A cryptozoologist investigates reports of a sea monster lurking beneath the icy waters of Alaska. He reviews startling eyewitness accounts and examines never-before-seen video evidence of the terrifying creature.
A cryptozoologist investigates reports of a sea monster lurking beneath the icy waters of Alaska. He reviews startling eyewitness accounts and examines never-before-seen video evidence of the terrifying creature.
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Find episode transcripts here:https://the-alaska-triangle.simplecast.com/episodes/the-alaskan-loch-ness-monster
SPEAKER 1: Alaska, a vast, remote wilderness twice the size of Texas.
SPEAKER 2: There are dangerous, unpredictable forces at work here.
SPEAKER 1: In one of the most mysterious corners of the globe.
GARY NIELSON:A lot of things can kill you out here without even trying.
SPEAKER 1: This is a place hundreds of times more deadly than the Bermuda Triangle.
SPEAKER 3: Oh my God.
SPEAKER 1: Stories of alien abductions.
SPEAKER 4: I believe it was a UFO.
SPEAKER 1: The paranormal, vanishing airplanes, and strange beasts.
SPEAKER 5: The Alaskan Bigfoot, he can rip you in half.
SPEAKER 6: These accounts are really widespread.
[BLEEP] peeked out of the tree right there.
[WOLF HOWLING]
SPEAKER 1: Have haunted those who dare set foot here. In the last 30 years, 16,000 people have disappeared without a
trace.
SPEAKER 7: More people have disappeared than the Bermuda Triangle, two to three times the amount.
SPEAKER 1: Witnesses tell us their shocking stories.
SPEAKER 8: I was petrified.
SPEAKER 1: And we've gathered some of the world's leading experts in their field.
SPEAKER 9: I'm always after scientific evidence that can be independently corroborated.
SPEAKER 1: To try and unlock the mystery of the Alaska Triangle.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Just like the Bermuda Triangle, the Alaska Triangle is a place of mysterious events and unexplained phenomena,
and one of the strangest stories has emerged from the depths of this vast and isolated lake. Both outside experts
and locals have been left asking the question, what exactly is it that lies beneath these waters?
SPEAKER 10: I was sitting there in awe just dumbstruck of what the heck am I looking at.
SPEAKER 11: There's definitely something big down there.
SPEAKER 1: In Alaska, there are over 3,000 rivers, and three million lakes, most still unexplored. Local folklore tells of hidden
channels slinking the waterways, and monstrous beasts lurking in the depths.
BOB BYRD: We're not dealing with a mirage, a deluded individual. We're not dealing with mistaken identities. We've got
something that needs explaining.
SPEAKER 1: The most terrifying creature of them all is said to live here in Lake Iliamna, and now multiple eyewitnesses have
stepped forward to suggest that this monster is no mere legend. At 77-miles long and 25-miles wide, Iliamna is
the biggest lake in Alaska. It's the second biggest freshwater lake in the whole of the United States.
It's also one of the hardest places to get to in the whole of the US. It's hundreds of miles from the nearest main
road. When viewed from the air, the lake's shaped like a giant fish. Could this be a clue to what lurks within?
Cryptozoologist, Cliff Barackman, one of America's leading bigfoot investigators, now has his sights fixed on
finding the monster of the lake. His first stop is the lake's southern shore close to the village of Kokhanok.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
I'm Cliff Barackman, and I am in Kokhanok, Alaska, on the shores of Lake Iliamna, Alaska's largest lake. In some
places, this lake is over 1,000-feet deep. There's no telling what could be swimming around in the bottom of this
lake.
SPEAKER 1: Cliff is here to meet the latest eyewitness. It's none less than the borough manager, Nathan Hill. On this beach
one afternoon in 2017, Nathan was one of a handful of people at this very spot who witnessed the monster out
on the lake.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
So Nathan, the reason I came up here is to investigate some of the stories about the creature that lives in the
lake. What's your experience with the creature?
NATHAN HILL: It was a calm day, and as I looked out, and I saw something in the lake, and there was at least half a dozen
people that had gathered around to see what was out there. And at that time, I had my cell phone out, and I was
recording in case something was to surface. Probably somewhere between 300 and 500 yards off the beach,
there was something that made some pretty big wakes, and everybody there witnessed it, and I got it on a short
video clip.
SPEAKER 1: Nathan hasn't posted his video online. In fact, this is the first time he's agreed to show it to any outsider. At first,
it doesn't look as if there's anything to see, but then towards the top left of the frame, something strange
appears.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
No, look right there. Right there. What is that?
SPEAKER 12: There it is. What is it?
SPEAKER 1: It looks like a giant sea serpent with three humps breaking the surface. If Nathan's right about the distance, that
would make just the visible part of this lake creature 40 to 50 feet long.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
Wow, that's cool. That's really cool.
NATHAN HILL: Yeah.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
That's great. No, look right there. Look at that, right there? What is that?
SPEAKER 12: That is huge.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
There's three of them.
SPEAKER 1: The quality is poor so we're going to send off the video for some expert analysis. Shortly after this sighting,
Nathan's friend, Thaniel, had a monster experience of his own. He's a fisherman and was out in his canoe when
the creature surfaced just yards from him.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
What did it look like?
THANIEL: Like a giant snake creature.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
Uhuh.
THANIEL: Wide as the canoe, and three to four times longer than the canoe, and black, leathery-looking kind of skin. It had
like that arch where it didn't just go like straight. It actually had a little arch with it or something.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
Like a jaw?
THANIEL: The snout came out.
SPEAKER 1: An arched neck means this was no giant fish, and it didn't move like a fish either.
THANIEL: Or it has the head, a hump, and the hump, it would do its-- like, it was like that. I was sitting there in awe just
dumbstruck of what the heck am I looking at.
SPEAKER 1: Thaniel's description does seem to match the monster that Nathan caught on video. A giant serpent-like creature
with humps. And from the safety of the shore, Thaniel took his own video. He managed to capture this glimpse of
the creature just before it disappeared under the surface.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
Yeah, what is that?
SPEAKER 1: It's only in modern times that people around the lake have had phones and cameras, but stories of the creature
go way back. The native people of the area have lived here for nearly 10,000 years. For them, the story of the
lake monster is no fairy tale. It's part of their oral history. Raymond Wassily is a native elder.
RAYMOND
WASSILY:
I heard stories from all my elders before me of how they saw it, and stories are the ones that tell the truth for the
nomadics because they didn't know how to write it.
SPEAKER 1: As a young man, Raymond himself had a close-up encounter with the monster when he was out on the lake with
his family.
RAYMOND
WASSILY:
My dad was on the cabin looking at it. He said, it's longer than the boat, and the boat-- the boat was almost like
32 foot end to end. It looked like it had a hump, and then I couldn't judge it, but it looked like it had three on the
way back to it. Then it kind of sloped, and it had a tail, and the head-- the head looked like it could swallow you.
SPEAKER 1: Three humps, just like in the video filmed by Nathan. Anthropologist, Robin Levine, is an expert on the native
folklore. As an outsider, she was always skeptical about these stories of a lake monster. That is, until one July day
back in 2008.
ROBIN LEVINE: A colleague of mine and I were flying back in to Fish Camp where we've been conducting research, and we were
on our way down flying over a bay. We're very close to landing, and I saw something in the shallows. Something I
hadn't seen before. At first, I thought it were two seals twisting together, and then I realized, no, it was one
creature.
SPEAKER 1: Robin's first thought was a beluga whale. Belugas do swim in the waters of Alaska, and the size was about right,
but belugas are almost white in color. The creature Robin saw was dark.
ROBIN LEVINE: It was pebble colored. It had a sinuous movement about it, but it was definitely not an eel. I could see pectoral
fins. I could see tailfins. As soon as we land, and we are taxiing up to the shore, I ask the pilot, what was that we
saw just in the bay as we were descending? And he got really excited, what did you see? What did you see? And I
told him, and he said, congratulations, you've seen the Iliamna lake monster. I was really surprised, but it was at
that time then that I recalled the stories I had heard, the stories that I dismissed years earlier, about something
in the water.
SPEAKER 1: Does lake Iliamna really have a giant unknown creature living in its waters? It sounds extraordinary, but this
whole area is rife with stories of strange beasts and mysterious creatures. Around here, news of a lake monster
wouldn't even be that unusual.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
All over the Alaska Triangle, there's talk of undiscovered species and strange animals. The best known is the
monstrous beast said to live in Lake Iliamna, the state's biggest lake, but the mysteries surrounding this lake go
beyond what lurks beneath. Schoolteacher, Sarah Armstrong, lives overlooking the lake, but she grew up most in
fear of Iliamna's bigfoot creature. What the locals call the hairy man.
SARAH
ARMSTRONG:
I remember growing up as a little girl, we would tease each other when we were out late at night, watch out for
the hairy man, and it would give you this spooky feeling and the chills.
SPEAKER 1: But it was as an adult that Sarah had a first-hand experience.
SARAH
ARMSTRONG:
Myself and two of my friends, we were going on a camping trip, and Ray, who's up in the bow says, what the hell
is that? And we're all looking in this direction, and our minds are just wondering, what it is we're seeing, and
you're trying to focus your eyes. And within just a blink of an eye, it was gone.
It just disappeared, and we were just kind of an awe and stunned for a moment, and then we look at each other
like, is that what we think we just saw? Did we just see this? It just looked like a tall, black figure. I didn't really
feel scared. I was just maybe more curious about the whole thing and kind of amazed that what we saw is what
we saw. Something I've heard about my whole life, I actually witnessed.
SPEAKER 1: There have been sightings of other strange cryptids around the lake too, including a bird the size of a small plane
said to resemble a prehistoric pterodactyl. But the greatest is the lake Iliamna creature. If it exists, it would dwarf
anything in Alaska. In fact, there's only one obvious comparison, the most famous lake monster in the world, the
Loch Ness Monster. Does lake Iliamna in Alaska really have its own prehistoric monster? Dr. Robert Alley is a
retired professor from the University of Alaska and an expert cryptozoologist.
ROBERT ALI: Everyone's heard of the Loch Ness Monster. Well, it stands to reason, if there could be a monster in Loch Ness,
there could be monsters elsewhere too. There's definitely something there. There have been photos, sonograms,
and pictures that have caused waves around the world. Many researchers have hypothesized that Loch Ness
could hold a relic population of plesiosaurs that is extinct marine reptile.
SPEAKER 1: The head of a plesiosaur would be an exact match for the monster spotted by Thaniel Kiessling when he was out
in his canoe.
THANIEL: It had like that arch.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
Like a jaw.
THANIEL: Like the snout came out.
SPEAKER 1: And it's a good match for the traditional image of the Loch Ness Monster. Every year, a million people visit Loch
Ness in the hope of catching a glimpse of the mysterious beast. Compared to Loch Ness, Lake Iliamna is remote
and isolated. Few tourists come here and only about 600 people live on its shores.
The lake is also over 50 times bigger than Loch Ness. If finding the Loch Ness Monster is difficult, then what are
the chances here. There's one man who thinks the monster may already have been found. Local radio DJ, Bob
Byrd, has unearthed evidence that back in 1967, the monster of Lake Iliamna was not only found but caught.
BOB BYRD: In a plane like this, Chuck Crappaschutz, who was a missionary, Christian missionary, spotted from the air and
radioed some friends, I've got this large fish swimming right underneath the surface.
SPEAKER 1: Word quickly spread around the airwaves that this could be the lake monster, and the idea was mooted to try to
catch it.
BOB BYRD: Somebody with a sense of adventure took a floatplane, put on some probably very strong halibut line with large
hooks, and cinching them to a cleat like that, tossed the meat into the water. Well, as he lollygagged down the
floats Salwa, before too long, his plane was being towed around.
SPEAKER 1: Beneath the surface, some giant creature with immense strength was pulling the plane across the water.
Eventually, the monster broke free. On inspecting the damage, it was clear that it was well beyond the
capabilities of any known lake creature.
BOB BYRD: His plane was towed around. He looked at the hooks. They'd been straightened out, and maybe others had been
bitten off.
SPEAKER 1: It would take unbelievable strength to straighten out the large tuna hooks and bite through the thick stainless-
steel cables. The creature would have to be gigantic, as big as a dinosaur perhaps.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
If we're talking about a plesiosaur, a creature like this would absolutely have no problem towing a plane around
on the surface of the lake. These creatures were huge, up to 50 feet. To them, a floatplane on the surface of the
lake would be like a toy.
SPEAKER 1: If there is a giant dinosaur-like creature hiding in the lake, then cryptozoologist, Cliff Barackman, is determined to
find it. He's decided to put all his trust in local fisherman, Richard Walton.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
Thank you for letting me on your boat and showing me around a little bit. Safe to say you know this lake pretty
well?
RICHARD
WALTON:
We've traveled this lake quite a bit over the course of our lifetime because it's kind of what you do here. This is
your road system. This is how you get around to all the different communities.
SPEAKER 1: Like Loch Ness, Lake Iliamna is exceptionally deep, and what lies beneath the surface is largely unexplored.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
If there's anywhere a lake monster can lie hidden in the depths, it's here.
SPEAKER 1: But for Cliff, comparisons with Loch Ness go deeper than you might think.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
All throughout British Columbia and Alaska, there are literally hundreds of lakes that have reported lake
monsters living in them, and what I find interesting about that is that the latitude is very similar to that of
Scotland where the Loch Ness Monster is.
SPEAKER 1: Similarities of climate and water temperature may partially account for this, and in these colder parts, it's easier
for creatures to remain hidden as there's more wilderness and fewer people, but there are times when something
strange is spotted even in a populated area. In June, 2016, this 24-foot whale washed up in Alaska and was found
to be an entirely new species. Now, journalist and researcher, Andrew Goff, has pinpointed the Alaska Triangle
has been ripe for new discoveries of river and lake creatures.
ANDREW GOFF:It's really a perfect storm. A remote location with huge bodies of water. It's full of species that we've yet to
identify or even begun to understand. So the natural reaction is to call them monsters, and you can understand
that. But really, they're just new species, and they probably have been here even longer than we have. It's the
ideal spot for a species to go unnoticed for hundreds of years.
SPEAKER 1: In November, 2016, there was a sighting that created an online storm. This video appeared linked to the Alaska
Bureau of Land Management. Within days, it racked up over a million views. The location? The Chena River,
Fairbanks, right in the middle of the Alaska Triangle, where government worker and keen photographer, Craig
McCaw, happens to be based. He was out on a routine job inspecting the river from this bridge.
CRAIG MCCAW: I was walking out on the bridge that you can see behind me there and taking some photos of ice beginning to
form. This was in late October, which is early winter in Fairbanks, and took out my camera, pointed it this
direction, and my attention was caught by movement in the river right beneath me. I looked down in the water,
and I did a total stop.
SPEAKER 1: When Craig looked down, he saw something extraordinary so he got out his phone. Right below him was what
looked like a giant, serpent-like ice monster, strong enough to be swimming upstream in the fast-flowing current.
CRAIG MCCAW: So I'm looking at it now right in the river, right over there. It's a little strange to see this thing swirling back and
forth in the river. It's got a rough texture. You can see that it has ice on it, and a lot of the rest of it is obscured
by the murky water.
SPEAKER 1: Close analysis of the video puts this strange creature at about 20-feet long, but that's just the visible part.
There's no known animal in this river with the size anything like that.
CRAIG MCCAW: It sent a shiver down my spine. I'd never seen anything like that.
SPEAKER 1: Is this an unknown species or a relic from prehistory? It's certainly true that prehistoric creatures do exist in these
waters. These blood-sucking fish, known as lampreys, were around 200 million years before the dinosaurs, and
they can still be found in Alaska even here in the middle of Fairbanks. In fact, in June, 2015, bizarrely, they began
falling onto the streets of the city.
REECE JONES: Fish literally started raining from the sky. How on Earth does that happen?
SPEAKER 1: In Cardiff in the United Kingdom, Dr. Reece Jones is a senior lecturer in biosciences and an environmental
researcher.
REECE JONES: When I say fish, I mean fish like this one here. This is a lamprey. Superficially, looks a little bit like an eel, but
actually, if I turn it around, have a look at the face on that.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
These are sharp tooth, foot long, blood sucking, eel-like fishes. These are vampire fishes that attach themselves
to other animals and suck their blood. Now, they're rarely seen, let alone caught, but here they are falling from
the sky miles from any river. How can that be? It's hard to imagine what these ordinary people would have
thought. They must have been terrified, mystified, and utterly freaked out.
SPEAKER 1: How the lamprey came to be falling from the sky has never been established, but could the serpent-like ice
creature be a kind of giant, prehistoric, blood-sucking fish?
CRAIG MCCAW: When I started filming this object in the river, I didn't really know. I still don't know what it was. It moved like a
giant fish. I have to say that. The way it undulated in the current, and it kind of held its place. Generally
speaking, what's in the Chena River are some species of freshwater fish, like Arctic grayling, northern pike,
burbot.
There are some mammals that pass through the river or a beaver that live in and around the river, but I can't
think of anything that's more than three or four feet long. And what I saw was much, much larger than that.
Nature still provides these mysteries from time to time that force you to stop and think, what am I looking at?
How can I explain this?
SPEAKER 1: Whether a strange giant fish or not, could this creature be related to the monster of Lake Iliamna? The Chena
River is a tributary to the mighty Yukon River, which connects many of the waterways and lakes of Alaska to the
coast. And then from there, it's a short journey upriver to Lake Iliamna. This means that there's a ready network
for these creatures to disperse throughout the triangle, but is there any evidence of more than one lake
monster?
Loch Ness has only ever had sightings of individual monsters, but now, one listener to Bob Byrd's radio show has
phoned in with some startling new evidence which, if true, would mean in Lake Iliamna, there's more than one
monster. DJ Bob Byrd has had one call that suggests the Lake Iliamna creature is not alone.
GARY NIELSON:I saw three gigantic creatures, and these things were just absolutely huge, and I have no idea what they could
have been. Rounded, slightly rounded, long, darkish, blackish gray. It was well over 60 feet.
SPEAKER 1: Increasingly, the calls to Bob's show aren't just about Lake Iliamna. Bob's many listeners have added to the
evidence of monsters elsewhere in the region too.
BOB BYRD: There's also similar sightings in other large lakes. Lake Clark, which feeds into Lake Iliamna, has its own legends.
Becharof Lake, which is south of Iliamna had a very credible sighting.
SPEAKER 1: Bob's now convinced that witnesses to the monster are genuine.
BOB BYRD: We're not dealing with a mirage, a deluded individual. We're not dealing with mistaken identities. We've got
something that needs explaining.
SPEAKER 1: Bob's own investigations have led him to what could be a secret government report on these lake monsters.
BOB BYRD: As I understand it, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game kept once a file on the sightings to see what sort of
consistency there might be in the reports. I don't know if that file exists anymore because, as a journalist, two
years ago, I asked them to find it for me, and they didn't have it. I have no doubt there was once a file.
SPEAKER 1: What was in that file, we don't know. But the caller to Bob's show has agreed to tell his story on camera.
GARY NIELSON: These things were awful big, and there was a lot of them.
SPEAKER 1: One clear afternoon in the late '90s, local businessman, Gary Nielsen, was out on the lake with his wife.
GARY NIELSON: My wife was looking over the side, and she screams, and she's on my side of the boat in my lap screaming at me
to go faster. So I just automatically hit the throttle, fast forward, and as I look back to where she was looking,
there was these two heads, probably about that long and about that wide.
And it was just the heads, and they were traveling like that, and they were looking at us as we were going by.
The heads were maybe two feet long, maybe longer, 16 to 18 inches wide, triangular shaped, very sleek looking.
And the bodies were awful long, but I couldn't tell the body length because I was too busy trying to get into the
shallow water. These things were big.
SPEAKER 1: Gary's detailed description matches that of other witnesses and also that of the Loch Monster. For the scientists,
multiple monsters is a given.
ROBERT ALLEY: If there's one monster, there has to be more than one. There has to be a breeding population. There can never
be just one. When you have a biological population, you've got to have significant numbers for maintaining a
gene pool.
SPEAKER 1: There's one particular aspect of the lake creatures that haunts Gary to this day.
GARY NIELSON: The eyes were so huge. They were just big, round, the best description is dead, black eyes, like they were made
for deep water to where there's less light.
SPEAKER 1: Huge eyes made for deep water could be a clue to how these monsters are connected to the triangle. There's an
old, native belief that the separate waterways and lakes are linked by underground channels. It's a story that
Robin Levine has come across as a part of her work with the native people.
ROBIN LEVINE: One of the stories I heard when I was out there was that there is a possibility that the elders say that there may
be an underwater passage, a tunnel, from Iliamna Lake to the saltwater inlet.
SPEAKER 1: Could it really be possible that these links exist? Well, there's some firm science that suggests they do, and with
access to the sea through large underwater passageways, any number of giant creatures could be in there. Bruce
Wright is a former professor from the University of Alaska, and he's been researching the bed of the lake.
BRUCE
WRIGHT:
It's so deep. It's at least 1,200 feet, but nobody-- nobody knows. Nobody's taken a rock tied to a string and
dropped it down to the bottom.
SPEAKER 1: As well as being of unknown depth, the lake lies on top of unstable bedrock.
BRUCE
WRIGHT:
It's a geologically-active area. There probably are cracks down at the bottom of the lake. Kind of makes you
wonder, well, maybe there's a link to the ocean through these things.
SPEAKER 1: From the coast, any number of creatures could navigate their way up into Lake Iliamna. For Gary Nielsen and his
wife, spotting two lake monsters was just the start.
GARY NIELSON:As I was watching them, I saw all these other wakes all around and up in front and some of the ripples or wakes
were like two feet high.
SPEAKER 1: Multiple wakes two feet high. They could only be caused by something massive moving in the water.
GARY NIELSON: We didn't bother to go out and try to see how big those big ones were because we were really trying to stay alive
in shallow water.
SPEAKER 1: But there's another scientific question that needs answering. If the lake has a large population of giant,
prehistoric beasts, what are they feeding on? How are they surviving? The answer lies in Alaska's abundant
wildlife.
BRUCE
WRIGHT:
Alaska has a really wide variety of marine animals because it's so productive up here. A lot of that is driven by
the cleanliness of the waters off of Alaska, but also there's high-oxygen levels. So we have good phytoplankton
bloom, and that energy drives this really rich, valuable set of organisms that live up here and lots of fish.
SPEAKER 1: If a large, unknown species was to exist anywhere, this would be the place. Food is plentiful, and one fish in
particular provides a direct link to Loch Ness in Scotland.
BRUCE
WRIGHT:
There's five million salmon that are entering this big lake moving up into the rivers or spawning right along the
shoreline, and the salmon really drive the terrestrial ecosystem. The energy from the salmon moves through the
ecosystem via bears and eagles that eat the salmon and move those nutrients up into the ecosystem. In fact, if
you go out, and you look at the stable isotopes of certain atoms in the trees, you'll find out that they're mostly
made of salmon.
SPEAKER 1: Like Loch Ness, because of the salmon, Lake Iliamna could sustain any number of fish-eating plesiosaurs and
multiple monsters would increase the danger out on the lake. It's a theory that Gary now holds to because of his
own encounter.
GARY NIELSON:And there's all stories about that that I never ever believed from way back one of them pulling people out of
kayaks or boats even, and I never believed it until that moment.
SPEAKER 1: Out on the lake, cryptozoologist, Cliff Barackman, is determined to investigate what's going on beneath the
surface. If there was just one lake creature, it could be anywhere, but multiple creatures would significantly
increase his chance of seeing something, and the boat's sonar can detect anything big moving beneath them.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
A lot of fishermen rely on tools like this for their livelihood to find big schools of fish, for the same nets, and all
that stuff, but this would also be a very effective tool to see any large animal under the surface too. Not just
smaller fish, but like something large like one of these lake creatures.
SPEAKER 1: Out on the biggest lake in Alaska, cryptozoologist, Cliff Barackman, and fisherman, Richard, are using sonar to try
to find one of these elusive beasts. Mysterious shapes pass by beneath them, but it's impossible to identify what
they are. Is this a plesiosaur, head up, swimming deep beneath them?
RICHARD
WALTON:
There's something moving across the screen.
CLIFF
BARACKMAN:
That's a big one, whatever it is.
SPEAKER 1: The best image Cliff has is the video taken by Nathan Hill, the local borough manager. It's this video we're keen
to have analyzed, and we're showing it to Dr. Ali.
ROBERT ALI: I'm looking here at a video of Lake Iliamna, and we can actually see three objects above the water that appear to
be curved and not linear, like a wave would be. So it's suggestive of a biological creature, and in fact, if you had
to compare it with something, with any one thing, you'd want to compare it with those three-hump little
statuettes that you see in the gift shops at Loch Ness showing head, middle, bump. One, two, three, and you
know you don't have schools of porpoise jumping in Lake Iliamna, and it's doubtful that three sturgeon are going
to arise.
What this suggests is something that's swimming in the manner not of a reptile or a fish with a lateral undulation
or amphibian, but rather a mammal. This is a tremendously exciting thing to watch. Possibly unidentified species
or fossil mammals that we think are extinct may actually still be living trapped in fresh water. It would suggest
just as equally a plesiosaur. So there are those who say it's a mammal. There are those who say, no, it's got to be
a reptile. We know it's got to be something. Something's in there, but what is it?
SPEAKER 1: Out on the lake, Cliff and Richard find no conclusive evidence. Considering the size of the task in hand, this is no
great surprise. According to scientists, even with a large number of lake monsters, sightings could still remain
very rare.
BRUCE
WRIGHT:
If you have salty water at the bottom of the lake that is oxygenated by some geological phenomena, you could
have some really unusual animals living down there that could stay down there, be inactive, and then when the
salmon show up, go eat your 5,000 pounds of salmon and then just go back down there.
SPEAKER 1: For those who've seen the monster, an unknown species certainly fits the bill.
ROBIN LEVINE: It's easy to dismiss what we call myths, what we call legends, until you've actually witnessed it yourself, and then
you realize that what people might refer to as a myth, what people might refer to as a legend, is actually local
knowledge. What I saw was perhaps its own, unique type of species as yet undiscovered.
BRUCE
WRIGHT:
At first, I wasn't convinced. I'm pretty skeptical scientist. I like to hold in my hand what we're talking about, but
it's hard to talk to anybody out there that hasn't interacted with this animal or seen it. You talk to all these
people, and it's just convincing there's something out there.
ROBIN LEVINE: We have so many more questions to answer, and that's the wonder of Alaska.
GARY NIELSON:Be aware. A lot of things can kill you out here without even trying.
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