Loch Ness Monster

I Digress

19 May

Today we digress to talk about some strange sightings seen of a mysterious monster on a mysterious Scottish lake.

Ancient sightings

We all know the story of the Loch Ness Monster. Sometimes known as Nessie, this large marine creature is believed by some to live in Loch Ness, popping her head up every now and then.

The only issue with this story is that much of the evidence which supports the existence of the monster has been largely discredited. Leading the good scientist to believe Nessie to be nothing more than a myth.

Although there are reports of a monster in Loch Ness dating back to ancient times. Even Pict stone carvings around Loch Ness depict a beast with flippers. Could this be a poorly drawn whale, dolphin, or seal, or the Loch Ness Monster herself?

The first written account can be seen in the biography of St Columba. That work says that back in 565 AD, the monster bit someone just swimming along, and was about to attack another man. But thank god Columba was there, as a man of God I guess he was in the unique position to intervene, ordering the beast to ‘go back’. Surprisingly the monster disappeared back into the waters with only the occasional sighting since.

Modern sightings

More recently there have been a few controversial sightings that have caused quite the stir.

The modern sightings, I would say, start in 1933, when during April a young couple were driving along Loch Ness on their way to Inverness. This road was newly finished meaning that the couple’s view of the lake was unobstructed. Now this is important because as they were driving, Aldie Mackay, a manageress at the local hotel, glanced out across Loch Ness and saw something moving in the water.

Many years later, Mackay described what she remembered seeing to the founder of The Loch Ness Project and marine biologist Adrian Shine. Here’s what she said:

…she said it was black, wet, with water rolling off it. It went in a circle, round and down. She yelled at her husband [who was driving] ‘Stop! The beast!’

Sounds like quite the event, and one you wouldn’t forget anytime soon.

Reported in the Inverness Courier on 2 May 1933, the incident roused a fair bit of local interest resulting in several more sightings being reported.

The article was written by Alec Campbell who wrote about the couple claiming to have seen

…an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface… [with the loch’s water] cascading and churning…

Widely regarded as the ‘first modern sighting’, it was actually the editor of the Courierwho chose the moniker ‘monster’ when referring to the creature living in Loch Ness.

And it’s probably thanks to that word choice that created the media phenomenon. London newspapers were sending correspondents up to Scotland to hopefully get a glimpse of the creature, and a circus even offered a reward of £20 000 for the capture of the beast.

But it was in December 1933, that Marmaduke Wetherell came onto the scene. Commissioned by the Daily Mail, Wetherell, a big game hunter, was sent to Loch Ness in an effort to find proof of the monster.

Now Wetherell works fast, because he’d only been at the Loch a couple of days when he reported finding fresh footprints, huge footprints, that couldn’t be from any other animal than the Loch Ness monster herself. He believed them to belong to:

…a very powerful soft-footed animal about 6 metres long.

Wetherell set about making plaster casts of the prints and sending them off to the Natural History Museum in London for some proper scientific analysis.

Unfortunately, the zoologists at the Museum were able to identify the footprints as being an exact match for a hippopotamus. And since you really don’t see any of those wandering around Scotland, it’s thought that the prints were made by an umbrella stand that used the hippo’s leg as a base.

Now, as you can imagine this revelation was quite embarrassing for Wetherell. This hoax really tainted any serious investigation into the Loch Ness Monster all the way up to today.

Now, no one was sure if Wetherell had created the hoax himself or had stumbled across the footprints that someone else had planted, regardless, a lot of the sightings being reported were put down as mainly results of optical illusions that were caused by boat wakes, floating logs, and other swimming animals such as otters, ducks, and even deer.

But then in 1934 the ‘surgeon’s photograph’ emerged. A highly respected British surgeon, Colonel Robert Wilson, alleged that he had photographed the creature. Finally some proof! He claimed that he had been driving along the northern end of Loch Ness in April 1934 when he took the picture.

The image showed the monster’s head atop a long neck, not that dissimilar to a popular aquatic dinosaur. And coming from a notable surgeon, that definitely led credibility to the photograph. I mean, everyone knows that doctors don’t lie, or at the very least few believed that such a highly regarded doctor would be a part of such a deception.

Naturally the Daily Mail got involved by printing the photograph and basically the whole world sent crazy for the Loch Ness Monster. It was true. It had to be. Finally proper proof. There was definitely a creature living in the dark waters of Loch Ness.

But as we well know by now all good things must come to an end, and so too did the credibility of the ‘surgeon’s photograph’. It wasn’t until a good 60 years later, so we’re looking at 1994, that the hoax was revealed.

Marmaduke Wetherell hatched the plan in order to get revenge on the Daily Mail after the way they had treated him following the hippo foot affair. The ‘monster’ turned out to be a head fashioned from plastic and wood attached to a toy submarine. Wetherell crafted the perfect plan, by persuading a common friend, Dr Wilson, to have the photo developed. He made the whole thing seem incredibly credible.

Searching for Nessie

Coming to the 21st century, many have not given up hope of finding the Loch Ness Monster. The Scottish government has even put a plan in place should the elusive creature ever be found.

Here’s Nick Halfhide of Scottish National Heritage telling us about this very interesting code of practice that was drawn up back in 2001:

…there was a lot of activity on the loch at the time about Nessie. So, partly serious and partly for a bit of fun, we drew up a contingency plan about how we would help Nessie if and when she was found.

Nick Halfhide sounds like a Nessie believer to me.

While the whole exercise may have been more fun than serious, Nick goes on to tell us that the code of practice has actually been incredibly useful for protecting other, newly found species.

Some of the lessons we learned then have been relevant when we have reintroduced species like sea eagles, and were used when, a couple of years ago, four new species were found in the sea off the west coast.

A pretty exciting moment in the story of the Loch Ness monster was when, back in 1975 within a Nature article, it was announced that the Loch Ness Monster was to be given a scientific name.

…recent British legislation makes provision for protection to be given to endangered species. To be granted protection, however, an animal should first be given a proper scientific name…The name suggested is Nessiteras rhombopteryx.

Now I don’t know what could make Nessie more real.

So what are the modern efforts that have taken place in the attempt to find the ever elusive Loch Ness Monster. Well, as it turns out, quite a few.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, several British universities launched sonar expeditions throughout the lake in an effort to find any evidence of a creature. Unsurprisingly, nothing conclusive was found, although each expedition did detect something large moving under the water. And then in 1975, an enhanced underwater photograph reportedly showed a shape that vaguely resembled a flipper akin to those common to aquatic animals.

Then in 1987, the largest expedition so far was launched, funded by £1 million, Operation Deepscan was put into action. Over a week, 23 boats, each equipped with sonar, slowly moved up and down the 37 km of Loch Ness poking deep into the 230 metres of water in the hope of finding something. While nothing conclusive was found, they did see three underwater targets on the sonar that they couldn’t quite explain. Could there be three Nessie’s? Or just one Nessie that moves around a lot?

Throughout the early 1990s, Nicholas Witchell, as part of the BBC, helped to put together Project Urquhart. Which would extensively study the loch’s biology and geology. Now while these guys weren’t specifically looking for monsters, they did report detecting a large, moving underwater target while going about their work. They say they were even able to follow it for a handful of minutes before they lost it. Could this be the proof that we’ve been looking for all along?

In 2003, the BBC sponsored another search for the Loch Ness Monster. Using 600 sonar beams and even with the help of satellites, they scanned the loch. With this advanced technology they were able to pick up quite a number of smaller objects at a surprisingly high resolution, just nothing big enough to be of any consequence.

Even though through these long decades no proof has been found of the existence of Nessie, sightings are still ever present. And while many of those sightings have been explained away, there are some that are convinced of what they’ve seen. Here’s an account from Alaistair Boyd, a student of the Loch Ness legend:

I am so convinced of the reality of these creatures that I would actually stake my life on their existence…I know that the thing I saw was not a log or an otter or a wave, or anything like that. It was a large animal. It came heaving out of the water, something like a whale, I mean, the part that was actually on the surface when it stopped rolling through was at least 20 feet long. It was totally extraordinary. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and if I could afford to spend the rest of my life looking for another glimpse of it, I would.

Since sonar wasn’t really getting anyone anywhere, in 2018 and 2019, a group of researchers from New Zealand decided upon a different approach. They would conduct a DNA survey of Loch Ness, which would allow them to determine what kind of organisms call the loch home. Unfortunately the DNA results weren’t exactly what Nessie hunters were wanting to hear. No signs of any large animals were found, although the presence of a number of eels were indicated. So possibly what people were seeing wasn’t Nessie after all, but an oversized eel?

Stranger things have happened.

Here’s Professor Neil Gemmell, a geneticist out of New Zealand’s University of Otago to talk us through the results:

People love a mystery, we’ve used science to add another chapter to Loch Ness’ mystique. We can’t find any evidence of a creature that’s remotely related to that in our environmental-DNA sequence data. So, sorry, I don’t think the plesiosaur idea holds up based on the data that we have obtained… Eels are very plentiful in Loch Ness, with eel DNA found at pretty much every location sampled – there are a lot of them… Therefore we can’t discount the possibility that what people see and believe is the Loch Ness Monster might be a giant eel.

Science really does take the fun out of every mystery, doesn’t it?!

Perhaps science is the real mystery.

I suppose what’s heartening is that these results didn’t damper the Loch Ness Monster spirit. Most recently in August 2023, a whole heap of mystery hunters converged on Loch Ness in order to look for signs of the creature.

The Loch Ness Centre said that they would use thermal-imaging drones, infrared cameras and even a hydrophone used to detect underwater sounds in a bid to discover any evidence that Nessie was alive and swimming around.

The two-day event was billed as the largest survey of Loch Ness in over 50 years and it included volunteers not just from their boats in the lake and those standing onshore but people from all around the world joined in on webcams.

With all this new technology, surely the discovery of Nessie is just around the corner.

Loch Ness Centre

Unsurprisingly, the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster is a massive draw card for the local economy. Tens of thousands head over to Loch Ness every year just for their chance of a glimpse of the elusive creature. And it certainly is popular with it being estimated that the area brings in £30 million a year.

But a pretty cool place to visit should you also find yourself in the area is the Loch Ness Centre, they’ve got all sorts of cool stuff. You can find out the early history of the legend and even see how the ‘Surgeon’s Photograph’ was debunked for yourself. You can learn all about the ongoing efforts to identify Nessie and prove her existence.

So make sure to not only drop by the centre but to keep your eyes peeled while driving around the Loch. You never know what you might see out of the corner of your eye.

Unless you’re driving of course, then always keep your eyes on the road!

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