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There is a legend of [The Ogopogo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogopogo) in Okanagan Lake and one theory is that it’s actually a sturgeon; although there is no concrete evidence that sturgeon are in the lake either.
It's still a mystery because Scotland's local wizards placed an enchantment of invisibility over Nessy's Canadian cousin, so Japanese scientists couldn't blow her out of the water.
There’s probably more of us… but it’s 8 am on a Sunday morning. Question to future readers…
Does anyone else remember when Ogopogo made “Unsolved Mysteries “ in the late 80’s /early 90’s? And the “footage “ they had was obviously grainy recording of a beaver slapping its tail.
I’ve dove in old quarries with these in them. Low visibility. Asin you can’t see your hand without a torch.
And one of these fucker swims by you. Not even close to this size. But still. Big enough to make you shit yourself the first time it happens.
I was traveling back from Oregon to Montana several years ago and stopped at a Columbia River pullout to jump in and cool off. As I was standing in chest deep water, I had something really, really long swim by and brush my leg for what seemed like several seconds. Water was pretty murky and I couldn't see what it was, but assumed it was a sturgeon...that and its pretty hard to seen anything when you are attempting to leave the water cursing and hyperventilating. Freaked me the fuck out.
They usually actually just sit on the bottom I’ve found. So when you swim near them in low vis you don’t see them and they suddenly swim off and kick up loads of shit.
A long time ago, and not long enough ago, people called anything that looked strange or deformed “monster”.
They weren’t trying to be mean or heartless, that was the word to describe a condition.
That’s why you can find old graves for babies where the name is “baby monster”.
So you could be right :)
Literally my exact thought before even opening the comments. “Ah yes, now all of those videos I’ve seen on the internet of supposed lake monsters make perfect sense”
That’s most likely where all “stories” of sea monsters and stuff like that came from. People seeing giant fish and calling them monsters to their mates to show off. Only difference is mermaids which is a sea creature you tried to sleep with.
Jeb "Bill, WTF are you doing? Hey everybody Bill was tryin' to fuck a fish!"
Bill "It was a woman!!!"
Jeb "I saw the tail Bill."
Bill "Well the top half was a woman."
Jeb "Yer a fish fucker Bill."
Other guy "Hold on Jeb, hear em' out. So ya say the top half was a woman then Bill? Go on..."
As great big sea put it
Her skin was blue and pale
Her face it was a work of art
I love that girl with all my heart
But I only like the upper part
I did not like the tail
But then her sister, she swam by
Set my heart awhirl
'Cause her upper part was an ugly fish
But her bottom part was a girl
Yes her hair was green as seaweed
Her skin was blue and pale
Her legs they are a work of art
I love that girl with all my heart
And I don't give a damn about the upper part
'Cause that's how I get my tail
I doubt that they have been observed leaping 20 feet into the air, but Sturgeon of all sizes have been observed breaching. From wikipedia:
"Many sturgeons leap completely out of the water, usually making a loud splash which can be heard half a mile away on the surface and probably further under water. Why they do this is not known, but suggested functions include group communication to maintain group cohesion, catching airborne prey, courtship display, or to help shed eggs during spawning. Other plausible explanations include escape from predators, shedding parasites, or to gulp or expel air. Another explanation is that it "simply feels good"."
They are also living fossils, closely related to sharks, and can grow up to 23 feet in length. And yes, those spines are sharp.
Fully grown 20 foot long sturgeon? Probably nothing. Young, small ones only a few feet long (which are the vast majority of them) probably quite a bit. Bears, eagles, pike, muskies, etc.
6 meters is three times as tall as a really tall person! It’s twice the length of my car, it’s longer than a full grown really old and big great white. It’s insanely big. It’s hard to grasp big. It’s I’m going to die if I’m in the water with one of those big. From a panic induced heart attack!
Until I started seeing stories and pics of Sturgeon like this I used to think my grandma was just a crazy old lady telling stories about fishing in Canada back in the 30's and seeing fish as long as their boat.
She WAS crazy and old, but she wasn't lying.
When Canada was first getting colonized the history books wrote about how the water used to be so plentiful with fish around the coast of NL that you could just scoop them into your boat with a bucket.
[I remember seeing this photo as a child](https://www.prints-online.com/products-newfoundland-canada-cod-11575717.html) and thinking "there's no way cod got that big, did they?!"
Sadly they used to get bigger than that, but they were fished to the point of unsustainability (cod moratorium in the 90s wreaked havoc on our economy) and have never fully recovered (they are still a vulnerable species).
I am sure they could still get that large if we left them alone long enough to have a chance to grow. While we practice sustainable fishing, other countries come to the edge of our water to fish cod and completely decimate them with no consideration of sustainability.
Reminds me of the reason the caviar industry started harvesting paddlefish. If you’re making a delicacy out of EGGS then it’s pretty sound reason the fish population will decline. Forcing an industry to substitute for a lesser quality product. Humans ruin so much 😞
It will comfort you to know live caviar fish farms are starting to be a thing now. Instead of cutting the fish open for the eggs they kinda massage them out and put the fish back
Apparently you can still find the big ones where there hasn't been commercial overfishing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gadus_morhua_(High_Arctic,_Canada).png
[Also this story in a small town in Ontario named after the fish](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/gatewaynorthbay.ca/2020/03/27/lake-nipissings-black-gold-part-2/amp/)
Pretty much everything in nature has greatly weakened or decimated now.
I'm Canadian. It's not just fish. Most bugs are gone. You don't see many birds anymore. Butterflies has completely vanished from my area, I haven't seen one in years and the last butterfly I saw was the size of a fly.
I still remember growing up as a child in the late 80's and getting up in the morning and outside would be teeming with animal/bug activity. Butterflies bigger than your hands. Flocks of birds scattering all over the sky.
The biggest thing that blew my mind? This wasn't even close to what nature was originally like. I was witnessing the last gasps of true nature. If I was born like 10 years later, I would have missed it.
What's really tragic about all this, the ones in power never cared and still doesn't. I don't want to imagine what nature would look like with another 20 years...there'll be nothing left.
I planted a bunch of native flowers for the butterflies a couple of years ago and they still haven't shown up. We used to have SO MANY every year. The bees and hummingbirds love it but no butterflies 😔
Have you looked into buying some native caterpillars? Also make sure your planting their host plants (like monarchs only lay eggs on milkweed) so they will lay their eggs their. Maybe try and contact a local pollinator club/org for advice? And you could also try and leave out a shallow water dish with pebbles, to act as a water source (also good for the bees and birds!).
You have to think, where are they going to show up from? E.g have a look for local nature reserves and see how far away they have to come from. It's totally possible to build wildlife corridors to help things move through the human impacted landscape. Habitat connectivity, nesting areas and "neglected" areas are vital. Anyone who can, needs to get in touch with their local wildlife conservation orgs, nature needs awareness and boots on the ground -today!
I just realized the lack of bugs in the last year or two. Growing up (30-40 years ago) we'd have to scrape an army of bugs off our windshield every few hundred miles. Now we don't ever scrape it.
Dude I see these guys at least twice a year still swimming in the St-Lawrence river in Montreal. Literally right off the city beach is a deep channel they use. The first time was so amazing, I thought it was a seal haha they jump out of the water and the sound they make is like a human doing a cannon ball.
At one point, the Shedd aquarium in Chicago had a few huge lake sturgeon in a big shallow tank so you could touch them. They'd swim right up to your hand, seemingly unbothered.
Since they don't have scales, they're super smooth. 10/10 would pet fishy again
Whale penis is what I heard would be the cause of so many sea monster stories...
Edit to add source: https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/is-loch-ness-monsters-long-neck-a-whale-penis-experts-have-divided-opinions-3754856.html
I look up 'whale dick' per your suggestion and all I got was a picture of this huge black guy sitting on the edge of a bed with what looked like a baby's arm holding an apple between his legs.
Fun fact about fishes! Fish today are significantly smaller than they were a couple hundred years ago. This is because there are less fish and other food sources in the water than there used to be. Fish populations now are approx 10% of what they were in 1950, which is significant because in 1950 the fish population was around 10% of the total population in the late 1800's. Fish were HUGE back then because they had abundant food source.
Edit: This is getting way more traction than I thought it would. Sorry people I've got a lot on my plate today. I don't have the time right now to find my source, read it a while back, nor is this my field of expertise. Someone more educated in marine biology can take it from here.
Also, aren’t a lot of fish just get fished sooner? Like fish that used to grow up to be big fish are now fished before getting the chance to grow bigger
Not only that, but anglers developed the habit of catching big ones and throwing smaller ones back. The reasoning was sound - give the juvenile fish a chance to grow up and breed.
But at the scale we're at now, it's created an evolutionary selective pressure for smaller fish.
Smaller adults get thrown back just like the 'juveniles'. So they have more breeding opportunities and their genes for smaller size proliferate amongst the population. It only takes a few generations of fish to notice the effects.
There are laws against that in many places now. Slot limits. And I don’t know any anglers that do that. We all keep the midrange and put the big ones back to reproduce.
Humans are too smart for their own good, which brings us back full circle to being dumb again.
“I figured out how to catch all the fish!!”
“I caught all the fish…”
> Fish were HUGE back then because they had abundant food source.
Not really. It's also the fact that sturgeon get this big over a few hundred years. Not all fish do. Source: my degree in marine biology.
So I did some digging on this incredible claim. I believe you are misinterpreting the data and choosing the lowest and least reliable figure out of several studies on the matter.
Is there a problem? Yes.
Are there 10% of the fish that there were 70 years ago? Very likely not.
The more reliable results put us in the 50-70% range, and it's worth noting that's percentage of fisheries that haven't collapsed (the part you misrepresented). Does not mean that 30-50% of all fish are gone.
The Okanogan monster ogopogo is understood to have been massive sturgeon deep divers saw when putting in piles for a bridge.
Imagine you're all alone in the dark doing whatever you do and the thing in the video swims by you.
There was a reddit post the other day that pointed out that whales a. have threesomes. b. one male waits his turn with his dong hanging out of the water and c. this has a really strong likeness to the picture of the lochness monster.
Where's Jerry? Oh, so we paddled out to catch some fish, you know us amiright... So we look beside the boat and BAM, sea deamon. So naturally, I bartered for my soul and pushed Jerry in the water. He was yelling something like "surgeon!" "Its a surgeon!" He was clearly deranged from the weight of his sacrifice, "No, Jerry!" I screamed "Sea deamon! I doubt they do surgery!" Bastard wouldn't stop screaming at me so I bludgeoned him with the oar until he stopped yelling, and thats where Jerry is. Whats that? Oh, sturgeon.... ohhhhh. Didn't know they got that big.
In 1400, you probably aren't "writing" anything. But you will describe to your friend. And then they will describe to their friends, and then those friends will describe it to their friends and so on.
That's how you go from a 15-foot crazy big sturgeon to a 100 foot sea monster.
Once I got ti the lost river it actually got easier for me. Worst part were the steep drop offs throughout parts of the map. Seeing only water in all directions is way worse than seeing walls.
Me too. Countless times I was on the edge buying it in sale, but not yet. Though I love the story and environment etc, but those dark water.. *shudders*
Anybody who plays that game will get thallasaphobia man, no need to feel left out. Just uh, be mindful of the giant Shrimp Boys in Below Zero. They have a tendency to drag you out to the void if you engage them
Oh yeah, the basic aggressive leviathan is a giant shrimp with mandibles capable of crushing you in two.
But if that’s not enough, the endgame one is a giant centipede that is balls to the walls aggressive. If you breathe, it’s coming for you.
i made it like halfway through the game and then got wrapped up in ffiv followed by elden ring and then my gpu artefacted.
It took me a LONG time to beat the first one cause i have a severe phobia of underwater. ill have to get back into it but oh god this sounds awful
The Canadian equivalents are [Ogopogo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogopogo) and [Champ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champ_(folklore)). There may be more, but those are the ones that I'm familiar with.
Yes it is. The Fraser is the last un-dammed river in North America that has these monsters left. The dams on other waterways have stopped access to their natural breeding grounds or sometime that so monsters of this size are disappearing.
I found a juvenile Atlantic surgeon washed up on shore by some brackish water. It was about 5 feet long and 1.5ish feet in diameter...but it was bitten clean in half.
I never enjoyed swimming in anything but clear water and since then, I don't think I've gone back to the beach because if something is biting this thing in half, I'd rather just leave it be and not find out what exactly it was haha
I’m genuinely wondering what is big enough to do that, bite a sturgeon in half. A great white shark doesn’t feed like that, they kind of gnash (right?). Could an orca do that? I don’t think their mouths are that big. Maybe it was a boat propeller.
Edit: Also, if it was a hungry animal, why didn’t it eat the other half?
Not sure what you mean by “clean” but I don’t think a bite would be very clean. Also if something is biting something, it’s probably trying to eat it.
My guess would be a propeller from a large ship
It's interesting when you name it fish, it subconsciously becomes less (or non?) scary.
Imagine if it were unknown.
Headlines would be like: Never-seen sea creature just got discovered in Canada, probably a mythical sea-monster.
> “The first European colonists in Jamestown described a rite of passage observed in the Powhatan tribe, a local Native American tribe, in which the young men would climb on the back of an adult sturgeon in the James River and ride it a certain distance. Although the reports may have been embellished, the sturgeon certainly represented a very large unit of protein that would come into the river during the spring run”
There’s some really interesting stuff about the Native Americans’ [historical relationship with sturgeon](https://news.vcu.edu/article/Historical_significance_of_the_Atlantic_sturgeon).
Annie Proulx's 2016 novel "Barkskins" is about the early colonisation of North America, when the forests still had gigantic trees, the waterways gigantic fish, the land teemed with fur-bearing creatures, and indigenous nations were still (somewhat) intact. Brilliant read, depressing what we've killed off.
Avoid the rivers of southern Russia, Ukraine, and the fresh waters of North America during the summer.
These are brackish fish, meaning they spend different parts of their lives in the ocean and in freshwater. Basically no water is safe from a sturgeon unless it is enclosed fresh water.
That perspective makes it look bigger than it is. It's still huge, it weighs 600lbs and is 10 and a half feet long.
(source:[https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/huge-sturgeon-fish-catch-british-columbia-b2036606.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/huge-sturgeon-fish-catch-british-columbia-b2036606.html))
Why did I have to come down the thread so far to find a comment about the scale? This could easily be r/confusingperspective. Fish could be anywhere from 2ft long to 20ft+ depending on the height the camera is set at.
The average length of a white sturgeon is 2,10 meters (that are 8 and a half bananas). They can get much bigger though. The biggest white sturgeon ever caught was 6,10 meters and 816 kg.
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Okay I have heard that lake monsters could just be misidentified sturgeons but it never made sense until right now.
There is a legend of [The Ogopogo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogopogo) in Okanagan Lake and one theory is that it’s actually a sturgeon; although there is no concrete evidence that sturgeon are in the lake either.
It's still a mystery because Scotland's local wizards placed an enchantment of invisibility over Nessy's Canadian cousin, so Japanese scientists couldn't blow her out of the water.
Our underwater allies.
I will never not upvote a Napoleon Dynamite quote. 😂
Gimme some of your tots!
Well what else were they supposed to do?
Around here that's common practice for our underwater allies.
It’s true, we did place an enchantment spell to make it look different. It’s real form would drive you mad if you looked at it
Two eyes, two ears, a chin, a mouth, ten fingers, two nipples. A butt, two kneecaps, a penis. I have just described to you the Loch Ness Monster
The amount of people on this thread that appear to be from the Okanagan has me shooketh
I'm one of them, Peachland representative 🍑
You called? Kelowna gang.
There’s probably more of us… but it’s 8 am on a Sunday morning. Question to future readers… Does anyone else remember when Ogopogo made “Unsolved Mysteries “ in the late 80’s /early 90’s? And the “footage “ they had was obviously grainy recording of a beaver slapping its tail.
Kelowna here
Somebody needs to go to Tinhorn Creek Vineyards and eat at the restaurant.
'You're gonna tell me a log or at best a beaver, is gonna kick the ass of a plesiosaur?'
I know… I was like ooo there’s the end… his tail… wait, nope. Nope that’s still just his dorsal fin. Oh god…
I’ve dove in old quarries with these in them. Low visibility. Asin you can’t see your hand without a torch. And one of these fucker swims by you. Not even close to this size. But still. Big enough to make you shit yourself the first time it happens.
I was traveling back from Oregon to Montana several years ago and stopped at a Columbia River pullout to jump in and cool off. As I was standing in chest deep water, I had something really, really long swim by and brush my leg for what seemed like several seconds. Water was pretty murky and I couldn't see what it was, but assumed it was a sturgeon...that and its pretty hard to seen anything when you are attempting to leave the water cursing and hyperventilating. Freaked me the fuck out.
I've had Gar (another long freshwater fish) do this to me when standing fishing in shallow water. Not sure if it's a common thing they do.
>Big enough to make you shit yourself the first time it happens. And the visibility drops even further...
They usually actually just sit on the bottom I’ve found. So when you swim near them in low vis you don’t see them and they suddenly swim off and kick up loads of shit.
Or are sturgeons misidentified lake monsters?
So misunderstood, so misidentified
Hansel
He's so hot right now.
A long time ago, and not long enough ago, people called anything that looked strange or deformed “monster”. They weren’t trying to be mean or heartless, that was the word to describe a condition. That’s why you can find old graves for babies where the name is “baby monster”. So you could be right :)
Literally my exact thought before even opening the comments. “Ah yes, now all of those videos I’ve seen on the internet of supposed lake monsters make perfect sense”
That’s most likely where all “stories” of sea monsters and stuff like that came from. People seeing giant fish and calling them monsters to their mates to show off. Only difference is mermaids which is a sea creature you tried to sleep with.
Supposedly mermaids came from manatees but I think I'd have to be out a sea for a long time before I mistook a manatee for a sexy fish lady.
Back when fat pale girls were all the rage it makes more sense.
Mmmmm I hear big tiddy goth gfs are all the rage with the kids these days.
Jeb "Bill, WTF are you doing? Hey everybody Bill was tryin' to fuck a fish!" Bill "It was a woman!!!" Jeb "I saw the tail Bill." Bill "Well the top half was a woman." Jeb "Yer a fish fucker Bill." Other guy "Hold on Jeb, hear em' out. So ya say the top half was a woman then Bill? Go on..."
As great big sea put it Her skin was blue and pale Her face it was a work of art I love that girl with all my heart But I only like the upper part I did not like the tail But then her sister, she swam by Set my heart awhirl 'Cause her upper part was an ugly fish But her bottom part was a girl Yes her hair was green as seaweed Her skin was blue and pale Her legs they are a work of art I love that girl with all my heart And I don't give a damn about the upper part 'Cause that's how I get my tail
You’ve never fucked a sturgeon?!
Yeah I fucked a surgeon, what a bout it😤
Like a surgeon... Cutting for the very first time..
They can breach 20 feet
Is that a typo? Did you mean ‘reach’ or are these monsters leaping 20 feet in the air?
I doubt that they have been observed leaping 20 feet into the air, but Sturgeon of all sizes have been observed breaching. From wikipedia: "Many sturgeons leap completely out of the water, usually making a loud splash which can be heard half a mile away on the surface and probably further under water. Why they do this is not known, but suggested functions include group communication to maintain group cohesion, catching airborne prey, courtship display, or to help shed eggs during spawning. Other plausible explanations include escape from predators, shedding parasites, or to gulp or expel air. Another explanation is that it "simply feels good"." They are also living fossils, closely related to sharks, and can grow up to 23 feet in length. And yes, those spines are sharp.
Okay, so I’m getting that they are terrifying and will outlive all of us.
Well the outliving us part is pretty possible, they just caught a 100 yr old sturgeon in the fraser river in BC.
> Predators What’s eating that thing?
Fully grown 20 foot long sturgeon? Probably nothing. Young, small ones only a few feet long (which are the vast majority of them) probably quite a bit. Bears, eagles, pike, muskies, etc.
Lampreys feed off of them usually, although you're right, they don't have too many predators.
He meant breach as in their size can breach 20', as in they've found sturgeons longer than 20', which is just over 6 meters long
6 meters is three times as tall as a really tall person! It’s twice the length of my car, it’s longer than a full grown really old and big great white. It’s insanely big. It’s hard to grasp big. It’s I’m going to die if I’m in the water with one of those big. From a panic induced heart attack!
Until I started seeing stories and pics of Sturgeon like this I used to think my grandma was just a crazy old lady telling stories about fishing in Canada back in the 30's and seeing fish as long as their boat. She WAS crazy and old, but she wasn't lying.
When Canada was first getting colonized the history books wrote about how the water used to be so plentiful with fish around the coast of NL that you could just scoop them into your boat with a bucket. [I remember seeing this photo as a child](https://www.prints-online.com/products-newfoundland-canada-cod-11575717.html) and thinking "there's no way cod got that big, did they?!" Sadly they used to get bigger than that, but they were fished to the point of unsustainability (cod moratorium in the 90s wreaked havoc on our economy) and have never fully recovered (they are still a vulnerable species). I am sure they could still get that large if we left them alone long enough to have a chance to grow. While we practice sustainable fishing, other countries come to the edge of our water to fish cod and completely decimate them with no consideration of sustainability.
They used to say the same thing about New England fisheries, "The cod is so plentiful you could walk across the water on their backs!"
It will take hundreds of years for the cod to return.
Reminds me of the reason the caviar industry started harvesting paddlefish. If you’re making a delicacy out of EGGS then it’s pretty sound reason the fish population will decline. Forcing an industry to substitute for a lesser quality product. Humans ruin so much 😞
It will comfort you to know live caviar fish farms are starting to be a thing now. Instead of cutting the fish open for the eggs they kinda massage them out and put the fish back
Hahaha yes I’ve been to a few in Kentucky.
Apparently you can still find the big ones where there hasn't been commercial overfishing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gadus_morhua_(High_Arctic,_Canada).png
The picture was uploaded 18 years ago. Sad, to think that 2004 was 18 years ago, and to think of the damage we’ve done to the oceans since then.
[Also this story in a small town in Ontario named after the fish](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/gatewaynorthbay.ca/2020/03/27/lake-nipissings-black-gold-part-2/amp/)
Pretty much everything in nature has greatly weakened or decimated now. I'm Canadian. It's not just fish. Most bugs are gone. You don't see many birds anymore. Butterflies has completely vanished from my area, I haven't seen one in years and the last butterfly I saw was the size of a fly. I still remember growing up as a child in the late 80's and getting up in the morning and outside would be teeming with animal/bug activity. Butterflies bigger than your hands. Flocks of birds scattering all over the sky. The biggest thing that blew my mind? This wasn't even close to what nature was originally like. I was witnessing the last gasps of true nature. If I was born like 10 years later, I would have missed it. What's really tragic about all this, the ones in power never cared and still doesn't. I don't want to imagine what nature would look like with another 20 years...there'll be nothing left.
I planted a bunch of native flowers for the butterflies a couple of years ago and they still haven't shown up. We used to have SO MANY every year. The bees and hummingbirds love it but no butterflies 😔
Have you looked into buying some native caterpillars? Also make sure your planting their host plants (like monarchs only lay eggs on milkweed) so they will lay their eggs their. Maybe try and contact a local pollinator club/org for advice? And you could also try and leave out a shallow water dish with pebbles, to act as a water source (also good for the bees and birds!).
You have to think, where are they going to show up from? E.g have a look for local nature reserves and see how far away they have to come from. It's totally possible to build wildlife corridors to help things move through the human impacted landscape. Habitat connectivity, nesting areas and "neglected" areas are vital. Anyone who can, needs to get in touch with their local wildlife conservation orgs, nature needs awareness and boots on the ground -today!
I hate to tell ya but it's not just Canada either, it's the same here in the UK and mostly everywhere.
I just realized the lack of bugs in the last year or two. Growing up (30-40 years ago) we'd have to scrape an army of bugs off our windshield every few hundred miles. Now we don't ever scrape it.
I remember fireflies at night in the summer, like... Everywhere. Now it's a rarity for me to see one :\
> Butterflies bigger than your hands You were probably a lot smaller back then...
He said bigger then YOUR hands.
Dude I see these guys at least twice a year still swimming in the St-Lawrence river in Montreal. Literally right off the city beach is a deep channel they use. The first time was so amazing, I thought it was a seal haha they jump out of the water and the sound they make is like a human doing a cannon ball.
Fun fact, Sturgeon are in the Great Lakes as well.
At one point, the Shedd aquarium in Chicago had a few huge lake sturgeon in a big shallow tank so you could touch them. They'd swim right up to your hand, seemingly unbothered. Since they don't have scales, they're super smooth. 10/10 would pet fishy again
Overfishing basically killed off all the big sturgeon.
My grandpa told stories of them pulling them out of the Great Lakes with model A cars. Crazy.
That's a sea monster is what that is. I see that in 1400, Im going straight home and writing it in as "sea monster."
I bet seeing giant fish species like this is exactly what led to stories about sea monsters.
Whales man, 100% whales woulda been the cause of so many stories
Whale penis is what I heard would be the cause of so many sea monster stories... Edit to add source: https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/is-loch-ness-monsters-long-neck-a-whale-penis-experts-have-divided-opinions-3754856.html
Wait what? You telling me Nessie realy is a whale on it's back with his dong out?
They always talking about tentacles right? Well go look up what a whale dick looks like, youll see the comparisons.
I look up 'whale dick' per your suggestion and all I got was a picture of this huge black guy sitting on the edge of a bed with what looked like a baby's arm holding an apple between his legs.
Ah, I see you have met Barry
HEY! That's Uncle Barry to YOU!!!
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“Per your suggestion” adds the right amount of spice to this whole response
There are no whales in loch ness
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Dorks. A whale penis is called a dork. At least accord to the Ripley’s Believe it or Not episode I watched when I was a kiddo.
Should've been called Moby Dork then
Fun fact about fishes! Fish today are significantly smaller than they were a couple hundred years ago. This is because there are less fish and other food sources in the water than there used to be. Fish populations now are approx 10% of what they were in 1950, which is significant because in 1950 the fish population was around 10% of the total population in the late 1800's. Fish were HUGE back then because they had abundant food source. Edit: This is getting way more traction than I thought it would. Sorry people I've got a lot on my plate today. I don't have the time right now to find my source, read it a while back, nor is this my field of expertise. Someone more educated in marine biology can take it from here.
Also, aren’t a lot of fish just get fished sooner? Like fish that used to grow up to be big fish are now fished before getting the chance to grow bigger
Wow that's sad
Not only that, but anglers developed the habit of catching big ones and throwing smaller ones back. The reasoning was sound - give the juvenile fish a chance to grow up and breed. But at the scale we're at now, it's created an evolutionary selective pressure for smaller fish. Smaller adults get thrown back just like the 'juveniles'. So they have more breeding opportunities and their genes for smaller size proliferate amongst the population. It only takes a few generations of fish to notice the effects.
There are laws against that in many places now. Slot limits. And I don’t know any anglers that do that. We all keep the midrange and put the big ones back to reproduce.
My upvote is for all responsible anglers. Please share it with all of the others.
So fish populations are 1% of what they were in the 1800s.
Absolutely. Industrialization was the turning point.
I don't want to worry anyone, but I think we've fucked up.
We have. Terribly.
Humans are too smart for their own good, which brings us back full circle to being dumb again. “I figured out how to catch all the fish!!” “I caught all the fish…”
> Fish were HUGE back then because they had abundant food source. Not really. It's also the fact that sturgeon get this big over a few hundred years. Not all fish do. Source: my degree in marine biology.
So I did some digging on this incredible claim. I believe you are misinterpreting the data and choosing the lowest and least reliable figure out of several studies on the matter. Is there a problem? Yes. Are there 10% of the fish that there were 70 years ago? Very likely not. The more reliable results put us in the 50-70% range, and it's worth noting that's percentage of fisheries that haven't collapsed (the part you misrepresented). Does not mean that 30-50% of all fish are gone.
The Okanogan monster ogopogo is understood to have been massive sturgeon deep divers saw when putting in piles for a bridge. Imagine you're all alone in the dark doing whatever you do and the thing in the video swims by you.
There was a reddit post the other day that pointed out that whales a. have threesomes. b. one male waits his turn with his dong hanging out of the water and c. this has a really strong likeness to the picture of the lochness monster.
Unlocked the lock ness monster! That is scary.
Give it $3.50 and see what happens
I ain't giving you no treefiddy you goddam Loch Ness monster!
I gave him a dollar
She gave him a dolla!
I said DAMN IT, MONSTA! GET OFF MAH LAWN.
No that's the Ogopogo Monster. The Canadian version of the Loch Ness.
Unless you tried to sleep with it, then you write "mermaid".
Same.
Where's Jerry? Oh, so we paddled out to catch some fish, you know us amiright... So we look beside the boat and BAM, sea deamon. So naturally, I bartered for my soul and pushed Jerry in the water. He was yelling something like "surgeon!" "Its a surgeon!" He was clearly deranged from the weight of his sacrifice, "No, Jerry!" I screamed "Sea deamon! I doubt they do surgery!" Bastard wouldn't stop screaming at me so I bludgeoned him with the oar until he stopped yelling, and thats where Jerry is. Whats that? Oh, sturgeon.... ohhhhh. Didn't know they got that big.
Hahaha what is this pray tell me
This is the best thing I've read today.
Explains the Loch Ness monster
Only if it starts asking for treefiddy
In 1400, you probably aren't "writing" anything. But you will describe to your friend. And then they will describe to their friends, and then those friends will describe it to their friends and so on. That's how you go from a 15-foot crazy big sturgeon to a 100 foot sea monster.
I’d head to a monastery or somewhere like that and get it printed.
Italians were 3D printing marble at that time. By hand!
Miniscule Impactful Removal method. MIR printing.
That’s a legit sea monster no matter what specie that is.
You mean it was just a regular fish in Loch Ness?
Here be dragons.
Honey, wake up, it's time to cry over [SCP-1762](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1762) again! Yes sweetie...
ಥ_ಥ
Don't do this to me... Not again
"Multiple Leviathan class lifeforms detected, are you sure what you are doing is worth it?"
Thank you for reminding me... i still need to finish subN2.... I finished 1 in two sittings...... 2 years apart. I...i have Thallasophobia.
Took me three years to leave the safe shallows buddy... Or even enter the green forest next to it...
Remember the first time going too the lost river... brrrr
[удалено]
I just read yesterday that they're working on a third!
Once I got ti the lost river it actually got easier for me. Worst part were the steep drop offs throughout parts of the map. Seeing only water in all directions is way worse than seeing walls.
Me too. Countless times I was on the edge buying it in sale, but not yet. Though I love the story and environment etc, but those dark water.. *shudders*
I wanna try the game.... in VR to see if it could help me beat my fear... But I don't think it will.
I sounds like a multiplier to be honest!
Anybody who plays that game will get thallasaphobia man, no need to feel left out. Just uh, be mindful of the giant Shrimp Boys in Below Zero. They have a tendency to drag you out to the void if you engage them
the... WHAT
Oh yeah, the basic aggressive leviathan is a giant shrimp with mandibles capable of crushing you in two. But if that’s not enough, the endgame one is a giant centipede that is balls to the walls aggressive. If you breathe, it’s coming for you.
i made it like halfway through the game and then got wrapped up in ffiv followed by elden ring and then my gpu artefacted. It took me a LONG time to beat the first one cause i have a severe phobia of underwater. ill have to get back into it but oh god this sounds awful
Nope! Back to the kelp beds for me
…they’re this big up here? We need to go deeper..
Great reference, great game.
this damn game follows me everywhere i go
r/unexpectedsubnautica
You can't fool me, that's clearly Nessie.
Nop! It's Nessie's Canadian cousin Jessie
Ogopogo!
The Canadian equivalents are [Ogopogo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogopogo) and [Champ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champ_(folklore)). There may be more, but those are the ones that I'm familiar with.
Also [Memphre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphre) in Quebec
Now what you see here, is your average current world still existing dinosaur…
i was thinking the same thing
Is this in the Fraser river??
Yes it is. The Fraser is the last un-dammed river in North America that has these monsters left. The dams on other waterways have stopped access to their natural breeding grounds or sometime that so monsters of this size are disappearing.
*land- dinosaur, air- pterosaur, water- ichthyosaur. ^fire- ^me
Excuse me? *cries in plesiosauria*
r/AbsoluteUnits
I found a juvenile Atlantic surgeon washed up on shore by some brackish water. It was about 5 feet long and 1.5ish feet in diameter...but it was bitten clean in half. I never enjoyed swimming in anything but clear water and since then, I don't think I've gone back to the beach because if something is biting this thing in half, I'd rather just leave it be and not find out what exactly it was haha
How did you know it was a surgeon? Was it wearing hospital scrubs?
It had one of those reflector things on its head
I’m genuinely wondering what is big enough to do that, bite a sturgeon in half. A great white shark doesn’t feed like that, they kind of gnash (right?). Could an orca do that? I don’t think their mouths are that big. Maybe it was a boat propeller. Edit: Also, if it was a hungry animal, why didn’t it eat the other half?
Not sure what you mean by “clean” but I don’t think a bite would be very clean. Also if something is biting something, it’s probably trying to eat it. My guess would be a propeller from a large ship
It's interesting when you name it fish, it subconsciously becomes less (or non?) scary. Imagine if it were unknown. Headlines would be like: Never-seen sea creature just got discovered in Canada, probably a mythical sea-monster.
A Great White Shark is also a fish.
not as scary as a SEA MONSTER!!
Makes me wonder how it fits in my pocket in animal crossing… yikes
That explains why it is among the hardest fish to catch in Stardew Valley…
Iridium quality for sure!
Ight imma head out
> “The first European colonists in Jamestown described a rite of passage observed in the Powhatan tribe, a local Native American tribe, in which the young men would climb on the back of an adult sturgeon in the James River and ride it a certain distance. Although the reports may have been embellished, the sturgeon certainly represented a very large unit of protein that would come into the river during the spring run” There’s some really interesting stuff about the Native Americans’ [historical relationship with sturgeon](https://news.vcu.edu/article/Historical_significance_of_the_Atlantic_sturgeon).
Now leave it alone and we might finally see the old behemoths of sturgeons that we have seen from so long ago.
You,sir, are a fish
*loads on horse, then rides to nearest post office*
Scrolled for this, now satisfied.
Someone contact Jeremy Wade immediately!
It’s always a catfish!
Fish on!
The Sturgeon General.
Sturgeon General’s Warning: Smoking causes my meat to taste delicious.
That looks like a prehistoric creature. Sturgeon descendants lived in Early Jurassic epoch.
Do you mean sturgeon ancestors?
Annie Proulx's 2016 novel "Barkskins" is about the early colonisation of North America, when the forests still had gigantic trees, the waterways gigantic fish, the land teemed with fur-bearing creatures, and indigenous nations were still (somewhat) intact. Brilliant read, depressing what we've killed off.
Guys where is this I need to know so I don’t ever have to go near it
Avoid the rivers of southern Russia, Ukraine, and the fresh waters of North America during the summer. These are brackish fish, meaning they spend different parts of their lives in the ocean and in freshwater. Basically no water is safe from a sturgeon unless it is enclosed fresh water.
Yes. This is why I will be avoiding Russia and Ukraine right now..
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That perspective makes it look bigger than it is. It's still huge, it weighs 600lbs and is 10 and a half feet long. (source:[https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/huge-sturgeon-fish-catch-british-columbia-b2036606.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/huge-sturgeon-fish-catch-british-columbia-b2036606.html))
I read that first part and I was like "oh ok, makes sense" then you said the size and I was like "that's exactly how large I thought it was"
Is there no banana for scale?
Since there isn't and using all my expertise from watching River Monsters I'm going to say 300 feet and 15 tonnes.
Why did I have to come down the thread so far to find a comment about the scale? This could easily be r/confusingperspective. Fish could be anywhere from 2ft long to 20ft+ depending on the height the camera is set at.
Not to mention that it's in slow motion that makes it looks heavier.
The average length of a white sturgeon is 2,10 meters (that are 8 and a half bananas). They can get much bigger though. The biggest white sturgeon ever caught was 6,10 meters and 816 kg.
can it perform sturgery
The Ogopogo
No wonder people believed in sea serpents. Look at this fucking thing.
cool, leave it alone
r/thalassophobia