CORINNA DOWNES: Where do we go from here/is it down to the lake I fear?

Late afternoon, Thursday 17th September 2009. We (Jon Downes, Max Blake, Tony Shiels and I) stopped at the scenic view at Ladies View in Killarney National Park on the Ring of Kerry. It overlooks the three lakes – Lough Leane, Muckross Lake (also known as Middle Lake) and Upper Lake. It was a calm afternoon with not much breeze to speak of, and was slightly cloudy.

Tony Shiels told us that we should watch the Upper Lake. In the southeast corner of the lake there is an island – not too far off the shore – and I saw a trail left by something as it made its way from the island to the shore to the east of it, as can be clearly seen in the photos (Bottom Left). I have no idea whether this was a bird on the surface of the water or whether it was something from underneath.

As can be seen clearly in the photos (above) there is a rock in the lake to the west of this island and we used this as a marker. Suddenly there was movement near the rock and as far as I could tell by looking through my telephoto lens, there was nothing sitting on the rock that could have jumped in. However, there was a great deal of movement as can be seen in the photos.

A long straight movement was followed by circular movements before whatever had made them seemed to dive down again. In one of the photos you can clearly see a kind of torpedo trail as whatever it was submerged and made its way to the right of the original disturbance.

I am not sure what it was but am fairly convinced that it could not have been a bird. The fact that it clearly broke surface and then submerged leaving that torpedo trail – to me – ruled out that it could have been a bird. If it was a fish, it must have been a pretty big one because of the size of the disturbance and the distance involved from where we were standing.

I have no idea what it was that we saw but if I was to be pressed for an answer I would probably suggest a large eel.

We will be releasing the video in the next few days, but want to do a little bit more work first. The video is far more impressive than the photographs.