Phantoms and Monsters

Tokyo's Tropical Fish Dilemma in 'Tamazon River'
Infamous Plum Island 'For Sale'
Colorado Officials Skeptical of Cattle Mutilation Theories
Spiral Anomaly Reported Over British Columbia - UPDATE!

Tokyo's Tropical Fish Dilemma in 'Tamazon River'

Posted: 24 May 2010 11:02 AM PDT

mainichi - Foreign species of fish including angelfish and piranhas are being found in large numbers in the Tama River between Tokyo and Kanagawa prefectures, resulting in some dubbing it the "Tamazon River" after South America's Amazon.

People are apparently releasing fish that have become too difficult to look after into the river, and the fish are surviving winter near water treatment areas, where the water temperature is higher.

To combat the problem of foreign species of fish being dumped in the river, local residents have set up a drop-off area for unwanted fish. Mitsuaki Yamasaki, 51, the head of a local river fish association, established the "fish postbox" in part of the association's fish preserve in Inada Park, Kawasaki, in 2005.

The "postbox" measures 7 meters by 4 meters. Reaching his hand into a container, Yamasaki pulls out a long-nosed fish measuring about 1 meter, which thrashes against the surface of the water. It is a longnose garpike. One longnose garpike was caught in a net in February, and another one was left by a visitor. The fish's sharp teeth can easily bite through a nylon net.

"The Tama River is like a department store for foreign species of fish. People sometimes called it the 'Tamazon,' after the Amazon River," Yamasaki says.

During Japan's period of rapid growth, home wastewater was discharged directly into the Tama River, polluting it. After water treatment facilities were set up, the quality of the water improved, and from about 10 years ago, sweetfish have been observed making their way upstream. At the same time, tropical fish and other foreign species have also been spotted in the river. Most treated water in the river was originally warm water discharged from homes, and it has raised the river's overall temperature.

Yamasaki has caught some 200 species of foreign fish in the Tama River, ranging from typical aquarium fish such as guppies and angelfish to piranhas and arowanas. Some of them have bred, and it is believed they pass the winter near water treatment facilities, where the water is warmer.

The fish postbox at Inada Park receives about 10,000 fish a year. Yamasaki temporarily looks after fish at his home, then has postbox members or schools take care of them.

Still, cases of people releasing fish into the river continue. A pair of garpikes was spotted swimming in the river and sweetfish were found inside them. Diseases that had been rare in Japan are also being detected.

"I'm worried that gars will start breeding in large numbers," Yamasaki says.

In the Machiya district of Tokyo's Arakawa Ward stands Tropiland, one of the biggest shops for aquarium fish in Tokyo with several hundred varieties imported from all over the world. Inside one tank at the shop is a pair of alligator garpikes priced at 1,980 yen. Now the fish are only about 10 centimeters long, but a label warns that they will get bigger: "These fish easily grow larger than one meter, so please allow room for them and keep them in a large tank," the sign says.

A 35-year-old worker says the store tells customers that some fish are difficult to keep, but he adds that customers often don't have a strong sense of responsibility.

"Many people think of the fish as part of their home interior or as accessories. They're like paintings," he says, shrugging.

So what happens when people give up on keeping their fish? People with experience in the business say that some are flushed down the toilet, and others are thrown out with raw garbage, but some owners secretly release them into rivers.

But this is not always the case. Around 7 p.m. on May 8, Yamasaki's mobile phone rings.

"I've got a fish I can't look after any more -- can you take it?" the caller asks. About three hours later, Yamasaki arrives at a station in Kawasaki to meet the caller. The young man, who looks like a student, is carrying a polystyrene box. Inside is a foreign species of catfish measuring about 30 centimeters in length.

"My fish tank is too small for it, and I have to move to a new place," he says, his voice trailing off.

"Don't worry," Yamasaki says in a friendly tone, as tears well up in the owner's eyes.

Yamasaki says that recently, more people are using the fish postbox in Kawasaki after being forced to move homes amid harsh economic conditions that sometimes are accompanied by lay-offs.

"Even though people might be feeling sorry for their pets, releasing them into the river is an example of ignorant good intentions," Yamasaki says. The 51-year-old played in the Tama River as a child, and is happy to see sweetfish swimming upstream again.

The fish drop-off spot is free to use, but tropical fish can die if they are dropped straight in, so Yamasaki advises people to phone in advance.

A boom in tropical fish was seen in Japan in the 1990s, and interest was sparked further by the 2003 hit animation "Finding Nemo." Recently children have started buying tropical fish with money they traditionally receive at New Year's, say workers in the industry.

The Japan Aquarium Fish Association started accepting discarded fish in 2007, but it has not received full cooperation from fish retailers. And since commercial aquarium fish are not designated as "invasive alien species" which can damage the environment, there are no legal restrictions on keeping them or releasing them. The Ministry of the Environment has not conducted surveys on aquarium fish in rivers on the grounds that there have been "hardly any reports of actual harm" caused by the fish.

Takashi Maruyama, an assistant professor at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology who is familiar with the issue, criticizes the release of such fish.

"Keeping fish requires ethical responsibility, but now people who never before had any interest in living things have joined the aquarium fish boom," he says. "Releasing such fish is just a way of evading reality."

Maruyama says a system is needed to improve the situation.

"There is no binding power in the work companies are doing to collect such fish, and the system isn't working. We need to establish a system with cooperation from administrative bodies."

Tokyo's Tropical Fish Dilemma in 'Tamazon River'
_____________________

D.B. COOPER MYSTERIOUS REAL IDENTITY GETTING CLOSER

A report of a fireball in the sky and a veiled threat from a mysterious man in a dark suit could aid a lawyer's dogged quest to prove a former Weber State ROTC instructor was infamous skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

Infamous Plum Island 'For Sale'

Posted: 24 May 2010 10:18 AM PDT

yahoo - It has been the subject of novels, a reference in movies and the topic of speculation ever since it became an animal disease lab in the infancy of the Cold War.

Now, the public is being asked for its input on what should become of the mysterious island a mile and a half off Long Island's north fork. The federal government is moving its research operations to a new lab in Manhattan, Kan., and putting up a "For Sale" sign at Plum Island.

Representatives from several environmental groups spoke out against the planned sale Thursday night at a meeting held by the General Services Administration, which has responsibility for selling the property. The agency held the community meeting in a school gymnasium eight miles from the island, kicking off an environmental review process that is expected to be completed by the fall.

"The island has a remarkable environmental and ecological value," said John Turner, who said he represented a coalition of civic groups calling themselves "Preserve Plum Island."

Randy Parsons of the Nature Conservancy drew applause from the estimated 50 people at the meeting when he suggested, "If we didn't already own it, wouldn't we want to buy it?"

Besides the laboratory, the island is home to a defunct U.S. Army base and a charming little lighthouse that looks out onto Long Island Sound. And, as fictional FBI Agent Clarice Starling told "Silence of the Lambs" villain Hannibal Lecter: "There's a very, very nice beach."

Author Nelson DeMille, whose 1997 book "Plum Island" featured a fictional detective investigating the murders of island biologists, told The Associated Press this week he wants the government to retain ownership.

"The most obvious thing to do would be to make it into a federal park and nature preserve," he said. "You could turn the lab into a visitors center."

Several speakers at the hearing also said they preferred the island be retained as a nature preserve, including a representative of the Audubon Society, who urged a thorough study of the bird population.

DeMille noted a long-repeated fear that the lab could be "a terrorist target waiting to happen."

The U.S. Government Accountability Office told Congress in 2007 that Plum Island's vulnerability was apparent after the 9/11 terror attacks, and that security had been tightened to help protect animal health and reduce the possibility of bioterrorism.

Plum Island scientists research pathogens like foot-and-mouth disease, which is highly contagious to livestock and could cause catastrophic economic losses and imperil the nation's food supply.

"Other pathogens known to have been maintained at Plum Island could also cause illness and death in humans," the GAO said.

Security on the island consists of security patrols, checkpoints, cameras, radar, locks and fences, said Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Ret. Col. David Huxsoll, a veterinarian who served as the lab's director from 2000 to 2003, said anthrax was among the diseases studied at Plum Island. "It was done in containment," he said, adding there were concerns anthrax could be used as a weapon to target the livestock industry.

"If it ever broke out in the cattle industry in this country, it would be disastrous," he said.

Before any discussions about development at Plum Island can proceed, officials must first determine the extent of any damage to the soil and water, environmentalist Adrienne Esposito said.

"Government facilities operate cloaked in secrecy," said Esposito, executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment. The group successfully lobbied in 2008 to kill a proposed Liquefied Natural Gas Terminal in Long Island Sound.

U.S. Rep. Timothy Bishop, whose district includes Plum Island, is not convinced moving is a good idea. He said in a letter to a House homeland security subcommittee this week that the sale of Plum Island could fetch $50 million to $80 million — not counting cleanup costs. Bishop said that would hardly cover the costs of building a new $650 million lab.

"Rather than pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars down a sinkhole in Kansas and open the Pandora's Box of decommissioning Plum Island, we should ... make use of existing facilities that continue to serve this nation well," Bishop said.

Last year, Congress appropriated $32 million for a new 520,000-square-foot National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Kansas, most of it for planning and design. It will allow research on diseases that can be passed from animals to humans, something currently not done at Plum Island.

A safety study of the new site is under way after some questioned the wisdom of opening an animal disease lab in the so-called Beef Belt.

Gary DePersia, a top real estate broker in the Hamptons on Long Island's south fork, said the possibilities for the island are nearly unlimited. "It could make an awesome resort, with condos and room for a golf course," DePersia said.

The Army ran the site as Fort Terry from 1897 until after World War II. The U.S. Army Chemical Corps had jurisdiction from 1951 to 1954, when it was officially deactivated.

In the book, "Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945," Piers Millett wrote in a chapter on anti-animal biological weapons that Fort Terry's mission was "to establish and pursue a program of research and development of certain anti-animal (BW) agents."

John van Courtland Moon, an author and history professor emeritus at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts, said his research has found that animal testing for germ warfare was conducted at Plum Island in the 1950s.

"Exactly what took place? I would imagine sheep, I would imagine goats and rats and rabbits" had been tested, he said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where the U.S. Army Chemical Corps is based, said officials there were looking into the historical record but had no immediate comment.

Esposito said the government's timetable to complete an Environmental Impact Statement by the fall was "somewhat delusional."

"This is a rush job instead of a thoughtful, meaningful process," she said. "That's a shame and we're not going to let it happen."

Infamous Plum Island 'For Sale'

Colorado Officials Skeptical of Cattle Mutilation Theories

Posted: 24 May 2010 09:34 AM PDT

KWGN - Authorities in Colorado's San Luis Valley are trying to solve a series of bizarre, gruesome slaying: cows, mutilated, carved up, left to die in the fields.

Police are stumped. But rancher Mike Duran, who lost two of his cows to mutilation last December, has a theory that is literally out of this world. He says it was aliens.

"It's almost like the animal was taken away, killed, surgically manipulated and brought back," Duran told us.

Some of the wounds on a female cow were "like laser cuts," he said. "There was no blood. No tracks. No witnesses at all."

"Some people say it was a cult. But even if it was a cult, we would find tracks or something like that."

In Duran's mind, that leaves only one other option.

"I believe there are aliens. People may laugh at me for thinking that," Duran said. "(The aliens) do what they have to, and then they bring (the cows) back and they drop them back in the field. And that's why there are no tracks."

Duran is not alone.

"The (female cow's) sexual organs were removed, the eyes were removed, a tongue was removed," said Chuck Zukowski, a self-described UFO investigator and reserve El Paso County Sheriff's deputy, who is trying to solve Duran's case.

"The pattern is that of surgical cuts. There are no bite marks. There are no scratch marks. There's no carnage on the ground...It's as if it was under surgery."

Duran says he found a powerful electromagnetic field coming from one of the cow's carved-out head, only adding to his suspicions that aliens are to blame.

"In my opinion, this is probably one of the best cold cases we have," Duran says.

The Colorado Department of Agriculture, however, doesn't buy the extraterrestrial theory.

"Postmortem changes on an animal happen very fast," said Nick Striegel, a veterinarian with the department. "Predators are coming in...they can lick up that blood. Insects and other parts of the decomposing process can digest body fluids."

If not predators, Striegel says it is also possible that people could be involved.

Below is an edition of 'Rocky Mountain Mysteries'.

Click for video

The following are links to posts on these cattle mutilations:

Mutilated Cow Reported Near Trinidad, Colorado

Two More Mutilated Cows Reported In Southern Colorado

Third Cattle Mutilation Reported in Southern Colorado, MUFON Investigating

Video: Southern Colorado Cattle Mutilation **Graphic**

Recent Cattle Mutilations in San Luis Valley, CO Still a Mystery

Spiral Anomaly Reported Over British Columbia - UPDATE!

Posted: 24 May 2010 05:02 PM PDT

Click for video

theweatherspace - The Norway spiral comes to mind when TheWeatherSpace.com received photographs and even an amazing video of the event. An object swooped down from the sky and then returned in a brilliant display on Friday night across the Western Canada areas.

Three different photographers have given their photos to TheWeatherSpace.com in what looks like something out of a science fiction movie. We cannot see what would cause this one Earth. The Norway spiral was said to be caused by a missile launch in the Russian territory. But what is this?

The only known areas to launch on the Western coast are the Vandenberg Air Force Base and Alaskan areas. Vandenberg confirms no launches and Kodiak Island has to be ruled out due to the direction of travel (from the west).

The photographs show a very similar shape and mysterious object off the coast of Canada. The object is not a missile as one photograph from the beach has the trajectory curving up! What is it?

A video was sent to TheWeatherSpace.com and the web team has added it to the video server on YouTube.com. The video shows the entire sequence of this object as filmed by Steven Murray.

"I have four sky cameras to catch meteors on and number three caught it", Murray said. "I saw it from my office while doing work. The object was on the monitor. By the time I rushed outside the object was gone but the loudest boom I ever heard from a distance struck shortly after."

Click for video

Update: Numerous e-mail has been received with various photos of the same event. On Friday night, something over the coast of Western Canada lit up the sky, lasting for less than a minute.

Reports are coming in from the area with photos and videos. Two videos have surfaced, however these videos look like an attempt to either do away with the story from the original photos or they could be the real deal.

Many have said it is a hoax and it very well could be, some things on the photos vs. the videos do not add up and scream one of those is a fake.

A new video has come in. This short clip has been edited by Nathan Varney of B.C. Canada. Varney says he saw the object and picked up his camera and zoomed in on it to get the recording. He states that the objected swooped down and then exploded. To the unaided eye he said the object vanished in a brilliant array of patterns but on Camera the object was seen going through a "tunnel", pointed on the leading end as if zooming out of the atmosphere away from the planet.

TheWeatherSpace.com owner Kevin Adams is investigating into who are sending the material and if a resolution to this can be found.

NOTE: Well, I contacted two associates (one in Manitoba and another in British Columbia) today to find out what the story is on these sightings. Apparently, there was a lot of activity over several provinces this past weekend. There were several reports of silver orbs over Manitoba as well as Alberta. As to the validity of the 'spiral' UFO and the video, that's still very much up in the air. The video looks like a fake IMO. But, there was a good deal of UFO activity nonetheless...so we'll have to wait and see what develops...Lon

Spiral Anomaly Reported Over British Columbia

UPDATE! Well, as I suspected...this was a hoax. A statement follows:

Betty Morgan Fired From TheWeatherSpace For Hoax Story

Betty Morgan

A hoax designed by a Southern California resident made a circle around the internet for a couple of days. The hoax of a UFO zooming out of the solar system at a high rate of speed. Had the video been real it would have been the best footage caught, however it was not.

Betty Morgan was TheWeatherSpace.com's Space News Editor on the story. She printed the story for what looked like an easy campaign for her column. Kevin Adams, owner of TheWeatherSpace.com, gave her a week notice.

"We simply do not accept stories to be posted on this site without looking over the material with managers", said Adams in a company e-mail.

The hoax, staged by Kevin Martin of Southern California, was only taken seriously by Morgan. When asked for a comment on the story Morgan had nothing to say.

"We are going to get back to real news reporting", Adams closed. "TheWeatherSpace.com was designed for actual facts about the topics on the top bar of the Web site. We will fill Morgan's position with the right candidate over the next week."

Have you had a close encounter or witnessed something unusual?
Send us an email

Become a fan of 'Phantoms and Monsters' at Facebook

Listen to our segment
'Strickly Paranormal: For Those Seeking the Truth!'

New 'SPECIAL OFFER' Category
BUY 2 and get the 3rd FREE!

Anomalist Books - works on maverick science, unexplained mysteries, unorthodox theories, strange talents, and unexpected discoveries. Please check out their excellent and diverse catalog