BURLINGTON, Vt. - Lake Champlain is placid, calm and generally quiet, save for the boat motors of summer enthusiasts, the plunking of fisherman's lines into the murky depths and the sightseeing cruises of the Spirit of the Ethan Allan II.

Below the surface, though, is a mystery that has endured for possibly thousands of years involving a marine mammal some believe rivals Scotland's Loch Ness.

Since the first documented but hotly-debated sighting of the creature -- affectionately known as Champ -- by explorer Samuel de Champlain in July, 1609, there have been well over 600 more. Native American legends about water serpents in Lake Champlain go back even several centuries earlier. The Iroquois who inhabited the west shore of Lake Champlain talked of a large, horned serpent.

On present day Earth, many lucid, sane individuals have seen something unusual both in and, unnervingly, out of the water. According to accounts, a creature resembling the long-extinct, water-dwelling dinosaurs, approximately five to 10 metres in length, with a long neck, humped body and horned head lives in the lake.

You do not believe in sea monsters, you say? Then you can expect a lively debate with at least 70 people who took an early-evening cruise on July 1984, on Lake Champlain, aboard skipper Michael Shea's Spirit of Ethan Allen, operated by this town's most popular excursion company. The fun and frolic of the Saturday party outing was interrupted when a humped creature partially surfaced alongside the ship, kept pace with it for three minutes and then veered off, disappearing from view. As if to reassure the witnesses they were not consuming too much champagne, it made a brief encore appearance 15 minutes later. Both sightings occurred near Appletree Point.

"There was something there," says Mr. Shea, a veteran boatsman. "I'm as sane as they come and I don't believe in a lot of stuff. But I saw something there. It was incredible how close it was and how real it was."

The creature was close enough for its humps to be counted, up to five surfaced, each about half a metre. Mr. Shea estimates its overall length to be about 10 metres. That fits the description given by author and Champ expert Dennis Jay Hall, a Vermont resident who founded the non-profit Champ Watch organization (www.champquest. com) in 1992.

Mr. Hall has been documenting sightings in the fresh water basin for more than 20 years, including more than 25 of his own. The information gleaned is available in his Field Guide & Almanac for Lake Champlain (US$16.95, Essence of Vermont Publishers). Mr. Hall has gone as far as classifying the creature Champtanystropheus, as he believes it belongs to the Tanystropheus family of nocturnal reptilian animals.

Whatever Champ is, it is not the same species as Loch Ness's Nessie, Mr. Hall insists. The latter is thought to belong to the Plesiosaurus family.

What Mr. Hall does know for certain is there are at least a dozen Champtanys in his neck of the woods and they are not very pretty. "This is a slimy, knobby, long-necked, large-toothed reptile," he says. "It's like a large snapping turtle without its shell, that is very ugly and stinks to high heaven."

Fear not, though, he says. "They live mainly on small fish ... humans are too large for them to eat."

There are other things to do here in Burlington including visiting historic sites or checking out the restaurants, stores and factory-outlet malls. But if Champ is your main event, plan ahead. Bring a camera, binoculars and bug repellant, practise your patience, humour and set aside a few hours of your time. Since many sightings have taken place at night and in secluded areas along the lake, do not hang around the busiest segments. If these creatures do exist, they are likely to be more afraid of you then you are of them.

Perhaps this is all much ado about nothing. Champ could be a piece of driftwood or, as many speculate Scotland's Nessie to be, a large sturgeon. The mere suggestion ruffles Mr. Shea's feathers. "Somebody sitting on land is not going to tell me it's a fish," he says indignantly. "I won't buy that. I saw something and 70 people can vouch for me."

But when you take his cruise, just remember to keep your arm out of the water. Seems like it could look like wriggling bait -- from a serpentine point of view.

• Story originally published by:
National Post, Toronto / ON | Bram Eisenthal - Aug 18.01

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