MONSTROUS SIGHTINGS IN ALASKA

Sightings of enormous unidentified fish-like creatures have long been reported from an immense body of freshwater in southwestern Alaska known as Lake Iliamna – covering around 1000 sq miles (2,590km2), approximately 77 miles (124km) long, and with a maximum recorded depth of 988ft (300m), it is the third largest lake entirely within the USA. Scientists speculate that if they do indeed exist, these mystery beasts may constitute a population of white sturgeon Acipenser transmontanus (pictured below), but if the accounts are accurate they are exceptionally large even for this notably sizeable fish, known to attain lengths of up to 20ft (6m). Moreover, they would also represent the world’s most northerly population of this species.

Another suggested identity is the Pacific sleeper shark Somniosus pacificus, comparable in size to the white sturgeon. In recent years, reports of Lake Iliamna’s monstrous inhabitants have been sparse, but on 19 June 2017 and for the next few days, several independent sightings were made of between one and three mysterious aquatic beasts seen offshore near the lakeside town of Kakhonak and claimed to be the size of large whales. At least six adults and several children saw them, and two of the adults were observing them through binoculars. All were in agreement as to what they saw. According to one of these eyewitnesses, Kakhonak resident Gary Nielson: “There was more than one, at least three. The first was the biggest; maybe double the size of a 32-foot [10m] gillnetter. The animal either blew like a whale, or spit water from his mouth or something. The smaller animals behind him did the same but not as dramatic. They were black or very dark grey. They surfaced like whales for maybe two to three seconds about a mile offshore. I am at a total loss as to what they could be”. Needless to say, if these cryptids were indeed spouting water, they are more likely to have been cetaceans than either sturgeons or sharks; also, a 64ft (19.5m) fish of any kind would be a monster in every sense of the word. www.adn.com/outdoors-adventure/2017/06/28/ lake-illiamna-monster-lore-resurfaces-with-newsightings/ 28 June 2017.