-
- OSLO (Reuters) - An international
team of monster hunters unveiled a giant trap Wednesday for catching a
fabled serpent, reputed to be a cousin of Scotland"s Loch Ness monster,
in a lake in south Norway. "This is the first serpent trap of its
kind in the world," Jan Sundberg, a Swede leading a team of 12 experts,
told Reuters. The team comprises seven Swedes, three Norwegians, a Canadian
and a Belgian.
-
- The 18-foot-long tube-shaped trap, comprising a metal
frame with nylon netting, will be lowered into Seljord lake in south Norway.
It will contain live whitefish for bait to catch an elusive beast known
to locals as "Selma." "The trap is adapted from a fish trap
for eels. If anything up to about six meters long swims in one end, the
opening closes and it won"t be able to get out," said Sundberg,
a veteran of several inconclusive high-tech scans of the murky lake.
-
- Over the next two weeks, the team will dangle the cage
in the lake, about 110 miles southwest of Oslo, at depths of between 30
and 100 meters near where sightings of the monster have been reported.
Two biologists at the University of Oslo were on standby to fly down by
helicopter and take tests if the trap worked. "We"ll take a DNA
sample, document the serpent and then release it into the lake," he
said. "We will be very careful not to hurt it."
-
- Experts on land would also try to track any unexplained
movements underwater with hydraphones and sonars to help experts on a floating
platform move the trap quickly to a promising spot. Sundberg said the team
recorded mysterious whale-like noises during a visit in 1999. "We"d
be disappointed if we don"t get some kind of result this time...the
only evidence scientists would accept is a dead or a live serpent,"
he said.
-
- The beast was first spotted around 1750, and most accounts
agree it looks like a serpent with the head of an elk or a horse. Seljord
is a town of about 1,500 people at the head of the picturesque lake, about
nine miles long. In recent years, Seljord has tried to imitate Loch Ness
in attracting tourists. In 1986, the local council changed Seljord"s
coat of arms to portray a sea serpent.
-
-
-
-
- MainPage
http://www.rense.com
-
-
-
- This
Site Served by TheHostPros
|