DALE DRINNON: Great Lakes Whales

There is a long-standing internet hoax site about whale watching on the great lakes:
http://www.lakemichiganwhales.com/ which is marked as 'For entertainment purposes only' at the bottom, but many people have taken it seriously. For one example, there was an article at Michigan Studies Weekly, which was duped by the site:
http://library.oakland.edu/tutorials/evalweb/whale.htm

And they were later forced to print a retraction. Whale remains ARE known from Michigan at the end of the Ice Age: http://www.sentex.net/~tcc/michwls.html which is not 'millions of years ago' as stated in the retraction.

HOWEVER, in this particular instance, I was more interested in some of the statements from people that did indeed take the matter seriously. One off the commentators on the Lake Michigan Whale-watching hoax site added the perfectly legitimate information that seals had been seen regularly in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan:

May 1, 2008: Thank you so much for bringing this site to the world and shedding some light on the much neglected study of freshwater marine mammals. Up here in the Northern Lake Michigan we have also sighted harbor seals on the pack ice this winter. There are unconfirmed sightings of gray seals in the upper lake also. I have spoken to the Peterson Brothers here who run a commercial fishery in the summer. They have agreed to run a spotting expedition as soon as the ice frees their vessels. With GLSU and Upper Michigan University research ships standing ready in our harbor, formal research is inevitable. We will keep you posted.
I have blind cc this to the Marine Mammal Research Institute in Bar Harbor for their reference. I do not know what difficulties you are having with your planes but I am sure J. Buffett woulld be interested in helping your venture with his Hemisphere Dancer.

Keep up the groundbreaking work.

Michelle George, PhD, LLD, BFD

The information remains true even if the site or even this particular letter are bogus. I have taken to calling these seals Seal#1 and Seal #2, and Seal #2 is approximately twice the size of Seal #1. Seal #1 is 5 or 6 feet long and Seal #2 is reported as being 10 to 12. The letter gives a tentative identification of Seal #2 as a grey seal, but it is also possible that it is a bearded seal.
Back in high school I saw letters to one of the educational magazines mentioning sightings of a 'Brontosaurus' on land in Michigan, off the Lake and on the way to Detroit. I had also heard reports of 'Plesiosaurs' seen by divers in Lake Michigan. I am prepared to call both of these bearded seals now because the bearded seals are enormously fat and consequently seem to have an absurdly small head. They would be examples for Seal #2, which is also reported at Lake Nipigeon and Lake Simcoe. It is compared to a 'Tuskless walrus' sometimes.

At the same time, there ARE legitimate sightings of something in the Great Lakes that resembles a porpoise or whale, reportedly anywhere from 10 to 100 feet long but more usually 15 to 45 feet. Some of the reports also say that this is a sturgeon, but many do directly call it a whale. I do not have enough information to be able to tell, but both identities are possible. As I mentioned before, sharks are sometimes also alleged in the area. That may sound unlikely, but as a matter of fact both porpoises and sharks could have been stranded in the lakes since the end of the Ice Age (so could the seals be for that matter).

The problem is getting legitimate information and not obvious jokes in reply when you ask about such things. There would not be anything too ridiculous in having remnant belugas, possibly even beaked whales, or bull sharks stuck in the Great Lakes. The evidence for them is extremely tenuous, though.

I have added some of the reference for the seals to the Elephant seals and bunyips photo album and I shall probably be adding more later. I can now conveniently call the elephant seal reports Seal #3. The reports do NOT include the great lakes area.

There is also a stray report of a seal in a lake North of Okanagan. It may have been dumped or it might have been a misidentification.