Those 1975 Underwater Photos

Just before 7 o'clock on the evening of Friday 29 August 1975 the telephone at my home in Leeds rang. An American voice inquired: 'Mr Nick Witchell? Transatlantic call for you from the United States.' After a short pause Bob Rines came on the line to announce news that meant the search for the 'Monster' of Loch Ness was finally over. 'Nick,' his voice came clearly and steadily over the thousands of miles, 'we've got it, we've hit the jackpot. We have detailed close-up colour photographs of the head, neck and body of one of the animals.'

Thus spoke Robert Rines to Nicholas Witchell as found in Witchell's "The Loch Ness Story". It is what I would call the summit of Monster Fever or perhaps we could call it "Peak Nessie". It was back in 1975 when rumours began to appear on the TV and newspapers that ground breaking photographs of the Loch Ness Monster were about to be revealed to the world.

Nicholas Witchell had already published the first edition in hardback of his book the year before and this news made it easy for Penguin Books to go to paperback with a new and final chapter entitled "The Solution". Reading that postscript gives one the impression that this was the last cryptozoological book on the creature. The next one would be zoological. Clearly that never happened, so what went wrong?

I was a kid back then whose love of mysteries had naturally latched onto the big mystery that was only a few hours drive from my home in Glasgow. I was too young to remember the controversy and sensation caused by the 1972 Flipper photograph, but by the time Robert Rines and his Academy of Applied Science were hinting at better yet pictures, I had already jumped on the Nessie bandwagon with such lightweight books as Dinsdale's "The Story of the Loch Ness Monster".

By the time December came, the proposed symposium in Edinburgh was called off due to excessive media attention and the photographs were subsequently presented to the world at a meeting in the House of Commons, thanks to MP and LNIB co-founder, David James.

The photos merited such attention that even Dr. George Zug, Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians at the Smithsonian Institution averred: "I believe these data indicate the presence of large animals in Loch Ness, but are insufficient to identify them". It seemed that the Loch Ness Monster was about to enter a new paradigm. It did, but not in the way those monster hunters expected.

By that I mean, the deflation that resulted from the anti-climax led some to rethink their positions and, as the 1980s dawned upon us, they took an opposing side to what their friends and colleagues continued to hold to. Hence the term, "Peak Nessie".

Now you may have read subsequently that said sceptics have done this and that detailed analysis and risked having their arses bitten off by Nessie by diving into the depths of the loch to recover tree stumps to claim the glory on how these photographs ought to be regarded as non-monsters. Well, to mangle a quote from a well known film - "Sceptics? We don't need no steenkin' sceptics!", because even as a naive kid I knew there was something wrong with these photos if one had just a couple of Nessie books to hand.

That "gargoyle head" was the greatest offender. Going back to Witchell's book, this was his reaction to this photo in that darkened room 42 years ago:

I had stood up to move closer to the screen and remained there as Bob moved to the next slide. The picture that came on to the screen was, without doubt, and I make no apology for the continued use of superlatives, the most remarkable animal photograph ever taken. It was the head of the creature, in close-up detail from a range of only eight feet.

For a few seconds the shapes were a tangle; then it suddenly fitted together. The head occupied the left-hand section of the frame and was more or less in profile: the open mouth of the animal showed what appeared to be teeth inside it; a prominent, bony ridge ran down the centre of the face into a thick, hard-looking upper lip ...

When it was first published and interpreted as a head, I struggled to see anything resembling a head at all. It was certainly not the most remarkable animal photograph to me. When Sir Peter Scott produced a painting sympathetic to the idea, I figured it out, but realised it could not be correct. Why? Because I referred to the sightings database that was extant at that time. Tim Dinsdale had done a good analysis of the creature's morphology in his first book, "Loch Ness Monster".

What his (and other books) described as a head bore little or no resemblance to the gnarled, knobbly object that was called a "head" by Robert Rines. The challenge to the researcher was whether to go with one alleged picture of the creature or go with the sum total of knowledge gathered to that point in time. The choice was obvious to me - go with the flow and deduce that this object was not the head of the Loch Ness Monster.

In that light, it was a bit sad to read Nicholas Witchell's account of how he was led into a darkened room to gain an exclusive viewing of these photographs. No doubt, the atmosphere was electric as the "head" appeared and Witchell perceived horns on the object. To this he mused that Greta Finlay was right, ignoring the other problems with the picture.

Now Greta Finlay was right, but not because of this picture and Witchell's error here led one sceptic (who is rarely seen without his bunnet) to take the initiative by promoting his improbable ear-less deer theory. In fact, note that the Scott painting portrays three horns, a clear departure from the sightings database!

Moving onto the body picture, I must admit I was more impressed by that and held on a little longer to that one. That was despite the newspaper headlines that followed its publication. I remember one headline in particular that described this photo as "bagpipes in a snowstorm"! It was sarcastic, but apt given what we had.

However, the database began to exert its inevitable pressure as the inconsistencies began plain to see. For example, the young version of me noted the proposed neck was way too long for what is usually described by eyewitnesses. However, if the top portion of the "neck" was ignored (since there is a gap between it and the rest), it was more acceptable.

But the biggest problem was the fact that the object is virtually white. A cursory glance at the database tells you there are no albino monsters. They are uniformly described as grey and would have been pretty difficult to spot in the peat stained waters at the distance that was being suggested - even with flashlights. It all looked a busted flush to me - even as a schoolboy. Since that time, I have looked again at these pictures and tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the totality of eyewitnesses always shouted back a collective "No!".

But herein lies the problem, attempting underwater photography in 40 feet of water was always going to be an arduous task. Ignoring the real problems with just getting the setup to stay stable in that environment, the peat suspension is a killer for clear, unambiguous pictures. Take a look at the picture below which shows of the Rines expedition divers at that time. Opacity is clearly an issue even at that close distance.

So Peak Nessie arrived and we entered the downslope in the 1980s. The Academy of Applied Science had arrived with fanfare the following year having negotiated a deal with the New York Times to give them exclusive access to any new pictures. They took no new exciting pictures and indeed the whole thing faded into such obscurity that it is not clear when they finally called a halt to the whole thing.

Nicholas Witchell is more sanguine about his comments now. In fact, I think he doubts there is anything mysterious in Loch Ness. One wonders if investing so much reputational capital into those pictures delivered a blow from which he, and others, never recovered from?

Doubtless, forty years on, technology has improved to the point where a better setup may produce better optical results, but the way forward now seems to be with sonar imaging and the great leaps that have been made to the point where they are beginning to achieve near-optical quality.

However, the problem there is getting one of these creatures to come up close. Sonar attenuates as distance increases and so, as with any proof finding endeavour, proximity is everything. This was demonstrated with the recent find of the Nessie prop which sank in 1969. Repeated sonar scans of the loch failed to find this Nessie-sized object until a remotely controlled sonar submersible got close enough to resolve it sufficiently to identify it. Normal surface scans had rendered it as no more than an interesting protuberance on the loch bed.

Clearly, the loch is still big enough to hide a few secrets. Unfortunately, investment in finding unusual phenomena at Loch Ness is in inverse proportion to the degree of scepticism. In other words, the more the "experts" talk down a monster, the less likely it will be proven. Then again, perhaps that is the way they like it.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com