NESSIE'S COUSIN?
Claims to have sea monster-footage
Kjetil Mæland og Carin Pettersson 18.08.04 10:00, ny 18.08.04 14:26
For the first time, the adventurer Jan-Ove Sundberg has managed to take pictures of what he claims to be the Seljord monster. View the pictures here.
Sundberg explained that the pictures of the monster also pictured a mirage of the animal (top), with a heat vibration in between. «That's the reason why it most of all resembles a cake or an ice hockey puck,» Sandberg stated.
Loch Ness has its «Nessie». Its Norwegian cousin may live in the lake Seljordsvannet about 80 miles west of Oslo in the county of Telemark.
Sundberg and his team, the Global Underwater Search Team (GUST), have been looking for the Seljord monster in the deep Norwegian lake for several years.
Last week TV 2 Nettavisen reported that Sundberg had filmed something that may be the Seljord monster. Here are the first pictures of what Sundberg claims is a small Seljord monster. The pictures are from a video which allegedly pictures the monster swimming in the water before disappearing into the water.
«It is rather speculative to call it a baby sea monster because the animal is only one and a half meter long,» Sundberg said to the Norwegian radio channel Kanal 24. «We have filmed an animal that moves itself up and down in the water.»
Mirage
Sundberg said to TV 2 Nettavisen that it is a mirage of the sea monster that is captured on film, and that it therefore can be difficult to interpret the pictures.
«We didn’t know what this was in the beginning, but we have now gotten it explained that the monster mirrors in the air,» Sundberg said. «Between the air mirage and the monster, you can see heat vibrations. These are in other words unique pictures. We have taken pictures of the sea monster at the same time as these are pictures of an atmospheric phenomenon.»
Another issue is that Sundberg never managed to focus the picture before the object disappeared underneath the water surface.
Analyse
When asked if this is a breakthrough in the hunt to find evidence of the existence of the Seljord monster, Sundberg answered yes.
«It’s not every day you get to film the monster,» Sundberg said. «This was just accidental. First I thought it was a buoy, but it was a mirage which tricked me. Now when we have analysed it home, we realize that it is a small monster in the water.»
Like a lion’s roar
When TV 2 Nettavisen talked to Sundberg Tuesday, he was working as on sounds he recorded at Seljordvannet this year. Sounds have been recorded earlier this year too. Researchers at the Institute for Marine Research in Bergen and University of Copenhagen have heard the recordings and concluded that that they were made by a large mammal.
Sundberg got new sound bites from the animal this year, but he does not wish to go public with the sounds just yet.
«We had just lowered the equipment into the water by Tjuvholmen when we heard a very loud sound directly underneath the boat,» Sundberg said. «It was like a lion that roared in the jungle, and it was directly underneath the boat. We jumped. We heard only one roar, and then we heard a smaller sound before it disappeared.»
Continues next year
GUST is back at Seljordsvannet next year. Then they are going to bring along divers, who among other things, are going to investigate strange tracks found on the floor of Seljordsvannet.
«We are also trying to build special equipment that is more useful for our mission,» Sundberg said. «Until now, we have used a sonar which is used to locate fish, but we are looking for larger animals.»
