Yes it is true! White Sperm Whales, like Moby Dick in the book of Herman Melville, are abundant in the fresh waters of southern Lake Michigan. Observing this rare cetacean is an exciting spectacle, unique, made possible only by Lake Michigan Whale Watching.
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There seems to have been a variety of hoaxes over the years claiming orca sightings in Lake Michigan and the whole culture has sort of grown a life of its own. The first hoax came in 1985 when a ship named the Charlotte Ann announced they would be hosting a Great Lakes Whale Watch.
Due to their nature, Lake Michigan is a freshwater lake, so dolphins cannot survive here. The marine mammal, called the harbor seals, are only found in the Great Lakes, particularly in Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior.
Let's dive into the unique sea life that lives in this Great Lake and how it got there. Lake Michigan has a wide variety of native species, including lake trout, lake sturgeon, lake whitefish, panfish, yellow perch, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, and bowfin.
Alligators are rarely found in the Great Lakes. Although some alligators thrive in freshwater, it's just too cold in the north for them to survive. They don't typically live farther north than North Carolina. It's unclear how the alligator arrived to Lake Michigan.
A few even submitted the issue to Snopes.com, debunkers of urban legends, which investigated the issue last summer and pronounced that stories of whales in Lake Michigan are the result of “mistakes, pranks and hoaxes.”
The Lake Sturgeon - Michigan's Biggest Creature You may be a little startled if it decides to swim past your feet, as the Lake Sturgeon is rather big in size. On average, they can be anywhere between six and three feet in length. They will also weigh anywhere between 30-100lbs.
Meteotsunamis are frequently observed in the Great Lakes, averaging 106 events per year. Examples of destructive Great Lakes meteotsunamis include: In 1929, a retreating 20 foot wave pulled ten people to their deaths at in Lake Michigan at Grand Haven, MI.
Do lakes such as our Great Lakes have tides? The answer is yes, our Great Lakes do have tides that occur twice each day, but they are much smaller in scale and barely noticeable unlike the ocean.
There are some odd geological finds at the bottom, including a 2007 archeological find that was described as Stonehenge-like, although it was actually more in a V-shape. One of the stones is said to have a mastodon image on it (although it's not fully clear if it was man-made or just a natural formation).
The United States Environmental Protection Agency, for example, describes them as “vast inland freshwater seas.” A seminal 2017 paper in Limnology and Oceanography, authored by some of the most influential researchers studying the lakes, also refers to them as 'inland seas.