Most of us Canadians don't have guns. The only loaded weapon I had that night was my mug which made its way through some Iceberg Vodka mixes and a bottle of red that night. Again I was in full control.
I was on a canoeing trip in Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada.
http://www.algonquinpark.on.ca/index.html
More specifically, the sighting took plac on Tom Thomson Lake (about 19km north and 18 east of the southwest corner of the park)... who himself died mysteriously one night on a lake but that was thought to be foul play initiated by humans or a simple drunken drowning incident.
It's a pretty big provincial park (765000 ha; looks to be about the size of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming) and can be seen from the main default view of the
http://maps.google.com/ website.
Interesting thoughts about the seal but they aren't exactly nocturnal and they don't swim with their heads above water but should be capable of eclipsing the speeds this thing was travelling at.
Moose, well I was just talking to a friend who does backwoods camping as well and (before telling him my story) he told me that his friend got chased by a moose in the water and that it moved so slowly that they got away from it just by paddling a canoe. As we all know, that's not fast at all... like a fast walking pace on the ambitious side.
Now I just did some math and now I almost don't believe myself.
With an average of about 350 Meters away from me when I saw it and when I lost track of it... it subtended an angle of 90 degrees across my field of vision in about the span of 40 seconds. Doing the math, that is roughly equal to this thing travelling 500 Meters in 40 seconds (went over the scenario a few times in my head)... in other words, it was going faster than I originally thought.
The math tells me that if it had been travelling consistently at the same speed in a straight line, its constant speed would have been approximately 45kph or about 28mph! Do keep in mind that it changed directions and came at me for about 12-15 seconds so it was moving much faster than that... assuming my sighting distance of 350 Meters was not totally butchered!
Before I made the sighting, I took a look from one campsite to the other one my friends were at one the opposite side of the lake and I thought it was about 1000Meters give or take 10%... now, after I got back from the trip, I just took a look at the canoe trail map again and it is exactly 1000 Meters from the two campsites. This thing was between 1/3 to 1/2 of the distance between the two campsites when I first sighted it. So looks like my measurements are sound and if my timing is correct, it actually was moving at about 45kph.
So the only freshwater creature I know that moves that fast is a seal but they always swim with their heads and bodies in the water do they not? It is not a species I'm too familiar with. Don't believe they have ever been spotted there in the daytime either. They do have big reflective eyes though as this page describes...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3788459&dopt=Abstract
Oarfish and giant eels would swim with their heads in the water and I don't think I'd see a back on the surface.
Spent like two hours at work today on google doing some research on and off reading up on sea serpents... sigh, I really really really wish I didn't see this thing. Not feeling too special now as I know a part of my future life disappeared that night and is now forfeit.
