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Tales of Tahoe Lake Monster Just Story?
Posted: January 28, 2004 at 9:10 p.m.
TAHOE CITY, CA (AP) -- Since sailors first started navigating earth's waters, tales of sea monster sightings put fear in their hearts. But reports of these creatures have not been limited to the world's vast oceans -- they've also been seen in lakes.
Reports of beasts shaped like giant serpents or waterborne dinosaurs have brought fame to places such as Scotland's Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, which borders New York, Vermont and the Canadian province of Quebec.
Even Lake Tahoe reportedly has its own sea monster, Tahoe Tessie.
Do the creatures really exist?
Dr. Charles Goldman, a limnologist who is engaged in the scientific study of lakes and the foremost expert on Lake Tahoe, tried to answer the question recently.
Goldman said he was invited last August to study Loch Ness by professor Robert Rains, head of the Applied Science Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rains, a firm believer in the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, used sonar in the 1970s to take strobed photographs of "Nessie." These photographs depict a humped creature 20 to 30 feet long.
While other photos of Nessie, such as the famous one showing a long-necked creature rising out of the water, have been determined to be hoaxes, Goldman said Rains' photos are more difficult to discount. One shows a flipper "that looks terribly authentic," according to Goldman. Another shows a 20-foot-long body and head.
Goldman said most sea monster sightings tend to be in deep, cold lakes that produce mirages brought on by temperature changes in the water.
"That is why people see things that really don't exist," he said during a recent lecture on "USOs: Unidentified Swimming Objects."
Other mysterious sightings have occurred at Lake Manitoba and Lake Okanagan in Canada, Lake Van in Turkey and Nahuel Huapi Lake in Argentina's Patagonia region.
The difficulty in verifying the existence of lake monsters, Goldman said, "is that you can prove something is there, but you can't prove something is not there."
Thus far, the search for a lake creature has yet to produce any concrete evidence, he said.
Twenty years ago, Goldman held a conference at the University of Nevada, Reno on the subject of USOs. While a number of scientists said they'd seen Tahoe Tessie, Goldman said all the sightings have one thing in common: no one ever saw a head or tail, only dark objects in the water.
Goldman decided to conduct his own experiments. He created a photo of "Tessie" by capturing the splash from rocks thrown in the water. Another photo shows what looks like a series of humps in the lake, but in reality are only waves.
"You have a flat lake with no boats visible, but boats did pass hours before, and the waves come back and amplify," Goldman explained.
Goldman said other explanations include someone mistaking a river otter or beaver for "Tessie" -- or the possible existence of a very large sturgeon.
Sturgeon have been known to reach 1,500 pounds and live for as long as 100 years, and could have been planted in the lake years ago, Goldman said. Given the lake's size and its fish population, a massive sturgeon would have plenty of food to sustain it.
Just in case the existence of a giant Tahoe sturgeon turns out to be true, Goldman has given it a scientific name -- Acipenser Tahoensis.
Goldman said he hopes to get a better look at Tahoe's depths next summer in "Project Deep Blue." If funding is available, Goldman would use the same remote-operated sub employed by Rains in Scotland to explore Lake Tahoe's bottom.
While the existence of Tahoe Tessie is unlikely, the Loch Ness Monster is more probable. Since the Irish Sea is connected to the Atlantic Ocean through a series of lochs, something could swim in from the ocean, Goldman explained.
One possibility: An oarfish, the longest of all fish, which can be as long as 30 feet and weigh up to 400 pounds. Although the ribbon-like fish lives at 700 feet below the surface, they've occasionally been spotted on the surface and been mistaken for sea serpents.
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