A swedish documentary film crew claims to have caught images of a famous swedish sea monster on film. The beast is called “storsjöodjuret” which translates into “the monster of the big lake”. Storsjön is the name of the lake in which it supposedly lives. The monster have been sighted for a very long time and is very bellowed by the people who lives by the lake. It has been used to promote the area and have become a symbol for the area in much the same way Nessie is a symbol for Loch Ness.

The team have capture the picture with submerged cameras placed on a small island and you can follow the cameras online here. The film apparently show a large creature generating body heat and since there are no similar large sea creatures in Sweden except for the wells catfish which normally isn’t found this far north they believe the film shows the lake monster.

The team currently have six cameras but are going to place 24 more cameras next year and a NBC is going to make about the lake monster and their work this fall.

If you asked me the video is far from conclusive and very blurry but it is still better than many other videos like this so I decided to post it here and allow you to make up your own mind about what it depicts

The clip is from Swedish television

Transcript if dialog:
TITLE: Sweden’s Legendary Great Lake Monster (Storsjödjuret) has been caught on Film

ANNOUNCER: .6 constantly monitoring submerged cameras have captured poor images of the Storsjöodjuret, and an American TV company is on its way to depict the hunt for it.

VOICE OVER: This is supposedly the first moving images ever caught of the Great Lake Monster (Storsjödjuret) taken by an underwater camera . The red is representing heat. At least the group trying to disciver the lake monster want to believe that the swedish Loch Ness is captured on film. A special monitoring station have been built in Svenstavik.

SUSANNE KINDSTRÖM (on the team) It is clear that what have been caught on film is alive and contain cells as the equipment shows red (heat) So, is it a sea snake or a part of the lake monster on might wonder. As we’ve just discovered.

INTERVIEWER: It can’t be a piece of wood, or something else..?

SUSANNE KINDSTRÖM: That’s NO piece of wood, that I can see! Not with that movement pattern

VOICE OVER: This is supposed to be the back fin of the lake monster, the camera supposedly indicates heat on this video as well [Shown on video is a BLUE rectangle] Since the project Storsjöodjuret began this spring [2008], the interest for it has been huge – most of all from abroad. The american TV-company NBC is said to be making a film about the lake mosnter this fall. Next summer, they (the lake monster team) are going to increase from 6 to 30 cameras. It is on this small island the cameras are placed today.

INTERVIEWER: But.. do you believe you will ever get Storsjöodjuret on film?

KURT JONSSON (project Storsjöodjuret): I believe so. And I am also convinced that the technology will also be able to….(help) . in 15 or 20 years, you will be able to search any lake. From space or with unmanned vehicles. Technology goes forward..

INTERVIEWER: So this won’t end with it being (just) a piece of wood?

KURT JONSSON: No, I don’t think so. Something will turn up, yes.

Divers enjoying the waters off Darwin, the northernmost island in the Galapagos, suddenly realised the presence of an amazing 33 feet (10 meter) albino whale shark (Rhincodon typus), and as if one sighting of an albino giant wasn’t enough, a snow-white southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) calf has now been spotted off the coast of Western Australia.

Common whale shark in the georgia aquarium. See picture of albino here

The whale shark encountered in Galapagos is and adult female and was first observed by naturalist Antonio Moreano as he guided a group of scuba diving tourists. “I told everyone to keep a distance and not disturb it so we all jumped in the water and followed it for five minutes.” says Moreano who also managed to get a few pictures of the awe-inspiring creature.

The young albino southern right whale lives in the whale nursery waters off Western Australia together with its 60-tonne mother. It has been given the name Wilgi Manung, which means “white whale” in one of the indigenous Australian languages. According to Doug Coughran, a senior wildlife officer with the department of environment and conservation, Wilgi Manung might not be a pure albino since its eyes and nose does not display the characteristic pink flesh normally seen in albino whales.

Albinism is a hypopigmentary congenital disordered. It can be partial or total, i.e. characterized by a partial or total lack of melanin pigment. Albinism is caused by recessive alleles and must therefore be inherited from both parents to manifest. Albinism has been observed in many different animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. The name albinism is derived from albus, the Latin word for “white”.

See the albino Whale shark here

See albino Whale picture here

When Kate Stoeckle, 18, and Louisa Strauss, 17, collected samples of fish from New York fish stores and restaurants on Upper Manhattan and tested them using the new genetic barcoding method, an astonishingly large portion of the samples turned out to be mislabelled and sold under the wrong name. A sushi restaurant claiming to offer white tuna was for instance serving their guests Mozambique tilapia instead, while another restaurant sold Spotted goatfish from the Caribbean Sea under the name Mediterranean red mullet.

Red Snappers

All in all, Stoeckle and Strauss collected 60 different samples of fish and had them tested at the University of Guelph in Canada. Four samples could not be identified by the genetic barcoding identification technique, but of the remaining 56 samples no less than 14 turned out to be mislabelled. This means that out of 56 samples, a whooping 25 percent were sold under false pretences.

All 14 cases of mislabelled fish consisted of comparatively cheap fish being sold as a more expensive species. It is therefore hard to see how the mislabelling could be the result of honest mistakes by fishermen or middlemen.

Not getting what you pay for as a consumer is however not the only problem with mislabelled fish; a false identity can also be used to sell endangered species to unsuspecting dinner guests. In the Stoeckle and Strauss study, two samples of alleged red snapper did for instance turn out to be endangered Acadian redfish (Sebastes fasciatus). The Acadian redfish has been listed as Endangered (EN) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species since 1996.

The study did not unveil the names of the restaurants and fish shops since it could not be determined if they were intentionally misleading their customers or if they had purchased the mislabelled fish in good faith.

Stoeckle and Strauss are both students at New York’s Trinity school.

Word spell check has made writing a lot easier but sometimes it really makes some strange suggestions. Below you see a screen shoot of a suggestion I got while writing about the Lyretail Anthias for the new marine section of this site. I really can’t understand why word though pyrexia was the word I was trying to spell.

Just go to show that you should never trust the spell check no matter how helpful it can be.

This might not be news for some of you, but for those of you that has missed it: a new species of manatee might have been encountered by Dr Marc van Roosmalen in the Brazilian Amazon! Not only is this believed to be an entirely new species of manatee; it is also the smallest living member of the order Sirenia, measuring no more than 130 cm as an adult.

All Picture by: Marc van Roosmalen

In September 2002, wildlife-researcher Dr Marc van Roosmalen collected a complete skull from a recently killed specimen, but it would take an additional two years before he could finally photograph, film and examine a live specimen in its natural environment. As per usual when a new mammal is “discovered”, the species is only new to the scientific community, not to the locals of the area, and the skull of the specimen collected by van Roosmalen came from a manatee that had been killed and eaten by the locals.

Van Roosmalen has proposed that the so called Dwarf manatee should be considered a separate species of manatee and has given it the name Trichechus bernhardi, but others have suggested that this peculiarly small manatee is actually an immature Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis). Both animals are very closely related and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) comparisons have failed to reveal any difference between the two.

According to van Roosmalen’s scientific description of the dwarf manatee, it lives in one of the tributaries of Rio Aripuanã where it inhabits shallow, fast running water. This distinguishes it from the Amazonian manatee which is known to prefer deep and slow moving waters and is found throughout a much larger part of South America. There is also a difference in diet; both animals feed on aquatic plants but on different species. In addition to this, there is a significant disparity in both proportions and colour. The dwarf manatee weighs about 60 kg as an adult and has a dark, almost black, body adorned with a white patch on the abdomen. The Amazonian manatee is much larger than the Dwarf manatee and can weigh over 500 kg. This difference has been used by both sides; those who believe that it is a separate species and those who believe it to be an immature Amazonian manatee.

Regardless of whether this is truly is new species or merely an immature version of the Amazonian manatee, I certainly agree with Christopher Collinson’s comments on the Tetrapod Zoology blog: “On a side note, why the heck are those dwarf manatees so friggen adorable? They have way more cutesy factor than any one animal should be allowed to posess, its at least like a million times more than regular old plain Jane manatees.”

Picture courtesy of: Marc van Roosmalen

Well not really but it is close enough to report on even if it isn’t fish related. In a nature reserve in Italy in the town of Prato, Tuscany, there is a deer that has only one horn in the center of its head. The dear, named unicorn, was born in captivity in the research area of the park and is believed to be a genetically anomaly. Another theory suggest that his unicorn look might be due to an injury the deer might have suffered when young. Although deers sometime only have one horn it is very rare, if not unknown to have a deer with one horn in the middle of the head. More commonly they just lack the left or the right horn. It has been suggested that this anomaly regardless of it cause might be the source for the myth about the unicorn.

You can read more about it and see pictures of the deer by clicking the link below.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25097986/

Dr Dean Pomerleau has managed to teach his two year old goldfish Comet to play football, basketball, push a rugby ball over a set of posts, play fetch with a hoop, limbo dance under a bar, and zigzag through a series of poles.

Dr Dean Pomerleau used positive reinforcement to teach the fish. Positive reinforcement has since long been used to train dolphins and other marine mammals. “With the correct tools and the basic promise of a food reward, fish can very quickly learn complex tricks – like the limbo, zigzag or playing fetch” says the fish trainer to The Sun.

You can read the whole story in Jenny Eagle’s article in The Sun.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1126255.ece

A technology that can be used to prepare nutrition enriched ice cream using fish has been developed by Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (CIFT), one of India’s leading fishery research institutes, Newindpress.com reports. The technology can also be used to enrich noodles.

Just like most other modern ice-creams, the “Maricream” produced by CIFT contains water, suger, butter and egg white, as well as stabilisers, emulsifiers and flavouring substances. What makes it so species is that its major ingredient is cooked cuttle fish.

Afraid of smelling fishy? Don’t be – the ice cream has been deodourised to remove the smell of fish.

Read the full article in the Indian e-paper Newindpress.com

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEB20080512151841&Page=B&Title=Business&Topic=0

There have been a lot of controversy around the Beijing Olympics, People being removed from their homes to make room for the Olympic village, Homeless people being shipped out of the city to hide them from the visitors and of course the situation in Tibet.

This time the controversy is about animal cruelty. No it is not about the Chinese eating dogs, It’s about one of the tourist souvenirs sold at the Olympics based on the cartoon fish, Beibei, that is one of the mascots for the Beijing Olympics. Vendors are selling a keyring with a small plastic bag containing a live goldfish.

The plastic bag has been sealed giving the poor goldfish only hours to live before they suffocate. Many goldfish meet their doom even sooner as the bags are made out of poor material and often break when carried on the busy streets of Beijing. The key rings are unfortunately selling very well.

The bags are sealed at the manufacturer and many goldfish die before they even get to the vendor. When the consumer buys them the goldfish might only have minutes last to live. Unfortunately as earlier said this doesn’t seem to stop this product from becoming popular.

A Spokeswoman from the RSPCA made a statement yesterday saying “We are shocked and appalled. It is a gimmick and shows no respect for the animals at all.” about the souvenir.

I can only speak for myself and say that this terrible souvenir will taint the Olympics for me and I can’t understand that a product like that is allowed anywhere. I would like to recommend everybody to spread this news and write about it in their blogg to increase awareness about this atrocious souvenir. If we can prevent just one of them from being sold it is worth it.

A newly investigated 290 million year old fossil may be an evolutionary missing link in the amphibian family tree. The fossil was collected in Texas by a palaeontologist with the Smithsonian Institution in the mid-1990s. The fossil eventually ended up at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., where it was re-discovered and investigated in 2004.

The new analysis of the fossil has been carried out by Jason Anderson, a comparative biologist at the University of Calgary, Canada. According to Anderson, the fossil has an overall amphibian look but with interesting archaic features. The animal resembles a salamander, but the tail is stubby and the ears are similar to the ears of a frog.

“So it’s kind of a frogamander, if you will,” Anderson sais to National Geographic News.

The fossilized species has been given the name Gerobatrachus hottoni. Until recently, scientists believed that frogs, salamanders and the wormlike caecilians all hailed from a common ancestor. Gerobatrachus hottoni suggests that frogs and salamanders are much more closely related to each other than to the caecilians.

Read more in Anne Casselman’s article for National Geographic News.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080521-frog-fossil.html

The study of the fossil appears in this week’s (May 21^st 2008) issue of the journal Nature.