Edinburgh Talk on Loch Ness Monster

Charles Paxton will be giving a talk entitled "The Vital Statistics of the Loch Ness Monster" on the 17th August at 8:30pm as part of "Skeptics on the Fringe 2012". However, I suspect the talk will not be as sceptical as we may think. Anyway, if you can make it, head along to support Charles in his latest analysis of Nessie sightings. I hope to be there myself.

Further details can be found here.

A Nessie Article from 1934

Paul Cropper (hunter of the Australian version of the Bigfoot called the Yowie) sent me a scan of this article from the Salt Lake Tribune of January 14th 1934. Though the image suggests a bit of tongue in cheek it is worth a read and shows how much interest the new subject of the Loch Ness Monster was generating even afar as the state of Utah in the USA. The catalyst for this article was probably the Hugh Gray photograph which had appeared a few weeks before.

Note the early emphasis on the view that the creature was a sea serpent that somehow found its way into the loch. That notion eventually gave way to the dominant theory that the creature had somehow got into the loch much earlier, perhaps thousands of years earlier. I have no opinion myself on when Nessie first took up residence in Loch Ness but certainly prior to Saint Columba which was over 14 centuries ago.

The document can be viewed here. I must admit I like their rendition of Nessie attacking some bekilted Scots amidst a loch full of empty(?) whisky bottles!

The George Edwards Nessie Photograph

(Once you have read this - you can read an important follow up article here - Ed.)

Having spent a week camping in the Kingdom of Fife, I come home to a new alleged photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. It would therefore be remiss of me not to comment on this latest image, not just to add it to the blog's history of Loch Ness and its unfathomable inhabitant but also attempt to wade through what is being said about it.

This is the account from the Daily Mail.

He has dedicated more than two decades of his life to the hunt for the elusive Loch Ness monster, spending 60 hours a week on the water. And now George Edwards believes he has finally fulfilled his ambition of spotting 'Nessie'; he even photographic evidence to prove it. Mr Edwards, who has spent 26 years on his quest, managed to capture this image of a dark hump slinking in and out of the lake's waters from the deck of his boat, Nessie Hunter, before it vanished back into the deep. He claims the picture is the best-ever taken of the Loch Ness Monster and proves once and for all that the elusive leviathan exists - and is definitely not a sturgeon.

He says he has even had it independently verified by a team of US military monster experts as well as a Nessie sighting specialist. Mr Edwards spends his life on the loch - around 60 hours a week - taking tourists out on his boat Nessie Hunter IV, and has led numerous Nessie hunts over the years. 

'I was just about to return to Temple Pier (in Drumnadrochit) and I went to the back of the boat which was facing the pier and that’s when I saw it,' said 60-year-old Mr Edwards, a lifelong believer in the monster.

'It was slowly moving up the loch towards Urquhart Castle and it was a dark grey colour. It was quite a fair way from the boat, probably about half a mile away but it’s difficult to tell in water.'

After watching the object for five to ten minutes, Mr Edwards said it slowly sank below the surface and never resurfaced.

'I’m convinced I was seeing Nessie as I believe in these creatures. Far too many people have being seeing them for far too long,' he said.

'The first recorded sighting was in 565AD and there have been thousands of eye witness reports since then. All these people can’t be telling lies. And the fact the reports stretch over so many years mean there can’t just be one of them. I’m convinced there are several monsters.'

Steve Feltham, who has dedicated the past 21 years to hunting for Nessie was unequivocval. 'It is the best photograph I think I have ever seen,' he said. From his base on Dores beach and has studied many Nessie sighting photographs.

'I think the images are fantastic - that’s the animal I have been looking for all this time,' he said yesterday.

'I would say it doesn’t prove what Nessie is, but it does prove what Nessie isn’t, a sturgeon which is a fish that has been put forward as one of the main explanations as to what Nessie could be but this hasn’t got a serrated spine like the sturgeon.'

Mr Edwards attempted to use his vessel’s sonar to make a contact but to no avail.

'I hung around for a good half-an-hour and used the deep scanning sonar to try and pick it up, but I’m afraid I had no luck at all.'

Mr Edwards took the photo at 9am on 2nd November last year on a compact Samsung digital camera that he always keeps on the boat.

Before releasing it publicly he sent it to the USA for analysis, though he can’t reveal further details. 

'I did not want to mention my sighting until I was sure that I had not photographed a log or something inanimate in the water,' he said. 'I have friends in the USA who have friends in the military. They had my photo analysed and they have no doubt that I photographed an animate object in the water. I was really excited as I am sure that some strange creatures are lurking in the depths of Loch Ness.'

I actually was informed of this photograph by a local man back in May when the photograph appeared on a postcard sold by George Edwards from around Easter which is shown below and tells us a bit about George's Nessie hunting history.

The pictures marked 3 and 4 are the one of interest whilst picture 2 is of the cruiser boat that George Edwards (in picture 6) employs in his tourist trade. Picture 5 reminds us of George Edward's other claim to fame which was the alleged 1989 "Edward's Deep" which he claimed registered a record depth of 812ft in Loch Ness (as opposed to the accepted 754ft). This reading is disputed and has not been officially recognised.

Picture 1 is of another image allegedly of Nessie in its single hump aspect taken by George Edwards on the 6th June 1986 at about 7am to which we shall return.

Some years prior to all this, George had been working on a Nessie book called "In Search of Eioch Uisge (The Water Horse)" which had been mooted for publication in the late 1990s but so far only extracts of it have surfaced on the Internet. This is a pity as it would have offered some insight into a person who has claimed to have seen the creature up to 19 times.

Three claims against the pictures are made. The first that the sun could not be that high at 9am on the 2nd November. The second is that the object is much closer than the claimed "half mile" and the third asks why only one picture was taken if the object was visible for up to 10 minutes.

On the first point, the shadow on the enlargement below does suggest to me that the sun is on the opposite side to the south east though on that day the sun does not rise until 0720. A look at the picture shows that the castle's north west side is darker than the rest which is supportive of this idea. It is not readily apparent from the picture whether the sun is low in the sky or this is just cloud reflection.

The sun position on that day and time are shown below. From the red marker showing the probable site of the incident, the green line points to sunrise, the yellow to where the sun is at 9am and the red line is sunset.

On the second point, it has to be admitted that the object is not half a mile away. In the top picture, you can see Urquhart Castle which is about one mile away from the stated position at Temple Pier. To the bottom left of the picture you can see an object which is undoubtedly part of the boat he is on. Based on that, I would guess the object is much, much closer. However, George Edwards is rather non-committal on the distance which given the alleged analysis by military experts is rather disappointing. They said the picture shows an animate object (though no wake is unambiguously visible) which leads me to ask George if I could see a copy of their analysis.

But there is actually a concentric ripple around the object which can help estimate distance. It is just about visible on the outer edges of the zoom in above. As you may know, a circular ripple seen at an angle can appear elliptical. The "flatness" of the ellipse can allow the angle of observation to be calculated and if the height of the observer above the water is known, then so can the distance to the object.

The ellipse has a ratio of about 12:34 (0.35) which suggests an angle of observation of  about 31 degrees. If the observer is standing 3 metres above the water then a bit of trigonometry gives a distance of 5 metres (another study emailed to me suggests 13 metres).

Witnesses being accused of being vague or wrong about dates, times and distances is part and parcel of media reporting of theses stories and I personally regard them as of secondary importance. I say that after recent experiences of newspapers getting some facts wrong. It always seemed strange to me that a witness would lie about such things. What is to be gained from such a stance especially as George Edwards himself is well aware of the depth of questioning that is applied to modern photographs purporting to be of Nessie.

The third point about why further photographs were not taken may seem an irrelevance but the context for asking such a question is the idea of motion. If the object was indeed moving slowly towards the castle, then a sequence of pictures would not only show this but reinforce the case for the images being genuine (as a sequence is harder to fake). 

If one were a sceptic, the case may seem closed at this point, but I would like to hear Mr. Edwards address these points before making further comment.

On a more serious note, I said I would get back to that 1986 photograph. Dick Raynor worked with George Edwards for some years and said this about the earlier photo at his website:

"Passengers on George Edwards Cruise boat "Nessie Hunter" will also be familiar with the  photograph he took in 1986, now available for sale on the boat for 50 pence.  I remember him telling me at the time how hard it had been to drag the water filled tube out of the back of a van and down to the water before it was towed out into the loch!"

If that is true then Mr. Edwards is in serious trouble. However, as with the scutter about distance, time and number of photos, I invite George to exercise his right of reply before the matter is settled.

But if we lay these things aside and approach the picture from the opposite direction, what can we further say? The first thing is that the object appears rather flat along its presumed spine. What this would indicate I could not tell. There is a general reddish brown colour to the object but with a darker ridge running along the top. The general shape in my opinion is not suggestive of seals, deer or otters.

The wave patterns around the object strike me as being interesting. There is a general pattern of waves washing in from the loch towards the photographer in a line roughly parallel to the horizontal axis of the picture. However, there is also some unique wave formations around the object.

I mentioned earlier the just visible concentric ripples which is more suggestive of a stationary object bobbing up and down than an object moving towards the castle. But water is a complicated medium and the complexity of interpreting waves can get too much if multiple forces are acting on the water. Indeed, if this was a fake Nessie tethered by a buoy, I may have expected more concentric ripples reaching as far as the boat, but that is just speculation on my part.

The bottom line is that this picture raises more questions than it answers and until Mr. Edwards helps out by answering some of my questions, then this picture needs to be treated with caution.

 

The Lachlan Stuart Photograph (Part 1)

In our series on the classic photographs of the Loch Ness Monster we move onto the famous picture taken by Lachlan Stuart in 1951.

At that time, things were pretty quiet at Loch Ness. Sightings of the creature still continued but these were the years of post-war austerity and rebuilding, so it seems that the Loch Ness Monster was not high up on the list of newsworthy items. Indeed, the last photograph of note prior to Lachlan Stuart appears to have been the one taken by F.C. Adams 17 years before in August 1934. Despite the alleged ease with which supposed fake photographs can be made, this seemed a long time to wait for the next one. Either way, this photograph exploded onto the scene on the 16th July 1951 via the pages of the Sunday Express.

The incident had happened the day before and Constance Whyte in her book "More Than a Legend" recounts the tale which we summarise here.

On that Saturday, Lachlan Stuart had arisen at about 6:30am to milk his cow on the croft he and his family occupied about 100 feet above Loch Ness at Whitefield which is almost opposite Urquhart Castle. He glanced out at the loch and noticed what he took to be a motor boat heading north up the centre of the loch.

However, on further inspection, the object looked more rounded and when a second hump appeared behind it Stuart called to his wife and fellow woodsman Taylor Hay. By the time Hay and Stuart had scrambled through the trees to the shore, the object was now displaying a third hump and had changed direction moving quickly southwards about 50 yards from them.

Stuart readied his box camera, saw the three humps in the viewfinder and took a picture. The creature was now moving towards a small promontory further south and a long neck and head had by then surfaced which was generally held parallel to the surface whilst intermittently submerging. The head was described as sheep like but without the ears. The small black dot in front of the left most hump in the photo is said to be the almost submerged head.

At one point the creature was close enough to shore to make the witnesses cautiously head back into the trees but the monster eventually headed back to the centre of the loch where it finally submerged head first about 300 yards out.

Stuart estimated each hump was about 5 feet long at the surface line with about 8 feet of water between them. The first hump stood about 2 feet out of the water, the second about 4 feet and the third about 3 feet. The head and neck combined to about 6 feet in length and Stuart also commented on their being a commotion in the water at about 15-20 feet behind the last hump which he surmised may be a powerful tail (adding these numbers up gives a total of about 50 feet).

The skin was not hairy but was uniformly "blackish" in colour. The foot long head though sheep like had no discernible features and the neck thickened suddenly to join the first hump. Hay and Stuart were at variance as to whether the humps were fixed or some kind of undulation.

And so the picture entered the lore and literature of Loch Ness. The picture was accepted as positive evidence by researchers such as Constance Whyte, Tim Dinsdale, Ted Holiday, Nicholas Witchell and Roy Mackal. In fact, Constance Whyte gives the fullest account and relates in her book "More Than a Legend" how she saw the picture on the same day it was taken and conducted interviews and onsite investigations within a few days. Tim Dinsdale goes into some detail in his "Loch Ness Monster" book but misspells Lachlan's surname as "Stewart".

Holiday in his book "The Dragon and the Disc" uses the incident of Stuart's camera failing to take a second picture as an example of the paranormal "Loch Ness Hoodoo" but misplaces the event as happening in 1952. I don't think Ted Holiday's statement holds as Lachlan Stuart had stated that the camera had a pre-existing shutter problem. Maurice Burton in his 1961 book "The Elusive Monster" says that he visited the site of the photograph during his 1960 expedition and though predictably dismissive of the picture is vague as to the reasons why.

But once the years rolled into the 1980s the mood changed and suspicion was cast upon the picture and it is one sceptical claim that this article will particularly examine.

THE STORIES OF RICHARD FRERE

When I looked around for information on this photograph and googled for "lachlan stuart" and "loch ness", I found that eight out of the top ten hits dubbed the photograph a hoax because of a man called Richard Frere (above) who claimed to be privy to the hoax. There are other "evidences" for this photograph being faked which we shall examine in later posts but for now we look at Frere's claim.

Richard Frere himself was most noted as working with and publishing a biography on the famous author Gavin Maxwell. Frere's other well known book was the 1988 "Loch Ness", a history of the loch and its surroundings as well as its most famous inhabitant. However, Frere was a Nessie sceptic, indeed an ardent one as his aforementioned book shows. He was also a keen supporter of preserving the beauty of the Highland countryside against commercialisation (as his opposition to the expansion of Urquhart Castle demonstrated). Needless to say, Nessie and Highland commercialisation went hand in hand adding more fuel to Frere's anti-Nessie stance. You can read more about Frere from his 1999 obituary in the London Times.

However, when one looks into this particular story by Frere, it turns out there are four different versions of his account in the online and offline literature. They are listed in turn here.

VERSION ONE

First, we have the version of Tony Harmsworth who received a visit from Richard Frere around the time of the opening of the Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition in 1980. According to Tony's book "Loch Ness, Nessie and Me", Frere approached him and told him he had seen Stuart in the act of setting up the hoax with hay bales and tarpaulin. To summarise this version on Tony's website:

"Richard Frere, a well-known local author who died in 1999, actually watched Lachlan Stuart setting up his Loch Ness monster fake picture. It was three bales of hay covered with tarpaulin.

When the Webmaster (i.e. Tony Harmsworth) published the fact that the picture was faked in his "Loch Ness - The Monster" publication, he received a poison-pen letter from one of Lachlan Stuart's friends ... which shows how well the photographer conned his friends. Recently his son called at the Loch Ness Centre and, surprisingly, he didn't know that his father had faked the picture either.

  

It must be understood, however, that if you are going to produce a convincing hoax you must tell no-one the truth."

VERSION TWO

The second account was published by the current curator of the Loch Ness Centre, Adrian Shine, in a piece for the BBC on the 75th anniversary of the mystery in 2008:

"The remnants of this hoax were witnessed by local author Richard Frere. He spoke to Lachlan Stuart the next day, who confessed that he had constructed the image from hay bails and tarpaulin."

This account implies Frere only saw the "remnants" which is an unclear term to me (e.g. perhaps he only saw part of the hoax being enacted or only saw the hay bales) and it seems Frere only got to the truth of the matter when he quizzed Stuart the next day. It seems Stuart failed miserably to follow Tony Harmsworth's advice to "tell no-one the truth"!

VERSION THREE

The third account is from the Loch Ness Project website and mentions no witnessing of the hoax. This version from their timeline link says:

"Lachlan Stuart takes a picture of three angular humps close to the beach. A little later, he confesses to a local resident, the author Richard Frere, that it was a hoax. Frere did not reveal the secret for thirty years."

The implication here is that Frere was not at the site of the hoax being enacted but somehow he managed to get Lachlan Stuart to confess the deed.

VERSION FOUR

The fourth and final version is from Richard Frere himself in his book "Loch Ness" and is even vaguer than the above accounts (page 169 from the 1st edition):

"A further photograph, published in the national press, was necessary if popular support for the story was to be retained. It came in 1951, a print of poor quality showing three black objects floating a few yards offshore. The picture was a deliberate deception, and a bad one at that. I have no particular objection to hoaxers, unless they endanger lives or waste taxpayers' money, and my chief reaction on getting first-hand knowledge of the affair was surprise at how easily even experts can be duped. This amateurish invention was given the seal of approval by a leading zoologist as the 'most important picture'."

From this version from Frere's own mouth, we are left in an even more uncertain position as to how he gained this "first-hand knowledge" and the phrase itself could mean anything. It is interesting to note that in none of the above is the alleged head in the picture mentioned by Frere.

CONFUSION REIGNS

So, which account is true? Did Frere see the whole thing (version one), or did he only see the discarded "props" and required a confession to complete the picture (version two)? Or was he never at the scene of the "crime" and was wholly dependent on confessions either directly (version three) or directly/indirectly as his own fourth and final account ambiguously states? Clearly something is not adding up here and if Lachlan Stuart was in the dock charged with deception, his lawyer would have no problem casting doubt upon the quality of the evidence against him.

In fact, Tony Harmsworth's book lifts a bit of the veil on what is going on here when he recounts how Adrian Shine talked to him about Frere's account (page 82). Tony had his "version one" story but Adrian Shine had been told "version three" by Frere. How could these two stories be reconciled? My guess (though it is not primary to the overall problem) is that this conversation happened because the BBC had asked Adrian for this 75th anniversary summary of the Nessie evidence. Which version would he use for the article? The answer appears to be "both" or "neither" depending on your point of view as Adrian produced our second but conflated version for the BBC.

By "conflated" we mean the critical device of conflation which involves the fusing of two variant texts into one with the intention to produce a new text which attempts to harmonise the variations in the originals. In other words, the second version of our four stories was not told by Frere but is an artificial construct which attempts to reconcile seemingly contradictory statements. Instead of these conflicting accounts from Frere setting off alarm bells, an attempt to harmonise was made instead.

So in the light of these varying accounts, we could justifiably label Frere's stories as "unacceptable as evidence" and end this article. After all, if a witness to the Loch Ness Monster changed their story, the critics would be dismissive of it, n'est ce pas?

FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS

But I wanted to dig a bit deeper before finally rejecting this evidence. The first thing that has to be said is that Richard Frere was not the "local" resident described above. In fact, he did not move to Loch Ness until 1959 - eight years after the photograph was taken!

According to Frere's own autobiography "Beyond the Highland Line" (John Murray 1984), he was actually living in Carrbridge near Aviemore in a set of converted railway carriages. The map above shows its location relative to Loch Ness and the journey by road to the Lachlan Stuart location would be about 35 miles. Of course, this does not prove he did not pass by that spot in 1951 but it would make it less likely not only because he was not local but also because in 1951 petrol was still being rationed and Frere states in his book that he was so cash strapped that he could only run a motor cycle.

On the subject of petrol, Frere also has a rogue side to his character freely confessed in his book. Since petrol was being rationed and thus limited peoples' movements, Frere indulged in the illegal activity of using paraffin to top up his motorcycle. It also transpires that he regularly defrauded his employers in two jobs by bunking off to go hillwalking or working on house renovations. One Loch Ness author suggested we should believe Frere's account over Stuart's because he was a "respected pillar of the community".  What Frere would have made of such high praise we will never know.

As it turns out, his autobiography gives us a neat rundown of his activities in 1951 and he reveals that he had a temporary Summer job from May with the Forestry Commission at the time of the Stuart incident. This is potentially significant because Lachlan Stuart also worked for them. However, Frere says that the job was a local one at Glenmore Lodge (about 5 miles SE of Carrbridge and marked on the map) and he makes no mention of working anywhere else. After that, he tried his hand at mushroom growing and poultry before setting up his own business in the mid 1950s as a timber cutter before he gave it up around 1960.

It is possible that he knew of Lachlan Stuart through other employees, though it is unlikely he met and became Stuart's confidant due to his short tenure and large distance away. Certainly, Frere does not mention anything about Lachlan Stuart or his photograph anywhere in his book which is a strange omission given it is sandwiched between his conversation with Tony Harmsworth and his mention of it in his subsequent "Loch Ness" book. Certainly, his own autobiography offers no support for being familiar with Lachlan Stuart or Taylor Hay.

Either way, it seems unlikely that if Stuart was a hoaxer he would blow his cover to someone he barely knew. In that light, if there is any grain of truth in what Frere says, it is more likely he merely heard someone indirectly saying that the photograph was faked or they thought it was faked which is hardly prime quality evidence. It is entirely possible the two men did meet as working colleagues but whether this was under good, neutral or bad circumstances is difficult to ascertain sixty years since the incident occurred.

But, as you may rightly point out, Frere told Tony Harmsworth that he was actually driving past and witnessed the whole hoax being staged. Now I don't think that working for the Forestry Commission made this stumbling upon Lachlan Stuart any more or less likely. The reason I say that is because Constance Whyte's account says that part of Loch Ness was quite busy for forestry at that time which leads me to conclude any alleged hoaxing would have to be perpetrated on a non-working day as early or late as possible which would suggest Sunday morning or evening. I don't consider this a time that Richard Frere was highly likely to be far from Carrbridge. But it is a strange coincidence that a Forestry Commission worker chanced upon another one 35 miles away in the middle of perpetrating a Nessie hoax! In fact, too much of a coincidence in my opinion. 

VISIBLE OR INVISIBLE?

The mystery for me deepened when I visited the site of the 1951 photograph a few months back. As I drove around the area and checked the beach itself, a big problem arose for Richard Frere. The first is that the beach is about 30 feet below the road. To access it, I parked on a lay by and then crossed about 40 feet of grassland before descending down a slippery slope to the beach (the lay by is pictured below from Google Street View plus my own photo of the obscured beach follows). There was some old stone steps at the bottom which suggested this area was once in more frequent use. I looked back up to where I had come from and I could not see the car from where I was. That meant the beach was not visible from the car which begs the question as to how Richard Frere could claim to Tony Harmsworth that he saw the men setting up the alleged hoax from the road?

Giving the man the benefit of the doubt, I surmised perhaps he could have seen the beach from a distance approaching from the north or south. However, a drive up and down that area proved fruitless as the beach was simply not visible. These two pictures from Google StreetView show the problem. The first picture shows the loch view as we approach the Stuart site from the south. The layby of the first view is away up at the top right (as usual, click on image to enlarge).

The second is from the approach from the north. In both cases, it is hard to believe that anyone could see the beach and its immediate waters from the road.

Or perhaps the tree growth along that portion of Loch Ness was less in 1951 compared to the present day? I could accept that if a situation similar to 1933 had happened. Back then, a lot of shoreline was cleared to allow better views from the newly upgraded Glasgow to Inverness road. However, our road from Fort Augustus to Dores was not upgraded until the 1960s. In that light and since an ecosystem tends to reach an equilibrium with its resources fairly quickly, I suspect the shoreline of Whitefield in 1951 was not much different to 2012.

However, the problems continued to mount. Tony Harmsworth's account from Frere says he was "driving" past the spot at Whitefield. However, people "drive" cars but "ride" motorbikes and Frere's autobiography is quite clear in stating he only owned a motorcycle called "Boanerges" at that time.

Motorcycles also present further problems as they are a lot noisier than cars and can be heard approaching from much further away. However, Frere told Harmsworth that he approached and stopped to watch the whole hoax being enacted. Are we supposed to believe that Lachlan Stuart and Taylor Hay failed to hear this motorbike approach then stop and carried on regardless? More likely they would have aborted the operation and we would never have heard of this photograph at all.

CONCLUSION

To put it simply, I doubt Richard Frere was a witness to an alleged hoax being perpetrated, let alone near Loch Ness that day. Neither do I believe Lachlan Stuart confessed anything to a stranger such as Richard Frere. The various and contradictory accounts force one to label this entire episode as unacceptable as evidence. One may speculate upon why these conflicting stories came to be but I will refrain from theories. It is sufficient to state the problems and move on. Sceptics may still accept Frere and make excuses but by their own standards the evidence is compromised and should be put aside.

But having critically analysed this piece of testimony, I would need to point out I have not actually proven the photograph is genuine. This blog approaches the mystery of Loch Ness from two directions. Defend the evidence for the monster where necessary is obvious, but removing objections to the creature or items of evidence presented against it is also important. The other aspect to this is demonstrating how poorly peer reviews of sceptical evidence is conducted. To put it more bluntly, it is not conducted at all as any critique which makes sense on the surface is accepted. It is the job of this blog to scratch that veneer of plausibility and expose the problems underneath.

If sceptics of Lachlan Stuart's picture are seeking evidence against it, they will have to go somewhere other than Richard Frere. To that end, our next article on this picture will address more objections.

Part Two can be viewed here.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Collecting of Loch Ness Monster Sightings

I am not long back from my holiday and have some things to post but I thought a quick look at the year so far is in order.

As of the current date, there is only one claimed sighting from April which we covered here. Some put this down to a boat merely doing a circular turn but my own investigations suggest this is not a good explanation as I shall post later. My PC is actually not powering up properly just now, so certain posts have to be held back until that is resolved.

One sighting may not seem much but I am convinced the vast majority of sightings do not make it to the public media. Indeed, one researcher I correspond with suggests from his own contacts that dozens of sightings are plain ignored and discarded each year. That this should happen in the current environment is no surprise.

In the past, witnesses would relate their experiences in several ways.

1. Local and roving monster hunters such as the Dinsdales and Whytes would investigate and publish sightings.

2. There was also the more "official" approach with larger organised groups and this is in particular reference to the now defunct Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. This group would be approached by witnesses at their HQ at Achnahannet and they would fill in sighting reports. These would then be analysed and summarised in their annual report and made generally available to researchers. 

3. In other cases, witnesses would go straight to local newspapers such as the Inverness Courier or more national papers if they thought they had evidence of a more substantial nature.

It was also the case that these groups would approach witnesses on a "tip off" if the witness was reticent or slow to come forward.

But what is the situation now? The Dinsdales and Whytes are gone and have been replaced by a more sceptical set of investigators. This modern genre do not accept the idea of an exotic species in Loch Ness and so what is their motivation to collect claimed sightings of a monster let alone make them publicly available?

There are the two exhibition centres in Drumnadrochit and so one may presume that witnesses may approach the people there but I have no idea how that scenario has panned out over the years. However, if the witnesses take in the sceptically-oriented multimedia displays at the Loch Ness Centre, they may not be so motivated afterwards!

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems likely that if the witness goes to a sceptical representative, their story is unlikely to go much further after the representative has decided it was a deer, log, otter or birds.

In fact, options 1 and 2 above now seem forlorn hopes and it is down to witnesses to approach the local media who still like to run these stories for human interest (after all, Nessie stories still attract readers).

To this we can add the increased reticence of witnesses to speak up in an environment where they may be regarded as fools. I will admit the Loch Ness Monster has always had plenty of doubters in society as a whole but today witnesses do not have the firewall of a publicly recognised figure such as Tim Dinsdale to stand by them and back them up.

Such is the modern environment that Loch Ness Monster witnesses find themselves in. The majority of sightings never go public but undoubtedly they are there.

New Fictional Book on the Giant Eels of Loch Ness

A while back, readers may recall I wrote on an anonymous blogger posting chapters from a story called "The Loch Ness Eels". The complete book has now been published as an e-book which can be purchased for about $5 from the following link.

Having got to read about half of Nigel Wakefield's engaging story for free, the least I can do is buy the rest to see how his story of giant eels pans out! I may even take it on holiday for light reading, so no posts here I suspect for a couple of weeks.

The Pseudo Art of Nessie Science

Now seems a good time to look further at the scientific method as it is applied to the Loch Ness Monster in the light of a recent news item.

Readers may recall the furore last year over a popular cryptozoological series called "Finding Bigfoot". The format of the show was pretty much in keeping with the TV hunt shows such as MonsterQuest and Destination Truth. However, the producers of the show were exposed as being economical with the truth and using shots which were made to look like mysterious events but which in fact were known to have ordinary interpretations by the very hunters involved in the program making. The Bigfoot people themselves complained about this at the time (for example, see link).

That this seemed to be a common format for at best filling in "gaps" and at worst distorting the whole show was even exposed at the respected British Broadcasting Corporation and their acclaimed series "Frozen Planet". It transpired that a shot of a mother bear with her cubs in a den which was shown interspersed with Arctic scenes was actually filmed in a Dutch zoo with snow added for good effect. The truth of this matter was only revealed in an obscure section of the BBC website, anyone watching the show would have been fooled into thinking it happened in the wild frozen north (story here).

The question therefore to ask of modern documentaries is not if this warping and dumbing-down happens but how much it happens. In that light, I wish to address the 2005 "Loch Ness Investigated" documentary made for the National Geographic and which I think also came under the "Naked Science" series (correct me if I am wrong). The documentary itself was viewable on YouTube at this link but that is now gone. For now you will just have to trust me on what I say!

The documentary is one of those "cool science" programs where we are shown how science and logic have all the answers and now watch us dismantle the Loch Ness Monster. Anyone watching the program will indeed get that impression, but as somebody who has studied the Nessie phenomenon for decades I was not impressed and wondered how much of the aforementioned reality-distortion technique was being applied to this program.

Before I begin, this is a commentary on the production of the program and not the Loch Ness experts that were brought in to state their case. It is possible they had no say in the final editing process, so they are largely left alone here. 

The program begins with the usual introductions to the Loch Ness Monster and before long the traditional plesiosaur is wheeled in (as an aside, Robert Badger who we featured in a recent classic sighting, makes an appearance). It's acknowledged that people in general think this is what Nessie would be if she did exist but the producers of the show indulge in a straw man argument by implying this is the only possible exotic explanation for Nessie. Once they dispose of this animal as a viable theory, the program fails to consider any other hypothesis apart from the sceptical one and gives the impression there is no more to be said.

The first main howler is when they state there is only 24 tonnes of fish in the loch to feed on. This is in fact a false statement. The 24 tonnes is taken from a study done by Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine. But a closer look at his original study reveals that this estimate was only referring to the fish swimming in the open waters near the top of the water column. It did not include the salmon, trout and eels which inhabit the sides and bottoms of the loch because these areas were not accessible to the sonar devices used in the study. If these were included, it would not be an overstatement to say the numbers could be trebled. More mistakes were made in regard to this food stock issue such as the predicted predator biomass but for further info see this link.

THE CLASSIC PHOTOGRAPHS

Having made that mistake, one did not exactly grow in confidence, but I watched on as they moved onto the sceptical arguments about the various pieces of Nessie evidence. Three of the classic images were first addressed. The Surgeon's Photo, the MacNab Photo and the Dinsdale film.

In regards to the Surgeon's photo, David Martin, the co-author of the book which exposed the hoax, was interviewed. The story was told of Marmaduke Wetherell and the fake tracks he created with a hippo's taxidermy foot and the subsequent desire for revenge as the Daily Mail newspaper dumped him for this tomfoolery. He set up a fake photo using a model head and neck on a toy submarine and the Daily Mail swallowed the bait as it published the picture and the rest is history. 

The story seems fine enough and this hoax will always be brought out first as "Exhibit A" by the prosecution. However, note this is not evidence against there being a creature in Loch Ness. I have no reason to think the confessor of the deed, Christian Spurling, was a liar. However, the producers did not address some failed predictions based on this story. The first is that there is a second photograph of the head submerging. The story does not predict this and this remains a bit of a mystery. More importantly, the story is wholly predicated on Wetherell's desire to get back at the Daily Mail for firing him.

He executed the first part perfectly in palming the pictures of to them but it is an unanswered question as to why he did not follow thru to expose the fake to the world and to the Mail's great embarrassment. In fact, the exact opposite happened as the Mail's new picture went on to be the icon of the Loch Ness Monster for the next sixty years (the other quibble I have with the toy submarine theory is that when the hoax is staged for TV, very lightweight styrofoam is used as the base for the fake head-neck. Hasn't anyone tried the actual metal submarine?)!

Next up for analysis was the famous Tim Dinsdale film. The whole thesis here revolved around the fact that Tim Dinsdale failed to recognise a boat for what it was and naively thought it was a brown backed monster. The main proof given for this is the idea that certain intermittent blobs seen behind the main body as it travelled parallel to the opposite shore were in fact images of a helmsman. By sequencing some frames from the film, it was claimed that this "helmsman" object was indeed part of the film.

A stereoscopic examination of some "helmsman" images were also presented as proof that the suggested helmsman was indeed part of the object.

Is that an end of the Dinsdale film then? Not quite, for the producers do not mention one thing and that is the quality of the data that was examined. Testing of theories can only be as good as the data available. The documentary itself shows about eight seconds of the object travelling parallel to the opposite shore. When one compares a still from their excerpt of the film with a similar still from the 1973 Disney Documentary, "Man, Mysteries and Myths", the problem with the data quality becomes obvious.

In the field of science, the ability to reproduce another researcher's results is key. If it can't be reproduced, doubt is cast upon the theory's validity. So, I can take this clip from the National Geographic documentary and attempt the image stacking that was shown. I may or may not be successful in reproducing what is claimed to be there but it is worth doing (and thanks to Adrian Shine for his help in this regard). So, does the poor quality of data hinder a proper assessment? Does the inferior data with its higher noise to signal ratio introduce artifacts that are not there in the original? The ultimate answer is to repeat the experiment with the original film (or something close to it) and its complete far shore sequence. So I have to suspend judgement on this aspect of the program until I see how far I get with the image stacking process.

The final photograph assessed was the one taken by Peter MacNab in 1955. The producers presented the case that it was simply the wake of a boat. To that end, the documentary homed in on a PC screen with the MacNab photograph overlaid with lines which were said to be converging boat wakes and the contention was that the "monster" lay along one of those lines. However, a further look at the photo shows that such a line simply does not exist. Take a look at the "monster" and see if you can see any boat wake ahead of it along the presumed line of travel. There is nothing there and so this particular line of reasoning should be seriously questioned.

 
The second photograph is my own taken near where Peter MacNab stood in 1955. Should I presume the other wakes in the upper part of the picture should be associated with the foreground cruiser once it disappears from view? No, and neither should they be in the MacNab photo.

The second problem as regards the MacNab picture involved the TV crew filming up close the wake of a boat and trying to make this look like the MacNab object. It was an abject failure and unworthy of critical thinking. The wake was filmed almost at eye level and much closer than the MacNab photograph (since this is the best way to see them). But from MacNab's position hundreds of yards away at an elevated position, no one would be fooled.

However, this appears to be another case of the producer cutting corners in presenting their argument because I suspect the person they consulted on this photograph would also disagree with their abbreviated conclusion. Last time I looked he further required some touching up of the photograph to "enhance" the two humps. To see what a real boat wake looks like, we have the 1969 Jessie Tait photo below and reversed to point in the same direction as the MacNab photo. Note that compared to the MacNab picture, the "humps" are of a different size, shape and spacing and that the wake continues beyond the front "hump".

My own analysis of the MacNab picture can be found here.

THE ART OF DECEPTION

Having "disposed" of all the classic Nessie pictures, the thoughts of the production crew turned to what they thought explained all sightings. The argument mainly lay in a series of witness deception theories which we now consider in turn.

SEICHES

At this point we were treated to a scientific explanation of what seiches were and how these underwater currents can make objects move in a contrary fashion to the prevailing wind. It was then suggested that such currents can fool people into thinking they are watching an inanimate object become a "live" object.

Now we readily admit that such a thing is possible, but a seiche on its own cannot fool anyone. A piece of footage was produced which was described as "rare" which perhaps indicates the infrequency of these events. However, it was quite clear that the object being moved was a log. That means other factors are required to complete a complex scenario such as obscuration by distance or time (i.e. too far away or too short in duration). In other words, seiche, log, time, distance makes for a less likely scenario. To that end, the probability of the person being deceived is not primarily down to the seiche but it is in inverse proportion to the distance to the object and the time available to view it.

MIRAGES

More scientific talk came but now about temperature inversions between the loch surface and the air distorting familiar objects into unfamiliar objects. However, unlike the seiche footage, nothing was offered by way of proof that such conditions produce Nessie-like objects. One wonders if these proposed events are so rare as to be of no relevance to the discussion. I appeal here for any such footage else we'll consign talk about Nessie-like mirages to the merely theoretical (and I mean Nessie-like mirages and not general large scale pictures of distorted mountains and forests). I would note in general that I too often see theories proposed to explain how witnesses misinterpret events but little in the way of field testing these theories.

I WANT TO SEE NESSIE! 

But the most contentious slot for me was the psychological theory about people seeing Nessie in ordinary objects because they are somehow pre-conditioned for this before they arrive. A psychologist was brought in to conduct an experiment in which an ordinary pole was made to bob up and down in the loch water as tourists stood on the shore taking in the view. The people were then asked what they saw. It was an exercise in the difference between what is there and what is perceived. However, the tourists were not playing ball and no one said they thought it was the head and neck of a Loch Ness Monster. We were treated to such non-committal descriptions as:

• "I think I saw Nessie's kids toys" (?)
• "Some kind of underwater machine"
• "It looks like Nessie's breathing pipe"

The best candidate for this less than convincing experiment was a young lad who thought it was Nessie but changed his mind when he had a closer look and decided it was a log. The producers triumphantly showed the boy's boat-like picture (everyone else drew a pole), but it was clear it was a picture drawn from his first impression rather than what he saw on a continued look.

It was evident that no one was really deceived by this and the experiment to me was a failure (unless only kids ever report seeing Nessie). Even creative editing would not have rescued this experiment and an excuse was made that one in ten would make a misidentification. Based on this episode, we are not convinced of that unsubstantiated statement.

For some reason, they then took the pole to a body of water at Stirling University and reran the experiment. What was the point of this I asked myself? No one was going to scream it was the "Stirling University Monster", in fact, it appears they got the same results as at Loch Ness!

THE UBIQUITOUS LOG

Logs seemed to feature a lot and as a final experiment a piece of tree was chosen "at random" to be used. Pretty good choice for a Nessie-like log, I thought, considering it was random. It was set off afloat and filmed and ... it looked pretty much like a log. Curiously, no mention of experiments with tourists was mentioned. Perhaps they had learnt the lessons of the other experiment?

ENTER THE STURGEON

Yet despite all this debunking of Nessie reports, one sighting was allowed to "live". It was a report from 1932 by a Miss MacDonald who said she saw a crocodile like creature in the River Ness. The reason it was allowed to live was because it was seen to support the theory that some sightings could be down to a large sturgeon. Now I am not sure why the program needed a sturgeon. Was it to instill a feeling that perhaps all these sightings are not adequately explained by logs, waves and wishful thinking? Or was it down to a desire to keep the mystery alive but in a more scientific context? Whatever the reason, the sturgeon theory was presented as an explanation for some sightings.

Now, we are quite sure the evidence for sturgeons is irrefutable, but the evidence for sturgeons in Loch Ness is no better than the evidence for an unknown species in Loch Ness. We have no carcass, films, photographs or sonar which allow a final classification of either of these critters. Sure, there have been sturgeons caught in the Moray Firth but nothing inland. It seems as if the scientific rigour of proof applied to an unknown species is not being applied to a known species. Again, it seems we are asked to equate something which is plausible to the realms of probable.

But I don't mind the sturgeon theory being proposed. It is a viable theory after all but if any sceptic asks where the exotic species carcass is, I will simply tell them it is in the same place as the sturgeon carcass (though Adrian Shine informs me that cartiliginious bones decay quicker than other bones).

EARTHQUAKES

What on earth have earthquakes got to do with Loch Ness Monsters sightings you may ask? As it turns out, seismic activity can disturb waters in unusual ways, but is this enough to explain any Nessie sightings?

One got the impression the bottom of the barrel was being scraped here but it did introduce an unusual element to this documentary - someone was brought in to present an alternative view on this theory. If only they had been more even handed with the other theories presented. The dissenting geologist said that earthquakes were not frequent or strong enough in the Great Glen to make such an explanation useful.

It was then stated in the program that the last time an earthquake had such a noticeable effect on Loch Ness was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Well, actually, this was another inaccuracy in the program. There has been at least one more recently documented story about unusual earthquake-induced effects upon Loch Ness. I'll leave it as an exercise to the documentary makers to find out where it is.

CONCLUSIONS

  

I was tempted to entitle this article "The Art of Pseudo Nessie Science" but to be fair, the producers were going about in a largely scientific way, it's just that it was not done very convincingly. It may convince those who are not familiar with the subject, but that is as far as it went. Hence I suggest there was a bit more of the "art" and less of the "science" in the final copy. One of the contributors to this documentary once described this blog as "justifiable as art" but not science. If this National Geographic documentary is the last word on "science" at Loch Ness, then for now I'll gladly stick to the "art" that goes on at this website!

National Geographic has released a new documentary on the Loch ness Monster under their "The Truth Behind ..." series. Once I see this, I will post a review. Hopefully it is an improvement on this 2005 version.