lake champlain

About Lake Champlain:

Lake Champlain is home to the Chazy reef, which hosts the oldest living reef in which coral occur, coming from the Ordovician Period, 480 million years ago. Fossils of marine invertebrates found in the Champlain Valley tell us Vermont was underwater as well during the Paleozoic Era, more than 300 million years ago. the last glacier melted away about 12,500 years ago, and the sea poured in. This inland sea was inhabited by many of the animals that inhabit the North Atlantic today, including mollusks, sea urchins, squid, herring, cod, salmon, seals, and belugas. In 1849, while constructing a railroad, workmen uncovered the bones of a beluga whale in a swampy area in Charlotte, Vermont. The fossil beluga is housed in the Perkins Museum at the University of Vermont. By about 10,000 years ago, the Champlain Valley had risen above sea level. The Valley’s waters drained northward into the St. Lawrence River. This river flows north of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. Over 20 fossils of ancient beluga whales have been found around Lake Champlain This fact is interesting because of what we found in the lake...echolocation, even though there are no beluga present now.

2 years ago we found echolocation in a fresh water lake. A very novel discovery. The research trip and all about the bi-sonar or echolocation we found is described below. Pete Bodette's video demonstrated much of what we found by listening, namely the size of it and the activity of the fish in the area. Because of Pete Bodette's video we felt it was vital for people to stop considering this a "monster", a "myth" or an intoxicated illusion of those that visit the lake. This creature is unique, possible severely endangered, and needs to be studied scientifically. Those that witness something strange on the lake, please don't be worried anymore about people thinking you are crazy, e-mail us. We are trying to raise the money to fund a genuine scientific investigation, with side-scan sonar, vector sensors, underwater video and other non-invasive approaches.

Pete's video is in the process of being forensically analyzed, to make certain no one can ever call it a "fake", and to also attempt to determine what the creature is, if possible, and if not possible, to rule out fish, otter and other creatures. It is costing us out of our own pockets $4000 to do this. But we feel that this creature needs protection, to be studied, and hopefully it will give those of us that live by the lake, that visit it, more respect for our beautiful environment.

QUESTION: Does the American equivalent of the creature in Loch Ness exist? Is there a large carnivorous creature living in Lake Champlain?

ANSWER: Some animal in Lake Champlain produces echolocation or bio-sonar...only whales and dolphin are known to do this...so what is making this signal?

Using 4 laptop computers, two with sound analysis software, Digital audio recorders, data-loggers, GPS software on computer, 2 portable analyzers, amplifiers, 2 vector sensors (which measure vibration) and two hydrophones (underwater microphones) and other equipment we visited sites on the lake where the "CHAMP" creature has purportedly been seen. Due to thermoclines, sometimes we could hear several miles away. (In lakes usually there is a warm layer of water and a cooler layer. Where these layers meet is called a thermocline. The depth and thickness of the thermocline can vary with the season or time of day).

It was vitally important that we search using passive means (receiving a signal), so we could not use sonar (which is active or sending a signal). The premise is that any large predator that is searching for food in a deep and murky lake would probably need to be using their own type of echolocation. Searching for an animal such as this is purported to be, using sonar, unless it is highly specialized form, would be not be valid protocol from an animal behavior standpoint. The creature could hear the boat’s sonar or fish-finder and it would be scared away, especially if it is thought to be timid or cautious.

We would watch the signal scrolling across our computer and analyzer screens and record onto hard-drive and Digital audio recorder. Most of the time we could hear fish, crayfish, and the occasional turtle, and boat engines. We once even heard music coming from a boat moored several hundred meters away. Ironically, it was the song "When the levee breaks" by Led Zeppelin. We also could hear the "plop" made by fisherman's lures as they hit the water, even 500-600 hundred feet away. That should tell you how sensitive the vector sensors are. Whales and dolphin search for food using a high frequency sonar signal called echolocation, or "bio-sonar." The only other known aquatic animals that echolocate are dolphins and whales (marine, although there are freshwater dolphin in China, India, Pakistan, and Brazil.) Echolocation (biosonar) is a high frequency signal mostly above our hearing range that bounces off objects. The animal can hear the return signal and thereby know what it is. Some call it perfect underwater sight. Average echolocation signals vary, but go up to 200,000 Hertz (cycles per second) or expressed differently, 200 kilohertz (kHz). The human ear can only hear to 20,000 Hertz or 20 kHz. Man-made sonar or fish-finders send out a signal that is very regular, and entirely different then biologically produced sonar.

At three different sites, on the 3^rd, 4^th and the 10^th we picked up an echolocation signal. We picked this up on Digital audio recorders or DAT (7 Hz to 44.1 kHz ) and computer analysis data-loggers (DC to 240 kHz) which stores onto hard-drive. The PCMCIA card that allowed us to data log was donated by National Instruments, and is the very latest in technology. It allows us to analyze sounds 20 times higher then the human range of hearing. The data on Digital audio recorder has been analyzed, and the data-logging sent to a member of our software team at National Instruments. We captured the echolocation signal on our hard-drive, analyzed it as it was happening, and the signal goes up to 140,000 Hertz, or 140 kHz. The echolocation signal under analysis is similar to Beluga whale and killer echolocation, yet different enough so that we can not make a positive identification. Methods such as cross-correlation, where one compares the properties of one sound to another, can usually tell us what type of creature it is, but not in this case. It is significantly different from both whale and dolphin, but it is echolocation.

Dolphin and whale have extremely advanced auditory and sound production capabilities. Very specialized, that is what makes our finding so interesting. Whatever was in the water in Lake Champlain has to have the same type of advanced faculties to produce the signal we got.

"I feel that the effort was a technical success as we were able to conduct far reaching, low-noise sound measurements and, indeed, were able to detect signals the nature of which suggests the presence of some interesting, unexpected phenomena." Dr. Joseph Gregory, a former member of our team who was a professor of sound and vibration engineering at North Carolina State University. Joe passed away November 2003.

Fauna Communications presented their scientific findings at an Acoustical Society of America (American Institute of Physics) conference fall 2003. We also will prepare the paper for publication in a peer reviewed scientific journal later this year. The paper will largely talk about the technology we used, and will not be a speculation about whether champ exists. What we can say, is that there is a creature in the lake that produces bio-sonar, and we have no idea what it is. Proving or disproving the existence of Champ would require a massive and non-invasive search using acoustics, optics, etc. Most importantly, animal behavior research requires a great deal of patience, so it would be a long term study. We would love to do this, so Contact Us!

This is a spectrograph of the biosonar, taken off of the Dat recorder. The color section: x-axis = Frequency (pitch) 4.50E+4 = 45,000 Hz or 45 kHz; y-axis= Time, Color = loudness (amplitude). It looks like the signal does not go any higher than 45 kHz, but that is only because the DAT recorder's upper recording limit is 48 kHz. To get this off of the dat we sampled at 96 kHz. To compare this chart with a dolphin echolocation go to Risso's Dolphin

Risso’s dolphin, from the Southern Thyrrenian Sea, from the University of Pavia Italy’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioacoustics and Environmental Research (0-21 kHz, 3400 ms).