[arel]

Is there really a lake monster in Lake Champlain?

I imagine there must be something there, as the creature has been reported even by the local Indians hudereds of years ago. The Mansi photo is believed to be authentic, from what I've read online. But people seem to use the lake. I just saw a web page about kayaking in Lake Champlain and there was no warning to beware of the lake monster.

What is the current status of the debate? Have any forum posters seen Champ? Is Champ a celebrity in Burlington as he is across the lake?

[vter]

Champ a celebrity? YOU BET!!! He even has a minor league baseball team named after him.
http://www.vermontlakemonsters.com/
I've never seen him, but always look. It's fun to believe....

[square peg]

Supposedly, Lake Memphremagog has one as well called "Memphre". From articles that I've read, some folks swear it/they/he/she exist. In twenty years of cruising up and down the lake I've never heard anyone mention the subject. The area looked much different in prehistoric times. Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence basin were a part of the Atlantic Ocean, so who knows for sure what biological remnants might be out there.

[Jason_Els]

There's no warning because Champ isn't known to disrupt boating though in 1873 the crew and passengers of the W.B. Eddy reported the ship ran into Champ which nearly caused it to capsize. Naturally that was the fault of the ship, not Champ.

Any animal can be labeled a, "monster" until science identifies it. Through the nineteenth century reports came from Africa of giant hairy wild men in the mountainous regions of the Congo. We now know those hairy wild men as gorillas. Nothing weird or supernatural about it.

However, there is something in Lake Champlain.

What that something is, however, is disputed. Pictures have been taken, people have made reports, legends referenced, but in the end, we're left with a few tantalizing clues.

The Iroquois called it, Chaousarou, while the Abenaki named it, Tatoskok. Samuel de Champlain saw something in the St.Lawrence in 1609 when he visited, recording a, "a 20-foot serpent, with a horse-shaped head and body as thick as a keg."

Sightings continued on and off, some pictures taken, then a video. Rewards were offered, stories told. But then something interesting happened, and then another.

In 1954 a reptile of some sort about 15 inches long, was captured in Shelburne Bay and tied to the dock. It slipped the knot and swam away. This story would be another footnote of unproven anecdotes until 1976 when William H. Hall of Vergennes caught a 12 inch reptile of some sort that had four legs, a forked tongue, and hissed. Hall sent it to the University of Vermont where at least one herpetologist looked at it and proclaimed it as something he could not identify but then the specimen was lost.

Then came Linde Emerson and the Champ of Button Bay. Emerson is a park ranger there and in 1994 she saw a juvenile champ of about 12 feet long and then another. Emerson hadn't been looking at the lake but her attention was drawn to it by some loud splashing sounds. Most champ sightings come from Button Bay and the Port Henry area so that has been the focus of research activity. She contacted Dennis Hall, the son of William Hall about the sightings. In 1992 the Halls established Champquest, an organization dedicated to further study of champ.

Dennis Hall claims he has seen several champs. He believes juveniles are raised in the Button Bary area before venturing into the larger lake itself. He also thinks he knows what champ is. After consulting a bunch of books he saw what his father confirms is the animal he found back in the 70s. He claims champs are, Tanystropheus, a member of the Protorosaurs which are a sub group of the Archosauromorph family. They aren't true dinosaurs however and, in fact, were around before any of the dinosaurs were. Hall explains it:

The Protorosaurs were a lizard type reptile that lived in the deserts of Europe toward the end of the Permian Period. Its long legs were tucked under its body, allowing it to chase after fast moving prey-mainly insects. Its neck was made up of seven large and greatly elongated vertebrae.

The long necks of the Protorosaurs reached an extreme in this member of the group. The Tanystropheus neck was longer than its body and tail combined. Yet only seven vertebrae made up the neck, each bone was greatly elongated.

Tany and the Elasmosaurus look similar but there are major differences. The Elasmosaurus had flippers. Tany has feet. The Elasmosaurus is 46 feet long. Tany is 25 tops. The most important difference is that the Elasmosaurus was an egg-layer and would have laid her eggs much like the modern day turtles (in open sight of humans). The Champtany gives live-birth. Unusual for a reptile, but she was not alone, other reptiles including the very ancient Ichthyosaurs , were live-bearers as are some modern day reptiles.

These kinds of reports spurred the Fauna Communications Research Institute to do a sonar scan of Lake Champlain in 2002. The found something.

Something unique.

Something big.

They found a living organism that uses echolocation (sonar) to search for food. Bats use echolocation to "see" at night to locate insects and to make their way around the completely dark caves they inhabit. By making very high-pitched noises in very rapid succession, bats can detect the difference of pitch as it returns to their ears and use those sounds to determine the location of objects. Now, as far as the water is concerned, no creatures use echolocation save two, porpoises and whales.

[Jason_Els]

We would watch the signal scrolling across our computer and analyzer screens and record onto hard-drive and Digital audio recorder. Most of the time we could hear fish, crayfish, and the occasional turtle, and boat engines. We once even heard music coming from a boat moored several hundred meters away. Ironically, it was the song "When the levee breaks" by Led Zeppelin. We also could hear the "plop" made by fisherman's lures as they hit the water, even 500-600 hundred feet away. That should tell you how sensitive the vector sensors are. Whales and dolphin search for food using a high frequency sonar signal called echolocation, or "bio-sonar." The only other known aquatic animals that echolocate are dolphins and whales (marine, although there are freshwater dolphin in China, India, Pakistan, and Brazil.) Echolocation (biosonar) is a high frequency signal mostly above our hearing range that bounces off objects. The animal can hear the return signal and thereby know what it is. Some call it perfect underwater sight. Average echolocation signals vary, but go up to 200,000 Hertz (cycles per second) or expressed differently, 200 kilohertz (kHz). The human ear can only hear to 20,000 Hertz or 20 kHz. Man-made sonar or fish-finders send out a signal that is very regular, and entirely different then biologically produced sonar.

At three different sites, on the 3rd, 4th and the 10th we picked up an echolocation signal. We picked this up on Digital audio recorders or DAT (7 Hz to 44.1 kHz ) and computer analysis data-loggers (DC to 240 kHz) which stores onto hard-drive. The PCMCIA card that allowed us to data log was donated by National Instruments, and is the very latest in technology. It allows us to analyze sounds 20 times higher then the human range of hearing. The data on Digital audio recorder has been analyzed, and the data-logging sent to a member of our software team at National Instruments. We captured the echolocation signal on our hard-drive, analyzed it as it was happening, and the signal goes up to 140,000 Hertz, or 140 kHz. The echolocation signal under analysis is similar to Beluga whale and killer echolocation, yet different enough so that we can not make a positive identification. Methods such as cross-correlation, where one compares the properties of one sound to another, can usually tell us what type of creature it is, but not in this case. It is significantly different from both whale and dolphin, but it is echolocation.

There's something big hunting for food in Lake Champlain and it uses echolocation to do it.

So what is champ? I don't know and there's no proof to show it's one thing or another, but there is something out there swimming around using a very sophisticated method of hunting unknown to any animal known to science that makes Lake Champlain its home.

Take note of two things:

Each of the quotes above are non-commercial, taken from not-for-profit sources (Champ Quest and the Fauna Communications Research Institute), and champ is a species protected by anti-hunting laws in both Vermont and New York. Canada has, sadly, not followed.

Have fun kayaking!

[arel]

Thank you, Jason Els. Your posts in this thread are informative and well-written. It seems clear that you put a lot of effort into them and I appreciate it.

[Jason_Els]

You are very welcome