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"'Feejee Mermaid' has become the generic term for the many fake mermaids that can be found around the world..."
This article contains information relating to a hoax. According to Cambridge dictionary a hoax is "a plan to deceive a large group of people; a trick." |
The Great Salt Lake Whales are fabricated cryptids said to live in Great Salt Lake, a landlocked saltwater lake in Utah. While the story was originally published in 1888, the legend has persisted for over a century. The story goes that two whales were released in the lake in 1875, giving birth to several offspring. There are rumours that desendents of these whale still live in the lake today.
The story[]
The 1888 newspaper article, reprinted in the Salt Lake Herald-Republican, described how a British scientist and entrepreneur named James Wickham had introduced two whales to the lake 13 years earlier in 1875 with the goal of establishing a whale oil industry in Utah. The whales were said to have been captured near Australia and were transported inland to Utah by rail in specially designed train cars filled with seawater. The whales were initially kept in a fenced enclosure in the lake, but eventually broke free and disappeared. In the years between their escape and the publishing of the article, the whales had apparently raised several offspring, which could also be seen in the lake.
An article published in 1890 in the Utah Daily Enquirer expanded on the story, reporting that Wickham’s whales were still thriving, had produced offspring and that the adults had grown to 60ft long.
Description[]
Few retellings of the story describe the whales themselves in any detail. The first version of the story says the whales were introduced to the lake to later be harvested for whale oil, implying that they were possibly Sperm Whales or Right Whales. Additionally, the whales were supposedly imported from Australia, and the follow up article published by the Enquirer a couple years later states that the whales had grown to 60ft long.
Whale species found near Australia that grow around 60ft long include the Humpback Whale, Southern Right Whale, Sperm Whale and Bryde’s Whale. Of these species, the Southern Right Whale and Sperm Whale are the only two historically hunted for oil. Some expansions made to the story have mentioned that krill were also introduced to the lake in order to feed the whales, making the Southern Right Whale the most plausible species given these details.
Plausibility[]
There are several major reasons why whales could not live in the Great Salt Lake. The salinity of the lake (10 – 12%) can be 3-10 times that of the ocean (3.3 - 3.7%), which whales are not adapted for. The high salinity would draw water out the whales’ bodies, dehydrating them. The lake famously does not support any fish species.
Baleen whales such as Right Whales need to eat a large amount of krill in order to sustain themselves, around 5,000 pounds per day. Krill would likely not thrive in the lake because of the high salinity. Sperm Whales need to hunt fairly substantial prey (like giant squid) in order to sustain themselves, which is also absent from the lake.
Additionally, the lake is also too small and shallow to sustain a breeding population of whales, and continues to shrink due to droughts caused by climate change.