Last Friday, the scene from Magnetic Island off the northern coast of Australia must have looked like something straight out of The Lost World. Beachgoers were treated to the sight of what appeared to be a long-necked sea going creature straight out of our prehistoric past.
The strange looking object moving in the water was extraordinary enough to get the attention of numerous eyewitnesses, many wondering just what it could be.
Plesiosaur? Sea serpent? Or could it be something more mundane and explainable, like a piece of driftwood or a sunken boat? You decide.
From The Australian:
The strange sea sighting has created quite a buzz on the island, with locals desperate to know: just what is lurking in the water?
One of them is marriage celebrant David “Crusty” Herron, who photographed it from a beach about 200 metres away.
“It was bobbing up and down in the water and at first I thought, what’s that?” Mr Herron told AAP.
“Someone yelled out ‘it looks like a Loch Ness monster’.
“I’ve never seen anything like it – it could be anything. We are all wanting to know what it is.”
James Cook University biology professor Glen Chilton says while new and old creatures are constantly being discovered, even near the Great Barrier Reef, it’s unlikely to be a strange aquatic beast.
“It’s probably a piece of a tree or piece of a boat which has somehow broken away,” he told AAP.
Australian cryptozoologist and self-proclaimed “yowie man” Rex Gilroy is keeping an open mind. “It’s hard to say from the photo,” he said.
Mr Gilroy, who has authored books on mythical creatures, says he’s aware of about 800 sightings of reptilian creatures with long necks and football shaped heads.
Some of those were from the Magnetic Island and Townsville area, he said.
The most recent was in October last year when a fisherman saw a creature with a large grey coloured body protruding from waters off Magnetic Island, he said.
When asked if it could have been the remains of a dragon boat that supposedly sunk there in the recent past, the man who photographed the creature, David Herron, refuted it and compared the beast to a plesiosaur. Here’s “Crusty” being interviewed by News 7:
SOURCE: http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/19578903/has-loch-ness-monster-migrated-to-nth-qld/