Nessie found in Australia

A giant eel is freaking out fishermen at a trout farm east of Melbourne, Australia. Eyewitnesses say the animal is several meters long and may weigh more than 200 pounds. The farm's owners are offering $1000 to anyone who can catch the eel, believed to have washed in from the nearby Yarra River. From the Herald Sun:
"The trout have been spooked by the monster and they have gone into hiding at the bottom of the ponds," (the farm's operations manager Gary) Wales said.

"I had to give refunds today to people who couldn't catch a fish.

"And I have had a few cancellations as well -- people are too scared to bring their kiddies in case Nessie jumps out and starts chomping on them."

more info at: www.boingboing.net...

editted to add link


[edit on 24-2-2005 by Zabilgy]

Fix your link please i want to see

I heard that story on the news a couple of days ago. Perhaps it ate all the trout. Well someone will end u with smoked eel for a year.

Here is a LINK.

I have caught salt water eels before and they put up a tremendous fight. No wonder these guys are planning on using a horse to pull it out once it is hooked.

Hey, I heard about that. that creature sounds a lot like the last creature sighting at Loch Ness back in December.Sure sounds like the same type of creature. Check it out

loch-movie.tripod.com...

Interesting. I've noticed that strange creatures are always seem to stay away from where I live.

unlike samon eals go out to sea to breed and have there young and come up river to grow into adults .
anyway national geographice cought a eal larvy (they look nothing like an adult eal ) more like a glass fish sortive .Anyway this eal larva was SIX FEET long and national geographice eastmated if it had grown into an adult it may have reached 100 feet in size .
So the lockness monster may just be out there.
Ps nationalgeographice also dreged up sharks teeth from the DEEP DEEP ocean a 4 ince wide tryangel great white UNfosslized from a still living shark .They eastmated that shark at over 90 feet.
PSS once I ran accross an artical from a news paper in texas someware there was a photo of a country road two lane there was cars backed up in both directions and state cops in the photo .What was causing the traffice jam you may wonder ? A turtel but no oridenery turtel a GIANT snapping turtel sitting in the middel of the road so big it blocked both lanes.
the police were quoted as saying (we wernt going to the ones who tell him he has to move .
Pssss Once on the 6 oclock NEWS chanel 6 25 years agaio or so a traler cought a great white shark and the shark proceded to tow the boat hundreds of miles to near newjersey and a news copter took Live footage of the boat 25 foot long boat and the shark was right next to it and the shark was much longer then the boat . the guy finly cut the line saying what do you do with a shark that size?.
the shark was eastmated at 36 feet and using the 25 foot boat for scale that was a close eastment.

Where is "drfunk"? Looking around for a panther in the Blue Mountains? By now he should've shown up here in this thread. Yesterday I found him in the Skull & Bones chatroom and he mentioned the real Aussie Nessie. It looks just like the "original" and people say they have seen it in the Hawkesbury River (New South Wales). I told him it could be a gimmick of the local Chamber of Commerce conceived to attract tourists, but then he gave me this link:

www.strangenation.com.au/Articles/rivermonster.htm

He also talked about the panther. It has been terrorizing people for decades up in the mountains. He gave me a dead link to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (it calls itself "Australia's most prestigious daily newspaper"), but no matter. You can go to the website and do a search for "panther":

www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/...

drfunk is a reliable source concerning these matters. He lives somewhere Down Under.

Big Cats living in the Australian bush have been talked about for years, but most people do not seem to take the sightings too seriously. However, while on fauna survey work in eastern New South Wales over the last decade I observed large feline tracks on a number of occasions, and advised the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service of my concerns, but was openly ridiculed for my efforts. Later I became aware of actual sightings and these and other observations were followed up by a biologist who became convinced that some sort of Big Cat lived in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. I didn't worry much more about it, until one evening in 2004 when I actually sighted the so-called Blue Mountain's Panther myself. I was driving between Bathurst and Lithgow along the Great Western Highway and caught a full view of what I believe to be a large adult male leopard cross the highway in front of my car! I have worked with all the Big Cats in zoos and am very familiar with them - and what I saw was a Leopard without a doubt. Following the event, I reported the sighting to the Government and it met with the usual incredulity. However, an officer from the NSW Department of Agriculture was a lot more supportive and sent me copies of various correspondences between Government Departments that indicated that they were fully aware of the existence of a population of a species of Big Cat that appears to be expanding in numbers and territory. Their earliest records date from around 1980, but the possiblity exists that they have been in Australia far longer - perhaps since the 19th century. So on the surface various Government officers involved with wildlife actively promote the view that such a creature does not exist in our State, but others know full well of its presence but are at a loss when it comes to dealing with the issue publicly. The DEpartment even went so far to hire a wildlife scientist who had extensive experience with Leopards in Africa and he concluded that the Sydney region sightings appeared to be credible. Well, you can take it from me that Leopards are definitely living in the Australian bush along the Great Dividing Range, and it would be most foolish to go bushwalking alone in this region now in my opinion.

So it's just a bunch of big cats prowling around in the bush, not some "other-dimensional" monster such as the Chupacabras, the Mothmen or Spring-Heeled Jack. This is a complete letdown. However, under the category of "invasive species" this is a noteworthy case. The main question is, How did they get there? Also, if what you saw was a "leopard" then it was the usual spotted variety, not the occasional black beast belonging to the same species that they call a "panther", which is the opposite of an albino individual: it sports a melanin-rich integument, rather than one devoid of melanin.