text: Alaskan 'Ice Monster' Sparks Imaginations Online 
   
   Alaska's Bureau of Land Management regularly posts photos and videos of flying squirrels, scampering porcupines, majestic moose or dramatic landscapes. 
   
   But the video that went up last week was different. It was ominous. It was mysterious. It was ... the Chena River Ice Monster, as captured by a baffled BLM employee. 
   
   The video shows a strange, undulating icy shape appearing to move through the water. The video has a dramatic soundtrack and an overlay of a camcorder, but BLM insisted the footage itself was unedited. 
   
   Previous videos posted to the Alaska BLM Facebook page have gotten a few hundred views apiece. This one quickly racked up half a million. 
   
   After all, the Internet is rife with videos purporting to show strange creatures — and most are easy to dismiss as fakes. But this wasn't a random stranger with a Bigfoot story. This was footage from a government employee, posted on an official site of a land-management agency! 
   
   The British tabloids loved it. People and Fox News picked it up. 
   
   And everyone wanted to know: What was it? 
   
   "We honestly don't know exactly," BLM employees said in the Facebook comments. In the absence of firm intel, the Internet immediately provided an abundance of speculation. 
   
   A giant sturgeon? 
   
   A lost shark, accidentally upstream? (BLM demurred, noting the river is "practically in the middle of Alaska.") 
   
   A Nessie-like sea monster? 
   
   A "beavegator," whatever that would be? 
   
   A "chunk of moose hide" waving in the current? 
   
   A "giant arctic crocodile"? 
   
   A "zombie salmon" — which is an actual real-life thing, and we are not making this up — of an unusual size? 
   
   A beaver towing logs? 
   
   A "monkey disguised as a river monster"? 
   
   A seal trapped in a fishing net? 
   
   A pike, or a sheefish, or a muskie, or an eelpout? 
   
   Well. 
   
   No. 
   
   BLM Alaska posted an update on Halloween, saying the enthusiastic responses online "show how captivating the mysteries of the natural world can be!" 
   
   But the BLM concluded that experts at another federal agency — the Alaska Department of Fish and Game — have "the most compelling explanation." 
   
   Which is ... a rope. 
   
   An ice-covered rope caught on a pier. 
   
   If you'd like to know more about this Alaska-sized letdown, the Alaska Dispatch News has the definitive coverage of the situation. 
   
   One expert summed it up in a few blunt words, telling the newspaper that the video might look cool, but the truth is just "not that exciting." ||||| Can you figure out what Alaska's mysterious "Ice Monster" is? 
   
   An employee for the Alaska Bureau of Land Management was checking ice conditions on the Chena River in Fairbanks last week when he noticed something moving against the current. The odd "creature," which spans 12-15 feet long, features an icy exterior covering what appears to be a submerged form. 
   
   “Our employees did not investigate. It’s kind of far out in the middle of the river,” the Bureau of Land Management - Alaska explained on its Facebook page. “Video was taken right by our BLM Fairbanks District Office facing downstream. We’re not sure what it is. We’re letting you all be the judge.” 
   
   In the spirit of the season, officials added some ominous music to the short clip and invited social media to take a stab at identifying the unusual creature. More than 700 people ventured a guess, with suggestions ranging from a lost shark to an Alaskan sturgeon to a rotting chunk of frozen moose hide. 
   
   "What is the likelihood that this is a whale that seriously lost its way from the Yukon river, transferring across other small river fjords into the Chena?" wrote one commenter. "Massive barnacles with ice on its back...But we would need some reference for the size of the animal first..." 
   
   As you might expect, there were several replies that what's shown in the video isn't a living creature at all, but just some trash caught between alternating currents. 
   
   "So far the most compelling explanation, one shared by experts at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game - Official and others, is that the video shows "frazil ice stuck to a rope that is probably caught on a bridge pier," the group shared. 
   
   Whatever "it" is, the Bureau of Land Management has enjoyed the speculation stirred up by the public. 
   
   "We've been excited about the number and variety of explanations offered for our recent video of the strange river object," they shared. "Your responses show how captivating the mysteries of the natural world can be!" ||||| Ice monster in Alaska? When video appeared online of an ice-covered object that appeared to be swimming in the current of Fairbanks Alaska’s Chena River, viewers came up with theories ranging from sturgeon to shark to river monster. What is it really? 
   
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   Throughout history, random appearances of seemingly odd and unusual sights have led to the creation and propagation of stories of paranormal activities, extraterrestrial visitations, and the existence of fantastic mythological creatures. 
   
   The latest entry in this category: the Alaska ice monster. 
   
   When a 22-second long video clip surfaced last week of a mysterious object floating in the partially frozen Chena River in Alaska, internet commentators were quick with theories ranging from realistic to fanciful. 
   
   The video, which has been viewed more than 600,000 times, was filmed by an Alaska Bureau of Land Management employee in Fairbanks, Alaska, and shows an unidentified object moving about in the current of the Chena River. 
   
   Craig McCaa, the BLM employee responsible for the footage, had been taking photos from the University Avenue bridge in Fairbanks in order to document the seasonal landscape changes as ice forms on the river, according to the Daily Mail. When he saw what appeared to be a 15-foot long object swaying in the current, he began filming. 
   
   “I initially thought, and several people thought, it could be some rope that snagged on the bottom of the river with chunks of ice,” McCaa told the Alaska Dispatch News. “Other people have mentioned everything from sea monster to giant sturgeon.” 
   
   And the theories, continued to get increasingly outlandish from there, with several linking the river object to Scotland’s famous Loch Ness Monster. 
   
   Such behavior however is common surrounding the appearance of mysterious or suspicious sightings. For centuries the possible existence of wild, exotic, and previously undiscovered creatures or species have animated society. 
   
   When a 1933 newspaper article appeared about a local Scottish couple who claimed to have seen an enormous creature on the surface of the deep and famous lake, a sudden fervor took hold with London newspapers sending correspondents to find the creature and a circus even offering a £20,000 reward for the capture of the lake monster. 
   
   "People don't like reality, they like crazy stories,” said Reinhold Messner in a 2015 article for the BBC about the fabled Himalayan Yeti. Mr. Messner, a famous Yeti-hunter who claims to have seen the creature in the mountains in the 1980s, said "[people] like the Yeti as a Neanderthal, the Yeti as a mix between a human and an ape." However, for Messner the explanation is much more simple, though albeit less thrilling. "All the Yeti footprints are all the same bear," says Messner. "The Yeti isn't a fantastic figure. The Yeti is reality." 
   
   Similarly an Alaska Fish and Game Tanana River Management Biologist Klaus Wuttig has a very simple explanation for the object that has become known as the Alaskan river monster; the object is most likely a rope stuck to a bridge pier. According to Mr. Wuttig, cold nighttime temperatures in Fairbanks caused a type of loose, slushy ice known as frazil ice to form on the rope, causing it to float to the surface and seemingly "swim" in the current. "It looks like it's swimming but it's actually stationary and just wading in the current," Wuttig told the Alaska Dispatch News, "it looks like like it's swimming upstream, but it's not organic." 
   
   Of course, such a clear, scientific explanation isn't likely to stop the multiplication of more "creative" stories about the Alaska "ice monster." ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| MYSTERY SOLVED....? 
   
   It's a quiet #Halloween morning in front of the BLM office on the Chena River in Fairbanks. We've been excited about the number and variety of explanations offered for our recent video of the strange river object -- your responses show how captivating the mysteries of the natural world can be! 
   
   So far the most compelling explanation, one shared by experts at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game - Official and others, is that the video shows "frazil ice stuck to a rope that is probably caught on a bridge pier." 
   
   Thanks for your theories, and Happy #Halloween! 
   
   Read the Alaska Dispatch News article at: https://www.adn.com/…/string-sturgeon-or-sea-monster-chena…/ 
   
   Photo of the same spot on the Chena River where the strange river object was sighted, taken this morning. As you can see, we've warmed up a bit and the ice and snow in the river on 10/18/2016 has melted. No sign of the mysterious "ice monster" or frozen rope. Photo by Craig McCaa (BLM) ||||| Update, 11:30 a.m. Thursday: 
   
   For all those speculating over what the object might be, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Tanana River Management Biologist Klaus Wuttig has an answer. 
   
   He thinks it's probably just rope stuck to a bridge pier. He said cold temperatures at night allowed frazil ice — a kind of loose, slushy ice that forms on water — to stick to the rope, which caused it to float to the surface. 
   
   He admitted that the video looks "really cool" but the reality is "not that exciting." 
   
   "It looks like it's swimming but it's actually stationary and just wading in the current," Wuttig said in a phone interview Thursday morning after watching the video. The ice looks segmented because of the current of the river. 
   
   "It looks like like it's swimming upstream," he said. "But it's not organic." 
   
   Wuttig has lived in the Fairbanks area since 1993. He said no giant sturgeons have ever been spotted in the Chena River. 
   
   *** 
   
   Original story: 
   
   At various times of year, Bureau of Land Management Fairbanks District Office Public Affairs Specialist Craig McCaa likes to go down to the Chena River to share photos of changing Fairbanks weather. 
   
   On Oct. 18, he decided to walk his camera down to the University Avenue bridge that crosses the river to snap a few pictures of ice forming on the water's surface. 
   
   But instead of finding just snow and ice, McCaa saw a "strange thing" moving back and forth in the current of the murky river. 
   
   "It never fully revealed itself," he said in a phone interview Tuesday. 
   
   McCaa took a video and posted it to the "Bureau of Land Management – Alaska" Facebook page Tuesday afternoon. By evening it had been watched about 20,900 times. Speculation has run rampant on what the creepy object — or creature — swaying in the water might be. 
   
   "I initially thought, and several people thought, it could be some rope that snagged on the bottom of the river with chunks of ice," McCaa said. "Other people have mentioned everything from sea monster to giant sturgeon." 
   
   McCaa said there were some minor alterations to the video — it's slightly sped up, with a camcorder view screen and some minor sound effects added — but that the movement of whatever is in the water is not enhanced. 
   
   He said he watched the object — which he said was between 12 to 15 feet long — swirl back and forth in the current for several minutes, though it remained stationary. McCaa, who has lived in Fairbanks since 1994, said he has yet to show it to BLM biologists to get their opinion. 
   
   He did think the spotting of the object just before Halloween was "fortuitous."
target: – Sadly, it's beginning to look like the Loch Ness Monster does not have a cousin in Alaska, but a video shot by a Bureau of Land Management worker was fun all the same. In the original Facebook post, the BLM said the video "captured this strange 'thing' swimming in the Chena River in Fairbanks." The "thing" quickly became known as the Alaska Ice Monster, with all kinds of crazy theories from commenters about what it might be. NPR rounds up some of them, including a giant sturgeon, a lost shark, a "beavegator" (no idea), a Nessie-ish creature, and a "giant arctic crocodile." Mother Nature News took note of this one: "What is the likelihood that this is a whale that seriously lost its way from the Yukon river, transferring across other small river fjords into the Chena?" Alas, the BLM then updated with a less exciting explanation. "So far the most compelling explanation ... is that the video shows 'frazil ice stuck to a rope that is probably caught on a bridge pier.'" Frazil ice is "a kind of loose, slushy ice that forms on water," explains Alaska Dispatch News. "It looks like it's swimming upstream but it's actually stationary and just wading in the current," a biologist with the state's Department of Fish and Game says of the formerly mysterious subject of the video, adding, "it's not organic." Not that the fun is necessarily over. "Such a clear, scientific explanation isn't likely to stop the multiplication of more 'creative' stories about the Alaska 'ice monster,'" observes the Christian Science Monitor. (A drone hunting for Nessie had a weird false alarm.)