The rocks in the picture, or the snake/sea monster, are quite common in the area. Could just be the right light at the right time. Could be real?

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2008/01/lake-superior-serpent.html

In other words, rock.

But all things dark dank and lovecraftian aside, the idea of a rare and occasional morph of a known species of eel with indeterminate size, with a highly specialized set of instincts that compel it to seek out new habitat for its species, is not entirely an exercise in the absurd. A lot of old concepts we have about species and sexual reproductive strategies and roles and what is and isn’t sensible based our terrestrial perspective is being re-examined. For instance, salmon, it turns out may be operating on probabilities little better than raw chance to return to their specific birth stream. Yes, it does happen but when the entire population is observed and accounted for it turns out that lots of its birth cohorts go other places. And if you think about it, that makes sense otherwise it would be pretty hard to colonize newly formed post glacial streams, which coincidentally, is what salmon favor for spawning (gravels and temps being important to their instincts, evidently) and of course, there are the parr which are an immature morphs of the species which are sexually precocious and in contrast to the little movie we run in our heads when we imagine salmon mating, these guys fertilize a quarter of the eggs by sneaking in while the males battle it out for control of the redd and the female who will lay her eggs in it. We focus on salmon because they are of importance to us economically and because I think humans see something affirming in the outward expression of domesticity and loyalty to its natal stream, but a closer examination provides a more complex pattern, one that has been honed by gazillions of generations to secure the genetic legacy by adapting to the glacial world and the habitats it provides, habitats that have become less dominant in our inter-glacial period. And salmon aren’t by any means the only species that go through these amazing physical changes traveling from different habitats. Eels,of course, shad, salamanders, herring, birds do it, bees do it. The Noah’s ark concept of 1 plus 1 equals a species is almost the exception when it comes to the full range of reproductive strategies.

So, all kidding aside, I really wonder if anyone has actually secured a few carcasses of cows or whatever down in the dark cold deep and watched to see if something comes to recycle it…in the oceans, on the alluvial fans that radiate away from the continents for hundreds of miles underwater and at depths rarely examined at any length, hagfish and some eel pouts and giant amphipods, carnivorous shrimp and who knows what may show up tomorrow (but I doubt if we’ll have a camera on it when it happens) are the scavengers. In places they live under the silt, waiting and conserving energy and protecting their genetic legacy, for how long? They, like a lot of cold living creatures, have very slow metabolisms and few requirements outside of the occasional chance arrival following a particularly severe flood which climatologists categorize by their frequency…so, since there are thousand year flood cycles, are there creatures whose life cycles have synchronized with these climatic cycles? Is that any more unlikely than the notion that we already know all about all the creatures that inhabit the ocean?

I for one gladly welcome our future oceanic silt dwelling overlords.

Otter be ashamed of yourself!

Are there any big northern post glacial lakes that don’t have these sightings?

I would be surprised if at one time or another almost every kind of floating object/atmospheric effect to cluster of birds or shoaling fish hasn’t been misidentified as a lake monster, but this witnesses report and for what it was worth the picture he had sure seems like it’s in that class of sightings of a large eel or lamprey or one of the other primitive jawless chordates that live long slow lives in deep aluvial mud awaiting the signal that the inevitable load of carcasses and other tasty organics have been delivered by a 500 year cycle flood as they are now decaying and sending out dinner invitations to feast like kings, or perhaps the water temperature was just right and it triggered an instinct to rise on a moonfilled night to navigate by scent and magnatite across a cold wet landscape and complete its life cycle.

Or I guess it could be a marine iguana that escaped.