Florida's Lake Worth "Muck Monster" is still making waves in West Palm Beach, and now a city commissioner is apparently ready to turn muck -into money.
The mysterious creature was spotted in the Lake Worth lagoon recently, and has been quite the craze ever since.
Now, according to the Palm Beach Post, City Commissioner Bill Moss is proposing the city turn the area's new pier into a sea monster tourist spot. Moss wants to install a muck monster-viewing telescope, hoping to attract more people to the city's waterfront.
The mysterious muck monster was first spotted in late August, when LagoonKeepers.org, a group that patrols the city's waterways in search of debris, videotaped the creature. "I hollered out ... and said, 'What is that?' We followed it, started taking video," said Greg Reynolds, a member of the group.
Don Serrano was with Reynolds. "I didn't know what it was….I was like HEY LOOK! And we moved over and saw it. It was different, very different."
"Little wakes and just kind of moving like this…real long ones too, just like that." Reynolds remembers, "We sped up on it to catch up to it and we got up on it, it dove down." "Every time we get 10 feet from it, it would just disappear."
What could it be?
"Who knows? I have no idea, but it was something that's for sure, without a doubt," said Serrano. Thanks to the LagoonKeepers, until it's identified, it has a name: Reynolds calls it, "The elusive muck monster!"
Thomas Reinert a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Marine Biologist studied the video and said: "This appears to be one animal moving in this direction…nothing's 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."
"I cant definitely say what it is." "I can speculate but we need more evidence to determine the identity of the Lake Worth muck monster," said Reinert.
"We 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've ever seen anything out here that didn't know what it was," Reynolds said.
"We see dolphins out there, sharks, we always see a fin."
Whatever it is, it certainly has people talking, and watching.
Reynolds jokes "Maybe Nessie's vacationing in South Florida!"
Video of the Muck Monster is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f2atr5K2zw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r681zSPWqLk