***UPDATE - ABC HAS REMOVED THE VIDEO, AND THE LINK GOES TO SOME LAME VIDEO THAT DOESN'T REALLY SHOW ANYTHING. IF I EVER FIND THE ACTUAL VIDEO AGAIN, I'LL UPDATE THE LINKS***

If you hadn't already read my coverage of the "new" video of the Champlain Monster, do so now so I don't have to be repeatative. Also, make sure you watch the recent video that aired on ABC's Good Morning America, via Yahoo! News. I understand others have been able to get the fullscreen to work through the page where you watch the video at ABC's site, but I have only been able to do it through Yahoo! News' link for some reason

I noticed today that the local paper, The Burlington Free Press in Burlington, VT, has done a writeup on this story with some more background than was provided in the ABC piece. It also points out that the fishermen were from Vermont, which adds to how annoying it was that ABC kept saying things like "Lake Champlain in New York" or "New York's Lake Champlain". We learn from this article that the location that the men were fishing on July 11, 2005 when the video was shot was on the New York side, but ABC leads you to believe that this, the sixth biggest lake in the nation, is a "New York" lake, when in fact 56% of the lake is in Vermont and 37% lies in New York, with the remaining 7% in Quebec, Canada.

Also, as I've mentioned, although I live in Nashville, TN, I was born and raised in Burlington, VT (rasied in Colchester actually, but for all non-Vermonters it might as well be Burlington), so this is actually my home town paper where I spent many hours as a teenager searching for jobs and cars in the classifieds. O'Reilly also recently mentioned this paper after that nutty Judge Cashman initially sentenced a guy who raped a little girl from the age of 6 until she was 10, to 60 days in prison. According to O'Reilly the Free Press was the only paper in the state not idiotically defending the judge's disgusting decision.

Anyway, check out the Burlington Free Press' story on the subject of this new tape, with some more "local" flare and information for true "Champ" fans, including a more extended story and side stories you didn't hear from ABC.

A few excerpts:

Another sighting was reported this week: WCAX-TV aired a story about a 75-year old man near Vergennes who reportedly took a recent picture of a creature on the surface of Lake Champlain.

If my memory serves me, WCAX is the local CBS affiliate. I wish I could have seen this report... Not that too many Vermonters read this blog, but did anyone with TIVO to PC capability happen to TIVO it? Can't hurt to ask, right?

more...

Any unexplained, unique or unidentified sighting on Lake Champlain, of course, brings to the fore the legend of Champ -- the mythical Lake Champlain creature that has been subject of debate and speculation for almost 400 years. Some people have photographed what they claim to be Champ, and in 2003 a team of scientists recorded a series of high-frequency sounds similar to those made by sea mammals coming from the lake's depths. But the presence of a large marine animal unique to Lake Champlain is more folklore than fact.

....

Bodette's story made its way to Elizabeth von Muggenthaler, a former Charlotte resident living in Hillsborough, N.C., where she's president of Fauna Communication Institute, a firm that studies how animals communicate.

In 2003, von Muggenthaler spent nearly a week on Champlain for the Discovery Channel, searching for Champ with highly sensitive sonar equipment. The crew of scientists recorded a series of rapid, high-frequency clicks and ticks that sounds whale- or dolphin-like to the trained ear. The pitch was seven times out of the range of the human ear, von Muggenthaller said, and cannot be attributed to any fish species in Champlain.

The equipment von Muggenthaler's crew used two summers ago determined the creature that emitted the high frequency sound was 15 feet long.

The 2003 recording of the sounds has been reviewed and scrutinized by other acoustic scientists, von Muggenthaler said. Von Muggenthaler, who arrived in Vermont last week, has seen Bodette's video and pictures. She can't say with certainty that this is the creature she heard in 2003, but in her mind the sounds she recorded that summer and these images captured by a fisherman are linked.

"Clearly," von Muggenthaler said, "this deserves serious investigation."

This is really cool. I had wanted to mention this in my original post, but for one it had run on long enough, plus I couldn't actually find the link at the time even though I had read about the study a while back. Well, here's a link to the actual study... VERY interesting stuff, perhaps more important evidence than this latest, open to interpretation, video. Not to take away from the video which is better than most of the Champ evidence out there, but these sound recordings are much more intriguing, I believe.

How can some random noises be more important than inconclusive video? Well, as it's simply put on the study's page:

QUESTION: Does the American equivalent of the creature in Loch Ness exist? Is there a large carnivorous creature living in Lake Champlain?

ANSWER: Some animal in Lake Champlain produces echolocation or bio-sonar...only whales and dolphin are known to do this...so what is making this signal?

I think that's enough to demand a lot of further investigation. Sadly, I don't see anywhere on that page to listen to the audio yourself, but I know I did listen to it on some page when I first read about this a while back. If you know of where that can be found, don't hesitate to email me or post it in the comments section. Although, unless you're an expert in the field, it really doesn't sound like much other than some unfamiliar strange noises, but it helps to have the audio that goes with the story.

So anyway, check that all out to fill in some stuff that ABC left out in their report, if you're genuinely interested in Champ.

 

***UPDATE - ABC HAS REMOVED THE VIDEO, AND THE LINK GOES TO SOME LAME VIDEO THAT DOESN'T REALLY SHOW ANYTHING. IF I EVER FIND THE ACTUAL VIDEO AGAIN, I'LL UPDATE THE LINKS***

Not being in Vermont, where I was born and raised, I would have missed this story had my aunt not told my sister who then told me. ABC's Good Morning America obtained video from a couple fisherman who claim to have seen the elusive lake monster. No smoking gun, but this is pretty interesting video.

Surprisingly few people have heard of the Champlain Monster ('Champ') of Lake Champlain, but it's basically a cousin of Loch Ness Monster that resides in the United States, between the states of New York and Vermont. There have been countless sighting since the early 1600s when the French explorer Samuel De Champlain, the discoverer of the lake, saw the creature himself.

In that past obviously cameras weren't as common for people to have with them at all times, but with digital cameras and camera phones, and so many people owning mini video cameras I suspect we'll have more evidence (though admittedly not proof), where as in the past mostly all we had were the word of people who claimed to see "something". Sure there have been a lot of out of focus and distant photos of "something", and pictures of ripples in the water, but until now there was only one really good picture that has held up under scrutiny:

The most famous photo, by Sandra Mansi

If you grew up on the lake as I did, you've most likely seen some ripples a time or two and joked about it being Champ, but not put a whole lot of thought in to it. I've always sort of been a Champ "fan", and subscribed to the theory that it may be a surviving plesiosaur. Other popular theories are that it may be a large sturgeon, some kind of huge turtle, or nothing at all.

If you aren't from Vermont, New York, or Quebec, Canada, you probably don't know much about Lake Champlain, but here's a little background via Wikipedia:

It is the sixth-largest body of fresh water in the contiguous United States, situated in the Champlain Valley between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of New York...

...

Lake Champlain is one of a large number of large lakes spread in an arc from Labrador through the Northern United States and into the Northwest Territories of Canada. Although it cannot be compared with Ontario, Erie, Huron, Superior, or Michigan, Lake Champlain is a large body of fresh water. Approximately 1130 km² (435 square miles) in area, the lake is roughly 180 km (110 miles) long, and 19 km (12 miles) across at its widest point. It contains roughly 80 islands including an entire county in Vermont.

A little more from the EPA:

56 percent of which lies in Vermont, 37 percent in New York, and 7 percent in Quebec.

...

Broad Lake is relatively narrow, but contains deep water up to 400 feet.

So we're talking about a huge lake who's size, in the United States, is only eclipsed by the size of the Great Lakes. Despite the EPA saying the Broad Lake is relatively narrow, as you read earlier, it's gets up to 19 miles wide. In short, it's a huge lake with all kinds of bays, coves, and virtually unchartered areas for a creature (or creatures) to call home.

In the lakes of Canada there are many more Champ/Nessy type creatures, probably the most famous of which would be Ogopogo. All these different creatures.. sure makes you wonder about all the old tales of giant sea monsters from centuries past. Even weirder are the reports of brontosaurus sightings in Africa and pterodactyl sightings in South America and elsewhere, but those are entirely different stories. Coupled with finding soft tissue in T-Rex and other fossils, it should make one wonder if all the old tales of dragons, were just "tales" after all... And whether the ridiculous dating methods of evolutionists should at least be questioned (i.e. they too believed that soft tissue was lucky to hang around for a couple thousand years, not 70 million. Instead of questioning the dating, they need to fit it in to the Darwininan dogma so they, as usual, have to change everything but their assumptions about millions of years and the theory of evolution, to make it fit so that they're religion doesn't come crashing down around them.) Again, that's for another day, but not totally unrelated.

Anyway, as I said, I suspect with the increased frequency that people are carrying some sort of camera a lot of "stories" will now have evidence to back them up. Hopefully Champ will be included. If you didn't already watch the video by following the links above, check it out from ABC's Good Morning America now. There is also a story (nothing much that isn't in the video) from ABC too, but you can check it out if you want. I just find it annoying that ABC keeps referring to it as "New York's Lake Champlain" or "Lake Champlain in New York", when in fact, as you read above it's actually 56% in Vermont and 37% in New York. Here's the article anyway.

Below is a little slideshow of some photos I snapped off with my junky old digital camera when I was up visiting last summer, and cruisin' around in my cousin's boat off of Burlington. See this Google satellite image for an idea of the area. Nothing special, just some random photos. By the way, the service that let me create this slideshow doesn't show the high resolution versions of the images, so there's nothing I can do about that.

For more information on Champ, check out these other resources:
Champquest (a lot of broken links)
True Authority story 1
True Authority story 2
Genesis Park
Or search on your own...

more:
Dr. Fong, Rocket Season, StrangeWire, Son of a Pitch, The Mad Science Blog