budgets mean they do not stretch to hiring the sophisticated equipment for another survey.

"The only way to find out what it is is to go back and look again and see if it has moved. The fact that there has been a lot of interest may mean someone will come along with funding," he said.
 
Yes,I remember when this came out.I think it did come out on Yahoo news,but I believe they may have gotten it from Ananova or some such.I haven't heard any more about it,either.
 
"(funds) do not stretch to hiring the sophisticated equipment for another survey "

What's so sophisticated about some cable and a grappling hook?
 
So `thats` where my lost black pudding went!

(Black pudding, always good for grossing out americans...)
 
Homo Aves said:
So `thats` where my lost black pudding went!

(Black pudding, always good for grossing out americans...)
:cross eye


The first thing I thought when I read the title of this thread was that it was some large collection of algae floating in the water. Better than black pudding!!
 
Yes, its suprising how many mysterious globs turn out to be algae...quite unexpected really.
 
algae or ..

yeah its always algae or some kind of chemical waste that gets caught between layers like oil, water and vinegar. gross. and for the record....
 
Sounds remarkably similar to the story posted here a few days ago about that lake monster in Russia (or somewhere Eastern European). Didn't they also identify a mass of gloop floating near the bottom of the lake?
 
Hmmm, seems to me they just assume it is organic. I don't see how the sonar should be able to tell. Well, I'm in Ireland, maybe I should see if anyone knows something about it.
 
Should have replied to this before now. The first post said the article had been on the website of some fundamentalist wingnuts and also on yahoo and ananova. It is often the case that these reports float around these sites with little attribution.

In fact the story first appeared last year in the Irish Times, as a result of a report on surveys of the lakes in the Killarney area. The group investigating the char fish is also a reputable body. I sent the original clipping to FT, so it may take a bit of digging to get the actual date of the report.

That said I have no idea what the mass might be at all.
 
Interestingly I heard Rik Waller Was Holidaying In Ireland Before He Went Into The "Back To Reality" House.

Im not sure if he tapers at the ends though?!
 
Organic Mass is very vague term. Feces is as organic as a dead body.
 
Yes,I remember when this came out.I think it did come out on Yahoo news,but I believe they may have gotten it from Ananova or some such.I haven't heard any more about it,either.

Here's the August 18 (2003) article on the subject from the Irish Times. I don't know whether this was the original news item on the discovery story.

Monster 'fish' in Killarney lake think scientists
Mon, Aug 18, 2003, 01:00
Anne Lucey Killarney

Scientists trying to find out more about the rare Arctic char in the lakes of Killarney have hooked a "monster". A hydro-acoustic study of Muckross Lake, one of the deepest lakes in Ireland, has thrown up a baffling image of a deep lurking "thing" the size of a small house in the south-eastern part of the lake.

It is the first time the lake - which is known also as the Middle Lake - has been properly surveyed, and the study is being carried out by the Irish Char Conservation Group (ICCG) with international scientists. Instead of the normal small signals indicating individual fish, monitoring personnel got something much larger in around 10 metres of water, last April.

They have been unable to identify the image. It was not due to a computer or logging error, as the sonar equipment was functioning normally, said Mr Andrew Long, fisheries consultant with River Monitoring Technology.

Only when they began analysing the data recently, did the truly mysterious nature of the "thing" become apparent.

Christened "Muckie" by the study group, parallels are already being drawn with the Scottish Lough Ness Monster.

Lough Ness and Muckross Lake have much in common. They are large and deep with similar fish species, including Arctic char. Muckross Lake is up to 70 metres deep - this makes it, along with its sister lake, Lough Leane, the deepest lake in Ireland, said Dr Fran Igoe, scientific adviser to the ICCG.

"What we do know is that the fish fauna in Muckross is very ancient indeed. We have confirmed the presence of a good population of Arctic char, and the lake is known to hold ferox trout, ordinary trout and Atlantic salmon, as well as lamprey species of eel, all of which attest to the ancient origins of the this lake," he said.

The latest discovery was "very exciting" and served as a reminder of the hidden mysteries still lurking in Muckross and other ancient ice-age lakes in Co Kerry.

Scottish fisheries expert and monster hunter Mr Ron Greer, who has written extensively on the giant Scottish ferox trout, is to lead a study of the lake in September. His experience with Lough Ness should prove invaluable, Dr Igoe said.

There was a serious side to the surveys by the ICCG, Dr Igoe remarked. Many of the lakes had not been surveyed before, yet Ireland was losing genetically unique populations of species, without fully understanding what was happening.

The curious find has been welcomed by Mr Paddy O'Sullivan, regional manager with Dúchas.

Whatever it turns out to be, it would be afforded full protection, as the lake in the heart of the Killarney national park was part of a Special Area of Conservation, he said.

SOURCE: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/monster-fish-in-killarney-lake-think-scientists-1.369925
 
The January 2004 blather.net article includes an external link to an extinct domain once used by the Irish Char Conservation Group. That group once provided a webpage dedicated to the Muckross Lake weirdness.

An archived version of this extinct webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070607185741/http://www.charr.org:80/news/muckrossmonster.htm

This article provides a bit more detail on what the researchers originally discovered:

“It was when we started to examine the recorded signals that we noticed something very unusual was going on in one transect logging. Instead of the normal small signals indicating individual fish which we always get during our surveys, we got something the size of a two story house in 20-25m of water along the south eastern portion of the lake. We have been unable to identify what exactly the image is, but we know that it is not a computer or logging error as the gear was functioning normally” reports Andrew Long specialist fisheries consultant with River Monitoring Technology Ltd.

This is also the only account I've seen that provides a copy of the imagery they recorded ...

MuckrossScanImage.jpg

 
Back
Top