NESSIE'S
COUSIN?
Claims
to have sea monster on tape
Kjetil
Mæland
and Carin
Pettersson
08/18/04
- Nettavisen
For
the first time, the adventurer Jan-Ove
Sundberg has managed to take pictures of
what he claims to be the Seljord
monster.
Loch
Ness has its "Nessie." Its Norwegian
cousin may live in the lake Seljordsvannet
about 80 miles west of Oslo in the county of
Telemark.
Sundberg
and his team, the Global Underwater Search
Team (GUST), have been looking for the Seljord
monster in the deep Norwegian lake for several
years.
Last
week TV 2 Nettavisen reported that Sundberg
had filmed something that may be the Seljord
monster. Here are the first pictures of what
Sundberg claims is a small Seljord monster.
The pictures are from a video which allegedly
pictures the monster swimming in the water
before disappearing into the water.
"It
is rather speculative to call it a baby sea
monster because the animal is only one and a
half meter long," Sundberg said to the
Norwegian radio channel Kanal 24. "We
have filmed an animal that moves itself up and
down in the water."
Mirage
Sundberg
said to TV 2 Nettavisen that it is a mirage of
the sea monster that is captured on film, and
that it therefore can be difficult to
interpret the pictures.
"We
didn’t know what this was in the beginning,
but we have now gotten it explained that the
monster mirrors in the air," Sundberg
said. "Between the air mirage and the
monster, you can see heat vibrations. These
are in other words unique pictures. We have
taken pictures of the sea monster at the same
time as these are pictures of an atmospheric
phenomenon."
Another
issue is that Sundberg never managed to focus
the picture before the object disappeared
underneath the water surface.
Analyse
When asked if this is a breakthrough in
the hunt to find evidence of the existence of
the Seljord monster, Sundberg answered yes.
"It’s
not every day you get to film the monster,"
Sundberg said. "This was just accidental.
First I thought it was a buoy, but it was a
mirage which tricked me. Now when we have
analysed it home, we realize that it is a
small monster in the water."
Like
a lion’s roar
When TV
2 Nettavisen talked to Sundberg Tuesday, he
was working as on sounds he recorded at
Seljordvannet this year. Sounds have been
recorded earlier this year too. Researchers at
the Institute for Marine Research in Bergen
and University of Copenhagen have heard the
recordings and concluded that that they were
made by a large mammal.
Sundberg
got new sound bites from the animal this year,
but he does not wish to go public with the
sounds just yet.
"We
had just lowered the equipment into the water
by Tjuvholmen when we heard a very loud sound
directly underneath the boat," Sundberg
said. "It was like a lion that roared in
the jungle, and it was directly underneath the
boat. We jumped. We heard only one roar, and
then we heard a smaller sound before it
disappeared."
Continues
next year
GUST is
back at Seljordsvannet next year. Then they
are going to bring along divers, who among
other things, are going to investigate strange
tracks found on the floor of Seljordsvannet.
"We
are also trying to build special equipment
that is more useful for our mission,"
Sundberg said. "Until now, we have used a
sonar which is used to locate fish, but we are
looking for larger animals."
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