Champ, the famed "monster" of Lake Champlain, might be for real after all.

Researchers working in the Button Bay area of the lake last month say highly sensitive sonar equipment on their boat captured underwater sounds similar to those emitted by a Beluga whale or dolphin.

"What we got was a biological creature creating biosonar at a level that only a few underwater species can do," said Elizabeth von Muggenthaler, president of Fauna Communications Research, a Hillsborough, N.C., firm that studies how animals communicate.