May 8, 2012
The alleged lake monster in Alaska’s Lake Iliamna is sometimes called “Illie.”
Now…
one scientist thinks Illie may turn out to be a variety of a sleeper shark.
“Certainly the size and the shape and the color seems to match a lot of the descriptions,” said Bruce Wright, a biologist and senior scientist with the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association in Anchorage, Alaska.
If a 20-foot sleeper shark lives in the huge Alaskan lake, it could account for many of the reports made by people who see something they can’t identify break the surface of the water.
“What confuses me is this [habit of the creature] breaking the surface. I don’t know if sleeper sharks do that,” Wright, author of “Alaska’s Great White Sharks,” told The Huffington Post.
“They do use the surface waters but tend to stay down deep during the day and come up at night,” he added.
This 2000 image shows biologist Bruce Wright in salt waters in southeast Alaska with a small Pacific sleeper shark that was caught on a research cruise. He believes much bigger versions of this shark group could be the true identity of Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster and Alaska’s Lake Iliamna creature known as Illie.
In my The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. (NY: Tarcher-Penguin, 2003, coauthored with Patrick Huyghe), we placed the Lake Illiamna Monster in the “Giant Shark” category.
I wonder if the newly highlighted Canadian biologist Bruce Wright is related to the late Bruce S. Wright, Ph. D., the wildlife director from New Brunswick who authored Ghost of North America, about the sightings and possible existence of the Eastern Panther?
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under Breaking News, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Lake Monsters