ON Press: One man's search for king-size salamanders
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Posted by W von Papineäu on September 27, 2002 at 07:38:58:
NATIONAL POST (Toronto, Ontario) 27 September 02 One man's search for king-size salamanders (Mark Hume)
Vancouver: A large, black "something" that was reported swimming in a lake near Vancouver has revived a hunt for a new species of giant salamander that has long been dismissed as myth.
"There is definitely something out there," says Barrie Alden, an outdoors writer and broadcaster who for more than 20 years has been collecting anecdotal information about huge salamanders more than a metre long. At that length, they would be more than three times the size of the Pacific giant salamander -- a rare, seldom encountered amphibian that can grow up to 42 centimetres.
"They are much larger than the Pacific giant salamander. They are huge," Mr. Alden said.
"It's still in the league of the Sasquatch as far as I'm concerned. But there are more and more sightings ... when you put it all together, it tends to make you think they exist.
"I think there is enough sighting evidence now to think these creatures inhabit our deep, cold lakes."
Mr. Alden has believed in what he calls "giant black salamanders" since 1978, when he interviewed Warren Scott, a prospector who had been exploring in the rugged wilderness northwest of Pitt Lake, which cuts through the Coast Mountains, just outside Vancouver in the Fraser Valley.
Mr. Alden said Mr. Scott told stories of encountering huge salamanders at night and watching in a spotlight beam as they hunted and killed mice on the forest floor.
But when Mr. Alden repeated those stories and began lobbying for a research expedition to find "the dragons of the forest," he was laughed at. Mr. Scott, meanwhile, had vanished, leaving him with no corroboration.
"I was ridiculed over that," Mr. Alden said. And so he stopped talking about the giant black salamanders but continued collecting stories.
Over the years, he said, he has heard from loggers, commercial fishermen and others who have reported seeing "big lizards" in the Pitt Lake area, on the Fraser River and in nearby Harrison and Cultus Lakes.
The latest report came just last week when Danny Gerak, who runs the Pitt River Lodge, a sports fishing resort, encountered "something different" swimming on the lake.
"I was coming up the lake, cruising along, 8:30 in the morning, crystal clear, flat, calm," he said. "About 300 yards out I saw something swimming. I said, 'Holy cow, look at this thing, it's a giant snake.' "
But as he drew closer, he realized it was not a and was unlike anything he'd ever seen before.
"I've seen otters, mergansers, minks, all kinds of ducks -- this wasn't anything like that," he said.
"Its head was raised about eight inches above the surface and it had this black, undulating body. It was swimming like a snake, but with its head held up. It was solid black."
Mr. Gerak's boat drew within about 20 metres and then the creature lowered its head and swam out of sight. It did not surface again.
"I've seen garter snakes swim. It wasn't like that at all. It was about three-and-half, to four feet long. Its head was the length and thickness of a beer can. I've been going up and down that lake for 30 years. This was definitely unusual."
Mr. Gerak said others in the Pitt area have since told him they've seen a similar creature in the same area, near the narrows, where Pitt Lake empties into Pitt River. There are extensive mud flats in the area, which Mr. Alden says fits with other sightings of giant black salamanders.
And there is a report of at least one being seen on land.
"There's an old tale of a logger seeing a lizard cross the road in front of his truck," Mr. Gerak said. "It sure makes you wonder. I'm going to be watching for it and I'm going to have to get a camera for on the boat."
John Kirk, president of the British Columbia Cryptozoology Club, said the reports are intriguing and deserve to be investigated.
"I would think, if there are giant salamanders up there, that we should be able to find evidence," he said. "Perhaps egg masses could be located. Either that, or one has to either ... be caught by people or we will have to get a carcass.... I know I'm going to go up there and have a look."
Mr. Alden said he plans to start looking in the area of the Pitt narrows and he expects others will too, once the word is out.
Mr. Kirk, whose organization takes seriously reports of animals that have not yet been identified by science -- which includes things such as the Sasquatch and the Ogopogo -- said a photograph would help but would not be conclusive, because digital manipulation is so easy.
He said there have been several reports of giant black salamanders over the years, and he thinks the latest from Pitt Lake sounds credible. But that fails to prove anything.
"They did see something in the water. The big question is -- what is it?" he said.
John Richardson, who works in the Department of Forest Sciences at the University of B.C., and is researching the demography of Pacific giant salamanders, said the sightings are interesting, but he doubts it indicates an undiscovered species is swimming around out there.
"The probability of it being a new species is very small," he said. "But you hate to say something is impossible."
Mr. Richardson said if there really was a giant black salamander species, it likely would have been captured by now, or at least observed by wildlife biologists who each year spend countless hours in the field doing research.
"If there was something that was living there it would have to have a sustainable population. To be breeding, there would have to be hundreds of them, not just a few, so you'd think there would be some evidence of that."
He said it is unlikely the Pitt Lake mystery is just an over-sized Pacific giant salamander, because they have never been observed north of the Fraser River, which is where the Pitt drainage is.
Mr. Richardson said there are huge salamanders, known as Sirens and Hellbenders, that live in the U.S. southeast, and that grow to more than one metre in length. There is also a species of giant Chinese salamander (Andrias davidianus) that grows to 1.5 metres.
"It's possible someone had one of those and let it go. That happens from time to time. People do that with pet caymans and alligators. They can live for a short period in our lakes. It's possible something was thrown in there."
Mr. Richardson said there are sightings of all kinds of unexplained creatures, but scientists need more than that to get them excited.
"People still report Ogopogo and Sasquatch. But we are still waiting for the proof."
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