Jon,
I have just watched the Killarney lake video on the blog; a very interesting looking film. I can certainly see what you mean about the giant eels; highly plausible but the mystery animal at 6.44 onwards I have my doubts about.
I have watched it a number of times and every time I see it, it looks less and less like a lake monster. Actually, it looks less and less like an underwater creature.
Being honest, I would say it is a large water bird, which appears to be taking off; as you watch the object move across to the right you can see what appears to be a flapping motion and the animal make contact with the water on a few occasions.
I would suggest from this image that it is either a large bird taking off or an osprey successfully hunting;
the reason being that the only reason for a fish to break the surface hunting would have to be for insects and it would then require a bloody big fly to attract a creature that size out of the water. It would not, however, be to hard to imagine a bird catching a large fish on the surface that in turn was hunting smaller fish, that in turn are eating the flies.
Interesting lake, mind you
all the best
Glen
I have to admit that the more I look at the video I think that you are partly right. The black dot does appear to be a bird, but the more I examine both the video (at as high resolution as possible) and the photographs that my darling Corinna took, the `torpedo` wake seems to be following the bird rather than being made by it. The bird is actually a `red herring` (if I may mix my metaphors into a gloriously surrealchemical game of verbal exquisite corpse), because the `torpedo wake` bears off to the right as the bird (probably a cormorant or a grotesque shag) flaps on its merry way. Maybe whatever it was in the water was chasing the bird?
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Yesterday, Naomi pointed out to me that the creature looked like a bird or something that had flapping wing motion but she dismissed it because it seemed to her that it came out from under the water.
Personally, I agree with others that there probably is more than one creature seen in the video.
The trail left behind by what I will call the "flapping creature" appears to have taken off at the small island and fly just above the water in an arc skimming the water with its feet and eventually gaining altitude as it flies left-to-right.
It is the long creatures (I count three) earlier in the video at the right side of the lake that are of greatest interest to me. It seems to be a continuous mass just below the water. It's head appears to be above the water in that the creature is creating wake. Also, it seems there are 3 creatures: the long one, a medium sized one and a "baby" one. They are most distinctive when they just reach land. It seems these eel-like creatures are interested in the shore, possibly their food source which may explain the birds quick exit later?
Although they look eel-like, they don't move eel-like. Don't eels swim like snakes move on the ground? These creatures don't seem to wiggle for locomotion.
I rather tend to agree with Richie on this video. The first set of ripples look extremely otter-like to me; swimming otters are very low in the water and though fast for mammals, are not *that* fast; those ripples look for all the world like one (or two; the last bit seems to show two objects) swimming otters.
The fast-moving torpedo is a bird; a shag or cormorant. Throughout most of the sequence it is flying in flare; that is to say it is so close to the water that the surface interferes with the tip vortices coming off the tips of its wings and thus drastically reduces the drag it experiences. Manx shearwaters fly like this habitually.
However, in this sequence the cormorant isn't trying to fly low in flare, but is trying to get off the surface and up into the air proper; that's why it is turning in flight to try to get some room to go faster and head on out. I suspect that earlier in the day it had had a successful afternoon's fishing, had spent some time sunbathing and drying out its wings on that nice safe rock, and decided as you were watching to head off out to some local roost. It then ruined the drying by falling in, getting soaked and by then feeling a bit of a prat tried its best to gain a bit of altitude so it could get off the lake and go wherever it was going; it would have been interesting and quite amusing to see if it did manage to fly out or was forced to go dry off again for a while.
The large, long creatures are the most interesting features, though. To get a better idea of what is going on, we really need to get a boat out onto the lake for a look at the same time as someone is observing from a distance, with a radio to guide the boat in; I would rather like to eliminate the possibility of these being inanimate or similar.
I'd love to camp at that lake for a week with a team....drink a few pints and maybe find time for some close-up filming and scanning the lake bottom with radar.
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