{"id":2039,"date":"2010-02-10T13:14:43","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T07:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptopia.us\/site\/?p=2039"},"modified":"2015-02-25T16:42:34","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T10:42:34","slug":"muck-monster-florida-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/2010\/02\/muck-monster-florida-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"MUCK MONSTER (FLORIDA, USA)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This mysterious serpentine creature was captured by shocked eyewitnesses on videotape as it slithered just beneath the surface of Florida\u2019s Lake Worth Lagoon. Once this strange footage was unleashed, it created on of the most intense \u201cmonster frenzies\u201d<\/em> in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

In late August of 2009, Greg Reynolds and Dan Serrano — representatives of “Lagoon Keepers,”<\/em> a nonprofit organization that maintains and cleans Palm Beach County’s waterways — were sent to recover what they believed to be a log from the Lake Worth Lagoon, but when they arrived on the site they realized that what was actually in the water was something infinitely more bizarre\u2026 not to mention alive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Reynolds said he and Serrano tried to catch up to it, but that every time they would get within10-feet of the creature it dove, resulting in the nickname “the elusive muck monster.”<\/em> Serrano commented in the strange sighting:<\/p>\n

“I didn’t know what it was\u2026 I was like, hey look! And we moved over and saw it. It was different, very different\u2026 It was an unusual wake. We saw it move along, creating some deep ripples, then it just dipped deeper underwater.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reynolds, who shot the video of what he believes to be a SEA MONSTER<\/a>, uploaded the footage onto his company’s Web site. Within days these unexplained images went viral, and it wasn\u2019t long before the legend of the now notorious \u201cMuck Monster\u201d<\/em> was born. Reynolds described their encounter to a local news station:<\/p>\n

\u201cChannel marker ten is the first time we saw the unknown creature. I hollered out\u2026and said what is that? We followed it, started taking video\u2026 It’s not a shark or manatee. Sharks would have their fins above the water. This is something much different.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>The video soon became a worldwide sensation that was covered by major news groups including NBC <\/a>and FOX<\/a> and the Muck Monster even became enshrined in television history as a the topic for one of David Letterman\u2019s lauded Top 10 Lists. Reynolds described the monster\u2019s shockingly swift ascension into the public eye:<\/p>\n

“The phone keeps ringing. It\u2019s showed up on CNN, coast-to-coast radio, 95.5 Wild morning show, K-rock out of Ft. Myers\u2026 it\u2019s everywhere\u2026 Just do a search on \u2018Muck Monster’ and it comes up in every corner of the world.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, with quick fame comes the promise of even quicker money, and it would seem that it\u2019s a bandwagon that the entire community is jumping on. City commissioner William Moss — reacting to that fact that the video site has received over 4 million hits on their tourism website — has secured enough support to install a telescope near where the monster has been spotted. This, he claims, is just the beginning of a campaign to entice tourists to the area to see what he believes is their primeval town mascot:<\/p>\n

“We’re going to have a naming contest. We’ll also have a feeding station, which will have fish pellets\u2026 I think it’s prehistoric, personally, and a lot of people agree with me.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Reynolds himself is trying to turn this publicity into more funding for his non-profit company by selling T-shirts that read “\u201cI\u2019m not the Muck Monster,\u201d but he insists all proceeds will go to helping the Lagoon Keepers maintain our beautiful waters. Of course, other independent entrepreneurs have also gotten in on the act.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon does not stop with the eyewitnesses or city officials as the local Tiki Bar Sea Grill is now serving a \u201cMuck Monster special,\u201d<\/em> which consists of a lightly saut\u00e9ed “Muck Monster”<\/em> served over rice with a caper lemon butter sauce with a little saut\u00e9ed spinach, For those whose appetites steer towards the aperitif there\u2019s the \u201cMuck Monster\u201d<\/em> cocktail, which, upon request, the bartenders will serve with a complimentary \u201cMuck Monster\u201d<\/em> dance.<\/p>\n

With all of this rigmarole it is little wonder that legitimate crypto investigators\u00a0 are treading the Muck Monster waters very carefully. While this post-encounter marketing bonanza in no way invalidates the initial sighting, it is very difficult to see past such a crassly commercial feeding frenzy to find the science that may lie beneath.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To try and understand what this creature may be one must look at the history of the lagoon. The body of water that is now known as the Lake Worth Lagoon was — In the mid-1800s — a fresh water lake, which derived all of its run by ground seepage from the Everglades (one of the reputed homes of the SKUNK APE.)<\/p>\n

In 1866, a settler named Lang allegedly dug a channel between the lake and the ocean, and by 1877 the lake had been transformed into a saltwater lagoon. Is it possible that a SEA SERPENT or other anomalous marine animal made it\u2019s way in through one of the lagoons channels to find itself at home in it\u2019s brackish, fish filled waters?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Marine Biologist, Thomas Reinert, scrutinized the video and claimed that he was baffled by the mystery:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis appears to be one animal moving in this direction\u2026nothing\u2019s breaking the surface. Typically dolphins break the surface, sea turtles, manatee, a large school of fish, if it were a shark at that level you would see a fin\u2026 I can\u2019t definitely say what it is. I can speculate but we need more evidence to determine the identity of the Lake Worth muck monster.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>The only one who seems willing to speculate as to the genesis of this monster’s sudden appearance is Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel, who — before naming the Muck Monster an official citizen of Palm Beach — told the local press:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has actually become a pretty serious business. We\u2019ll be visited by CNN, who will be looking for the Muck Monster. In all seriousness, what I think has happened is that, because of all of the work on the water front, the rebuilding of the sea wall and all the construction going down there, it has stirred up this creature.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the end, Reynolds feels that\u00a0 people should still treat this potentially dangerous aquatic oddity with caution, and cites that the ocean still has many secrets locked in her depths:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spend a lot of time out here on the water and seen a lot of different creatures out here and this is the first time in three and half years that I\u2019ve ever seen anything out here that didn\u2019t know what it was\u2026 This water is teeming with life. Who knows what’s in there?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who indeed.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Copyright Rob Morphy 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This mysterious serpentine creature was captured by shocked eyewitnesses on videotape as it slithered just beneath the surface of Florida\u2019s Lake Worth Lagoon. Once this strange footage was unleashed, it created on of the most intense \u201cmonster frenzies\u201d in United States history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2504,"featured_media":12277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[80,804,82,83,978,433,95,79,81,977],"class_list":{"0":"post-2039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-aquatic-enigmas","8":"category-monsters","9":"tag-eel","10":"tag-florida-monsters","11":"tag-lagoon","12":"tag-lake-monster","13":"tag-lake-worth-lagoon-monster","14":"tag-muck-monster","15":"tag-sea-monster","16":"tag-sea-serpent","17":"tag-slither","18":"tag-the-elusive-muck-monster"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/muckmonster1.jpg?fit=400%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2504"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2039"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11530,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions\/11530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptopia.us\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}