Thursday, September 27, 2007
Steve Fossett, Bigfoot, & the Loch Ness Monster
LiveScience has an interesting take on the use of satellite mapping in the search for Steve Fossett:
Adventurer Steve Fossett went missing Sept. 3 about 70 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada, in a small plane. He left no flight plan, and searchers have combed tens of thousands of square miles of Nevada and California. After weeks of fruitless searches, and with the survival window closing, Web users were enlisted to help in Fossett's rescue, from the comfort of their own homes.
Using a program called Mechanical Turk, high-resolution satellite imagery of the search area was collected and analyzed. Participants were shown a single satellite image and asked to note any objects or wreckage that could be a plane or its debris.
The search did solve a few mysteries: several previously unknown small plane wrecks - some dating back to the 1950s - were found. Though Fossett and his plane remain missing, the satellite technology used to search for him could theoretically be applied to other types of searches. It may finally verify the existence of large, mysterious creatures reputed to inhabit the globe. Unknown animals such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, for example, might be easily located and captured - if indeed they exist. - More
It's an interesting argument, and as a huge cryptozoology fan I'd love to see something come of it. It's becoming increasingly difficult write-off cryptozoologists as the tin foil hat set when every few years new species are being "discovered" left and right. It wasn't that long ago when giant squid were just a myth.
And speaking of the Loch Ness monster, from an article in the Reno Gazette-Journal, I learned Lake Tahoe has their own lake monster, Tessie.
TAHOE CITY - Each report of a Tahoe Tessie sighting adds to the mythology of the lake's legendary creature.
The legend is so prevalent that Beth Douglas, of Sacramento, thought Tessie sightings happen every day in Tahoe.
That's why Douglas didn't blink at her friend Ron Talmage's reaction last Friday afternoon to a dark shape undulating at the lake's surface about 100 yards off Tahoe Park Beach.
"Does that look solid to you?" Talmage, of Rocklin, said to Douglas.
When Douglas replied that the shape - with three to five humps along its back - did look solid, Talmage flatly said "Damn, that's Tessie." - Tahoe Tribune
The Tessie plot thickens with reports of a Lake Tahoe dive by none other than Jacques Cousteau - a dive that yielded a sighting so horrific that Cousteau hid the footage, claiming the world wasn't ready for what he witnessed.
"Even famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau is said to have had a brush with something horrific in a deepwater dive in the mid-1970s. "The world isn't ready for what was down there," is the quote most commonly credited. Cousteau never released any photographs or data from the dive, adding to the mystery and legend." - San Francisco Gate
The only kink in the story is Cousteau never actually made the dive. Nevada historian Guy Rocha does an effective job debunking the Cousteau legend on the Nevada State Library website as part of his excellent Historical Myth a Month series. In the same article he also details the legend that the bottom of Lake Tahoe contains a underwater graveyard complete with perfectly preserved bodies due to the frigid lake temperatures. Granted with Nevada's history of mob activity there probably are more than a few bodies resting on the bottom of Lake Tahoe, but the idea that they would remain preserved after all these years flies in the face of science, not to mention common sense. Then again, so does George Bush. :)
On a decidedly non-cryptozoological note, Northern Nevada also boasts another mystery - the whereabouts of John C. Fremont's lost cannon. According to the same RGJ article that turned me on to Tessie:
Snow was deep over the Carson Pass in January 1844 as Fremont's group, which included Kit Carson, tried to cross. The 1835-model mountain howitzer they carried proved too cumbersome and they left it behind somewhere near the state line and Bridgeport, Calif.
"They were in the vicinity west of the Walker River," said Nevada state archivist Guy Rocha. "They just walked away from it."
The group headed to California and never returned to find it. Along the way, Fremont is believed to be the first white man to view Lake Tahoe. Treasure hunters have looked for the prized cannon without success, using Fremont's journals as a guide.
"Like buried treasure, people will look for that cannon 'til kingdom come," Rocha said.
John C. Fremont deserves an extra shout-out as Portland, Oregon's Fremont Bridge is named after him - although in my house it's always been known as the "Big Scary Bridge," I love it when a story on Steve Fossett leads to Tessie, which in turns leads to Jacques Cousteau, underwater graveyards, lost cannons, and eventually home. Yes folks, this is what I do at night when I should be writing.
All roads lead to Portland.
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