In 1969, a shrimp boat the M/V Mylark had been fitted with an expensive state of the art electronic detector in order to map the ocean floor in an area known as the Raspberry Straight, off the coast of Kodiak Island, Alaska. The detector was the Simarad which was supposedly a fool-proof electronic device. According to the report it was functioning perfectly when one of the operators noticed an anomaly about 330 feet (110 metres) below the surface. The object on the display screen appeared to be about 200 feet( 67 metres) long and looked as if it was swimming. The men were able to capture an image of the screen reading .It was described as a large, animate, dinosaur shaped marine animal. It became known as The Kodiak Dinosaur.
The experienced fisherman who were operating the equipment stated that what they picked up on the detector was not any known species of whale or any other indigenous marine creature from the region. What happened to the print out of the screen reading is unclear so it may no longer exist.
Dr. Roy P. Mackal theorised that there are still pods of ancient cetaceans in the world’s oceans known in the fossil record as Basilosaurus. He thought one may have been responsible for the strange reading.
There were often sceptics who claimed sonar readings in Loch Ness were the result of the sounds waves bouncing back from the loch sides. Not all readings can be attributed to this but some possibly could. Could the same thing have occurred here but with the waves bouncing back from the ocean floor ? I am no sonar expert so don’t know if it is possible .The other explanation is that it was a huge strange unknown creature, which is always a possibility.
I puzzled over this object for a long time. It just so happens that I have seen a copy of the original in Sanderson's files and I am not entirely convinced that the image is genuine. It is also obviously NOT a 200 foot marine Brontosaurus, which is what the image resembles.
ReplyDeleteGiving Mackal a chance, I suppose it could be an elongate primitive whale seen in two different views but recorded on one tape. The MYLARK was turning at that point and my assumption was that the objeck could also have been in motion and the tail end got recorded twice owing to the relative positions of the object and the craft recording the object. That would cut the actual length of the object in half (to 100 feet) but we would have NO idea what the head end would look like in that case.
Conceivably, that could mean it is a very distorted reading of a submerged blue whale.
Thanks for writing about that. I heard about it before and would like more detailed information on it.
ReplyDeleteThanks -
Phillip O'Donnell
Cryptozoologist
phillip@livingdinos.com
The problem with sonars from that era is you can't measure the dimensions of a moving object unless you know its speed and direction of travel. As both the boat and the object were mobile, this is impossible. Nowadays there are Didson sonars - http://www.soundmetrics.com/FM/fm_fisheries.html - for those who can afford them :-)
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