My digging around crypto zoology has given us guidelines for our efforts. The most important guideline is that it is paramount to study the nature of the likely ecological niche in which your rarely observed cryptoid resides. The image itself may be very fuzzy but the actual niche rarely is.

For instance, when I first heard of the Burrunjor, I understood immediately that a major niche of a specific sort needed to exist. A few moments of using google maps gave me a literal bulls eye on the map itself and all the reports neatly fell into place. That led me to reinvestigate the reports scattered about the globe of swamp dwelling dawn age mega reptiles and to narrow their niche down to aquatic nocturnal reptiles that either feed on pond lilies or crocodiles. Just enough reports have emerged to allow one to look in earnest.

I am satisfied that there exists an extant population of aquatic dawn age reptiles living in the same environment occupied by crocodiles, but obviously a small remnant. Several species have been recognized, so it may be possible to sample a fairly complete family before we are finished.

For the casual reader it is sufficient to understand that the particular niche is inimical to human penetration without encountering these beasts let alone to go looking for them at two in the morning in a canoe. That we do not have samples or superior reports is completely understandable.

Parts of this unusual family of reptiles are those that are adapted to cold water. The plesiosaur is included obviously, but also the giant sea serpent and possibly several other members not yet known.

The existence of the giant squid in deep water proves that it is possible for a cold blooded creature to live and absorb sufficient oxygen in the cold water deeps of the ocean. Remember that the surface layer of the ocean is not overly thick at perhaps a hundred meters or so. Yet the moment you pass out of that you enter the cold waters of the deeps themselves that vary little pole to pole.

In fact it is obvious that these creatures specifically reside in the deeps and do not lightly penetrate the surface zone. One has to assume that they experience discomfort when the water warms up. As likely it requires a period of adjustment to come to the surface and this is not done unless it is to lay eggs possibly in a freshwater swamp. That would explain the rare sightings of such likely animals in coastal waters and a number of fresh water lakes including Loch Ness and lakes in the Pacific North West.

We have all been dismissive of these tales. Yet the above describes a creditable life way that almost never intersects humanities course. They are cold blooded reptiles adapted to draw oxygen from the water with possibly external gill like structures and perhaps a lung for rare surface activity. They do not need a huge amount of food since their metabolism is slow.

It is also reasonable that they return to fresh waters to lay a clutch of eggs as do other marine reptiles. Perhaps this is done in sand bars with ample running water as is common with fish.

Much as I would like to have a target locale for plesiosaurs, the extant sighting reports speak to a large marine serpent. Possibly this even evolved from the plesiosaur. I suspect it may well have a separate evolution from serpents in general.

All of the sightings are associated with large fresh water lakes in rather northern locales. This may be a byproduct of the actual needs of a clutch. The eggs themselves will be large and the resultant newborn will be large, easily able to compete with and soon eat most lake fish. Yet a clutch will need an ample food supply to initially fatten up before they migrate downstream to the ocean. This most likely takes place during winter and the migration possibly takes place with the spring floods. Remember, they want and need cold waters. Large deep lakes as most commonly noted for sightings also have a bottom cold water zone.

Obviously the trick to observing these creatures will be to place a sensor array across the outlets of these lakes that has the capacity to develop high resolution and operate a continuous monitor for at least a year or two. Expensive but we actually should be doing just that. I think that we either have effective capacity or can easily create it. This would work wonders for the fish count both coming and going and we definitely need to do that.

I have included these eye witness accounts for the record. Once again these are often high quality sightings made by rather competent observers. The numbers quoted are in excess of a thousand pretty well establishing the veracity of a real phenomenon.