- Jeff,
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- I'm a fan of yours and thought that you might fine this
article, in today's Burlington Free Press interesting...written by Sam
Hemmingway. It's about our "Champ," a Loch Ness type serpent
believed to be living in the waters of Lake Champlain.
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- Keep up the good work.
Jim Bayerle
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- Lake's First 'Champ-Hearing' Recorded
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- By Sam Hemmingway
Burlington Free Press
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- Champ, the famed "monster" of Lake Champlain,
might be for real after all.
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- Researchers working in the Button Bay area of the lake
last month say highly sensitive sonar equipment on their boat captured
underwater sounds similar to those emitted by a Beluga whale or dolphin.
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 "What we got was a biological creature
creating biosonar at a level that only a few underwater species can do,"
said Elizabeth von Muggenthaler, president of Fauna Communications Research,
a Hillsborough, N.C., firm that studies how animals communicate.
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- Von Muggenthaler said her team was on the lake at the
behest of the Discovery Channel, which was doing a television show about
Champ. She said the TV crew departed a day prior to the first biosonar
readings detected by her team.
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- Von Muggenthaler declined to speculate on the size, nature
or physical characteristics of the creature her equipment monitored. She
acknowledged there is no evidence the lake is home to a freshwater whale
or dolphin.
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- The biosonar noises picked up by the equipment sound
like a rapid series of ticks and are emitted by underwater creatures in
their search for food.
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- What is unusual about the sonar heard in this case was
its volume: Ten times louder than any known fish species in the lake. She
said the irregular sequence of tick sounds also ruled out any chance the
noises were produced by a mechanical device or fish finder.
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- Von Muggenthaler said the readings were recorded on multiple
instruments on June 3, 4 and 10. Some of readings lasted as long as 10
minutes, and she suspects the creature came within 30 feet of her boat
during one of the episodes.
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- While the readings provide no clues about the creature's
physical makeup, she said she should be able to say how fast it was moving
once analysis of her data by National Instruments Inc. of Austin, Texas,
is completed next month.
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- "I don't know what else to tell you," she said.
"That's what I got. That's what it is."
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- Von Muggenthaler said she hoped her discovery would not
cause a spate of ill-advised Champ hunting on the lake.
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- "It is important to remember that, if there is indeed
a creature out there, it is protected by New York and Vermont law,"
she said. "The best thing people could do for this creature, if it
exists, is leave it alone."
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- The recordings by von Muggenthaler represent the biggest
development in the debate about the existence of Champ since the publication
of Sandra Mansi's photograph of a serpent-like object taken during a family
outing in 1977.
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- Over the years, hundreds of Champ sightings have been
reported by fishermen, boaters and other lake users. Skeptics have claimed
Champ is an extravagant piece of folklore perpetuated by witnesses making
more out of what they saw than what was actually there.
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- Von Muggenthaler, a native of Charlotte, was skeptical
of Champ's existence while growing up in Vermont.
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- "I was sort of a scientist at an early age,"
she said. "To me, you had to see it to believe it."
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- Steve Smith, director of facilities at ECHO at the Leahy
Center for Lake Champlain, said he was uncertain what to make of von Muggenthaler's
discovery.
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- "I just don't know," he said. "Who is
to say that it is beyond the realm of possibility" that she had found
Champ? He said he is familiar with her work in bioacoustics from a time
when she was able to record communications between giraffes at a North
Carolina zoo where he was employed.
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- "Her work is well respected in the zoo community,"
he said. Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
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- http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/Columnists/Sam/0718042653.htm
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