MAX BLAKE: Eyewitness account of the events at the Lakes of Killarney, Co Kerry, last thursday

On Thursday the 17^th of September, 2009 Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels took Jonathan Downes, Corinna Downes and myself around a peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland. After travelling around the ring we reached a viewpoint called Lady’s View, a raised viewpoint from which you could see the three lakes of Killarney, North Lake, Muckross Lake and Lough Leane. I stood with the JVC Everio video camera, Corinna was using a Canon 350d with a 70-300mm telephoto lens, and Jon had a small point and click 3x zoom Fujifilm Z10. Once we were alone, after we had all talked about sightings of lake monsters on the lakes, particularly Muckross, Tony told us to keep watching the Northen lake. The lake was generally calm and still, there was a very very gentle breeze in the air, and the centre of the lake had a gentle amount of rippling on it, whilst the rest was very still. There was a floating log or rock in the lake about 50yrds out from the edge, near our side. There was also a large island over to the right hand side. This was around 50-60yrds long, and 30yrds wide (please see rough sketch).

After a couple of minutes a couple of large white ripples started to break on the surface. What made these ripples I do not know; I saw nothing break the water. I was already filming, but as the battery was running very low, I expected it to stop filming and die at any minute. A couple more ripples broke, and Jon said that he could see something large and white moving in the north end of the lake. It dived down before I could see it/film it. The rough area that this occurred in has been called 'anomalous 1' in the sketch. A little later there was a large wake forming in front of the log/rock. This moved at a rapid pace toward the shoreline. I zoomed in to about 12x, and the object broke the surface before diving. This created a large ripple, which can be seen on the film. Both the ripple and the wake spread out and took a while to vanish. This has been called 'anomalous 2' on the sketch. After this occurred a bird on the water took off to the right of 'anomalous 2' and flew off in a curve, coming at first straight toward us, then over to the left. It left behind a wake as it peddled along the water to get airbourne, before taking off and being visible to me as a small black bird. It was probably a tufted duck.

A couple more ripples later, and another object was seen moving on the right side of the Island, moving right. It was moving slower than 'anomalous 2 and as such the sighting lasted longer. There seemed to be something pertruding from the water making the wake, but this could have been a trick of the eye. The track of this has been called 'anomalous 3' in the sketch.

What I saw, I do not know. I saw no features of an animal making the wake. All I know is that something large made the marks. A large salmon moving across the top of the water would not have made a mark anywhere near the size of this. If I had to make a guess, I would say that it was most likely to have been a giant eel.