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In China, hunt on for Loch Ness monster
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-06 11:26 In 1980, Yuan was part of a team of 150 experts who launched the first
scientific study of the lake's environment and its flora and fauna.
It was then that he met Chinese Mongolians living in the area known as the
Tuwa people and heard the ancient legend of the monsters in Kanasi. Few details
were available; most of the villagers fell silent when pressed.
Five years later, still intrigued, Yuan headed another team to study
environmental protection for the lake — and to search for the creatures of the
Tuwa myth.
Within a day, he had his first sighting.
"They looked like tadpoles coming up for breath," Yuan recalls. "Their eyes
were huge. Their mouths were gaping."
After weeks of study, Yuan and his team discovered dozens of huge red fish,
each 30-50 feet long and weighing more than four tons, living in the lake.
In 1989, scientists concluded that the fish — a type of giant, freshwater
salmon that thrives in frigid, deep, waters — were in all likelihood the
monsters.
Despite that conviction, there remains a niggling doubt.
Yuan says the largest Taimen salmon scientists have captured is just 12 feet
long and weighs 220 pounds. The biggest caught in Kanasi is 4 feet, 9 inches
long, according to the documentary — a flat-headed specimen with a mouth full of
razor-sharp teeth.
So are the lake monsters really the giant salmon? Or something completely
different?
"There is no doubt the so-called lake monster is a kind of fish, the Taimen
salmon," says Jiang Zuofa, a professor at the Heilongjiang Aquatic Research
Institute in northeastern China. He says he has seen up to 50 of them — some
more than 12 feet long — from the top of a mountain.
"The species is big and ferocious and lives in cold, fresh water," he says in
a telephone interview. "We believe it is possible for them to eat chickens,
geese and sheep, but it is impossible for them to eat cattle."
The People's Daily weighed in recently.
"Scientists say with certainty that there simply can't
be so-called 'lake monsters' in the world," its Web site said.
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