Ness, Lost Lake
of Albion
Artist note –
Lost lake
of Albion is a project
born from my attempts to make the Loch Ness Monster myth make any sort of
sense. How do you have a lake that can support populations of megafauna, in Britain?
Firstly you need a community of animals that can act as food, and for this you
would need a much deeper lake than the frankly tiny Loch Ness, where the
monster is said to reside. With it come various indigenous kinds of fish and
animal. Also, how do you make sense of the many guises that Nessie has taken
over the years in various theories? An eel, a worm, a saurian, a mollusc, an
amphibian? Maybe these are all unique megafauna that inhabit various levels of
the lake?
So to make a suitable lake for all of this, we need to
basically geoengineer a new version of Britain,
which I call Albion. The only way to make a
Baikal-like lake which can support a local endemic fauna is to turn the Irish
sea into a huge crater which drains at one end into a vast marsh, this is the Lake Ness.
Introduction
Albion is one of the most
fabled lands known to man, and despite mankind’s occupation over the ages, it
has resisted mankind at every turn. Only in the light of modern science does
its endemism and complexity truly come to light.
At first thought to be a fairly recent occurrence, this is
partly true, as during the early part of the ice ages, it was connected to the
European continent. However, it appears to have been relatively stable prior to
that, and has a relict fauna that may reflect what was once widespread in other
parts of Northern Europe. As well as extensive
craggy mountains, and lowland woods and meadows, the truly most distinctive
aspect of Ablion is the great lake
of Ness. This lake is
extremely deep, and in this it is similar to Baikal and other similar lakes
found in Russia,
similarly it was once during the ice ages, connected to the sea by a range of
lochs.
Ness, again similarly to
Baikal, hosts an endemic fauna of fishes and animals suited to such an
extensive and rich ecosystem. We see creatures here of small, medium and very
large size, which are mostly endemic, but in some cases may be migratory, or
found in small pockets on the mainland.
To the Southwest, Ness drains into a great riverrine marsh
that soon turns brackish, here we see various waterside animals that can be
just as prominent as the inhabitants of the lake themselves.
Stay tuned for Part 2, Plants, Invertebrates and fish of Lake Ness!
All images, designs and writing on this blog are the property of Timothy Donald Morris, do not use, reproduce, or copy them without my permission.
© Timothy Donald Morris 2021
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