Creature record / 1994

The Lake Dakataua Migo: the 1994 Japanese TV footage

January 1994 · Lake Dakataua, Willaumez Peninsula, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea

20Thinly documented Cryptid Creature 15 sources 4 videos

January 1994. A Japanese television crew stood beside Lake Dakataua, a flooded volcanic caldera on New Britain, Papua New Guinea. They had come for the Migo. Through a lens zoomed to its limit, about 1,200 yards out, something long and dark moved across the water. A head. A neck. A hump. A spiny tail. Then it sank. The footage aired on TBS in February 1994. Roy P. Mackal, the expedition's scientific adviser, put the animal at up to 50 ft, and it was hailed as a prehistoric survivor. Others studied the same blurred frames and saw something far more familiar. The argument over what swam in Lake Dakataua had begun.

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Key facts

When	January 1994
Time of day	not recorded
Where	Lake Dakataua, Willaumez Peninsula, West New Britain Province,Papua New Guinea
Duration	about 5 minutes (longest filmed sequence)
Witnesses	2
Witness roles	scientist
Found
Evidence	none confirmed
Investigations	none recorded
Status	disputed

The creature

A long, dark animal swimming right to left at the surface: an indistinct head held above water, a smaller 'neck' and a large flattened hump, with a serrated tail. Earlier, 1971 witnesses described a 30 ft beast covered in short black hair, with crocodile-like jaws, a long neck and turtle-like flippers. Mackal estimated 33, then 50 ft.

Size	about 4 m (Naish about 4 m; Mackal claimed about 50 ft)
Distance	about 1.1 km from the witnesses
Colour	black
Surface	dark
Duration	5 minutes

Herman and Kia Regusters' Mokele-mbembe sighting at Lake Tele (related)

Context

Lake Dakataua fills a volcanic caldera at the tip of the Willaumez Peninsula, on New Britain in Papua New Guinea. It covers 48 km² and reaches about 120 m deep. Local people had names for what lived there. Migo. Masali. Rui.

Sources (15, most influential first)

The Lake Dakataua Migo: lake monster footage of 1994 · Tetrapod Zoology (Darren Naish)· 2021-02-16 · Wiki, blog, podcast · blog
Whatever happened to the migo? Revisiting... (Part 1) · ShukerNature (Karl Shuker)· 2020-12-18 · Wiki, blog, podcast · blog
Filming Migo the monster · ScienceBlogs, Tetrapod Zoology (Darren Naish)· 2008-10-27 · Wiki, blog, podcast · blog
Whatever happened to the migo? Revisiting... (Part 2) · ShukerNature (Karl Shuker) · Wiki, blog, podcast · blog
An interview with Prof. Roy P. Mackal on the migo · ShukerNature (Karl Shuker)· 2014-11 · Wiki, blog, podcast · blog

Reputability

20/100Thinly documented

Editorial note: most sources for this case are later retellings; the press and book coverage is thin.

Keywords

People

Roy P. MackalCryptozoologist, University of Chicago; scientific adviser on both 1994 expeditions
Tatsuo NadakaActor and on-screen 'expedition leader' for the TBS programme THE Presenter
Darren NaishPalaeontologist who identified the animal on the footage as a saltwater crocodile
Karl ShukerCryptozoologist who obtained a copy of the tape and published accounts in 1995 and 2020
Shohei ShiraiHead of the Pacific Ocean Resources Research Institute; collected reports from 15 local people and compared the Migo to a mosasaur
Jon DownesCentre for Fortean Zoology; received a first-generation VHS copy of the footage
Tokuharu TakabayashiJapanese correspondent who supplied the VHS tape
Atsuo TanakaJapanese explorer and writer who stayed at Blumuri village in September 1983

Names

Bernard Heuvelmans Karl Shuker Darren Naish Fortean Times Centre for Fortean Zoology Naish Shuker Roy P. Mackal Mackal Jon Downes