The Iliamna "giant fish" stories have always fascinated me. It's the only story about a large "lake monster" I think will prove to have something real and unusual in it. The thousand-square-mile lake, so remote there are no roads to it (only a mountainous portage from Cook Inlet littered with debris from old trucks and the boats they were transporting), hosts the world's biggest salmon run. It's at least 800 feet deep. Jeremy Wade (River Monsters) suggests it's a kind of sleeper shark, while a more common theory is an undocumented population of sturgeon that runs larger than most. The reports are pretty consistent about shape and features, with color and size varying, and it's certainly possible for a fish to adapt to seasonal variations in the food supply (there are trout, char, etc. that don't migrate in and out via the Kvichak River as salmon do).
Enter marine ecologist Bruce Wright, who is sure there's something down there and intends to use a moored underwater camera to try for a picture of it (it, they, them, whatever: since stories go back before the first white people showed up a few centuries back, obviously there must be a population that's stable over time). A retired military colonel named Mark Stigar thinks, so, too, since he tried fishing for it with a line of hooks on the bottom, and something dragged the anchor and damaged the gear. I've written about it myself, though I've not yet been able to visit.
Will they find anything? It would not surprise me. What will they find? It might be something to surprise all of us. I hope it is.
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