The Carcass Problem (Part 2)

Having looked at some of the dubious carcass stories from years and even centuries past at Loch Ness (as exemplified by the front cover above), we now look at the basic question - "Why has no Loch Ness Monster carcass been found yet?".

This question may sometimes be framed as a statement by sceptics. To wit - "A Loch Ness Monster carcass should have been found by now!". However, this issue is better framed as a question as I have seen no detailed or logical argument by anyone as to why such a statement should be true.

Back in the 1930s, it seemed a given that if there was a creature in Loch Ness, it would eventually be captured, dead or alive. By the time the 1960s came around with the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, this gave way to more cautious hope. Now in the 2010s, one wonders if any prospect of a DNA find is on the cards.

But back to the problem. There are only two answers to the question. The first is that there are no carcasses to find. However, that answer can itself be subdivided into four categories. The first of the four is the position that there is no carcass because there are no monsters and never has been. The second is that the creature is a boneless invertebrate and so any body will be scavenged away in short measure. The third is that the Loch Ness Monster is a paranormal phenomenon and hence no carcasses are to be expected. The fourth is that Nessie is a regular visitor to the loch but not a resident and hence we again should expect no carcasses.

I won't dwell on these categories any further and readers may wish to comment on them below. The second answer to the question is simply that nothing has been found because researchers have not looked hard enough. That answer requires further explanation and subdivides into the nature of the beast, its environment and the search.

PROBLEMS WITH THE BODY

There are two ways to find a corpse, by accident or by design. Millions have visited the shores of Loch Ness in the past eighty years and no one we know of has stumbled upon any body part of any mysterious creature. Meantime, a far smaller group of divers have ventured in those waters since the nineteenth century. I have been sniffing round the shores of Loch Ness for decades and have detected nothing I would seriously present as evidence. That tale can be repeated multiple times for all Loch Ness investigators, named and unnamed.

However, it has to be said that I don't often see much of anything around the shores of Loch Ness. I stumbled upon a sheep skeleton on my last visit and it is a matter of unimportant speculation as to how it got there. Polling the statements of others largely bears this out. I asked long term monster hunter, Steve Feltham, what he has encountered from his home on Dores beach. His reply was:

"Deer that drown trying to swim the loch occasionally. We dont generally get fish on the beach, in fact in twenty years I cant recall a fish. One or two eels on their backs in shallow water, thats about it."

Another on site investigator, Dick Raynor, said this of things floating around:

"I have seen dead fish on the surface - there's a Roach on my website, I saw a salmon or trout floating around the bay here last summer and there was a dead sheep near the castle about 4 years ago. My suspicion is that most of the floating dead things were dead and floating before they entered the loch. In the case of corpses, they are sometimes found floating a couple of weeks after dying and it is assumed that they were lying in the shallows until they resurfaced."

So not much of even what is known to exist in Loch Ness is readily found. Perhaps there is some truth in that old legend about the loch never giving up its dead, which brings us to the murky depths below. Dick Raynor makes another statement on the death process at Loch Ness:

"The only large creatures regularly shot on Loch Ness seem to sink immediately, and I'm not aware of one ever being washed up. I refer, of course, to the seals."

I recently spoke to Gordon Menzies, a veteran of Loch Ness cruise ships, who added that a seal could remain afloat for a time if it was shot after taking in a lungful of air. But, in general, they sink and then it is what happens after that which has an impact on the carcass problem.

This absence of floating corpses is explained in terms of the rate of decomposition. In that regard, I would like to quote leading Loch Ness researcher, Adrian Shine, on the problems inherent in locating carcasses. This is taken from the 1976 Loch Morar Expedition report.

There are very few records of unidentified carcasses being found by Scottish lochs. Factors which may account for this are that Lochs Ness and Morar are deep, steep sided and cold (about 5^oC below the thermocline). The cold would slow decomposition and allow time for scavengers such as eels to dispose of the remains. Gases, which did result from decomposition, would have their volume and buoyancy reduced by water pressure at depth. One cubic foot of gas at the surface would have a buoyancy of about 621bs but at a depth of only 32ft this would be halved, while at 200ft the buoyancy would amount to only about 8lbs.

The bodies of those drowned in Loch Ness are seldom recovered.  One would not expect the remains of fish living at depth to float. Many animals, which are secondarily aquatic, swallow stones, and it is believed that these may function as ballast. Plesiosaurs did this, as do crocodiles. Sea otters are examples of mammals with the same habit, as are seals, which may contain as much as twenty five pounds of stones. This may well cause a body to become negatively buoyant at depth when the air cavities are compressed. Cmdr. Cousteau has found "graveyards" of elephant seals and these bodies seem to have little tendency to float.

I would add my opinion that the scavenging task is increased by possible cannibalism amongst Loch Ness Monsters. I suspect this would be rare and confined to dead and dying animals. The Loch Ness Monster would certainly not be unique in this regard. Loch Ness Ferox Trout are well known for their predation of other ferox.

If these creatures are mainly benthic dwellers, then we should not expect any floating corpses. However, there are exceptions to the rule. If a creature died in the shallow shelf waters of the loch or a little deeper down amongst the clefts and the ridges of the littoral region, it is theoretically possible for them to remain there for a period of time and be more amenable to discovery. But since the behaviour of your typical dying monster is not known with any certainty, that must remain a matter of speculation.

For example, a dying, aquatic creature would have less energy to move itself up from the depths, let alone haul itself into shallow waters. To me, it seems more likely they would stay deep.

PROBLEMS WITH THE ENVIRONMENT

So what is it that prevents discovery of Loch Ness Monster bodies? In an answer, it is Loch Ness itself. I have already pointed out the decomposition problem, but what else hinders a search?

The most likely scenario for a discovery is that part of the creature which endures the longest. That would normally mean the skeleton. For the sake of argument, I will assume this would be an endo-skeleton. Now, there are two things that can happen to bones in Loch Ness. They can either be eventually broken down by the water's acidity or they can be buried in the silt. It is a matter of conjecture as to which process will claim the bones first.

In terms of acidity, Loch Ness researcher, Dick Raynor, had this to say:

"Exposed bones are not likely to survive for many years however as the calcium hungry loch water will cause them to dissolve and crumble in the slightly acid environment."

However, it is unclear how long it would actually take for a skeleton to be broken down. An experiment conducted by the Loch Ness Project in 1984 bears this out. A hessian sack containing beef bones was lowered to a depth of 200 metres and left there for a year. When it was brought back up, no discernible change in terms of bone dissolution was noticed. Clearly, this is a process that would take a number of years (depending on the thickness of the bones).

The question is further complicated if the creature has a cartilaginous skeleton. These bones are less dense than the bones we possess because in water they do not have to be so load bearing. You can find such bones in sharks, sturgeons and so on. As a consequence, these bones will break down faster than terrestrial ones. It is a bit of an irony that the sceptical idea that some sightings of the Loch Ness Monster may only be Atlantic Sturgeon also may suffer from lack of evidence due to the same problems!

The silt that blankets the sides and floor of Loch Ness also presents its own problems. A large number of rivers and smaller burns empty into the loch, bringing with them debris of varying sizes and composition (animal, vegetation and minerals). This continual flow of debris eventually settles into the sides or bottom of the loch where it will be further broken down into smaller particles over time. The higher water pressure of the bottom will also compress and compact the silt over the centuries.

Any larger object that gets caught in this process will get buried but how long that takes is variable. The rate of silt deposition depends on where you are in the loch and when. Clearly, the seasons of higher rainfall will drive debris into the loch at a faster rate and those areas nearest to water inflows will generally receive the greatest depositions.

Moreover, silt may accumulate on the higher ridges and shelves over the years but then cascade down into the deeps when a tipping point is reached. A study of sediment core samples taken in the 1990s by the Loch Ness Project suggest varying levels of sedimentation with a contemporary rate exceeding 1cm per year for the deeper waters of the North Basin.

Other core samples contained markers for the radioactive events of Chernobyl (1986) and the peak in atmospheric nuclear bomb tests (1963). These depths were given as 3cm and 9cm down respectively which suggest more recent depositions rates of 3 to 7 mm per year. A more historic core sample detected the 1868 great flood of Inverness at 30cm to 50cm depth which gives a deposition rate of about 4mm per year. Note that this one off event alone added up to 20cm of silt, probably enough to cover many carcasses.

One could take the contemporary rate of 1cm for further calculations, but it is acknowledged that not all parts of the loch are equal, so I will use the 4mm rate from the 124 year old flood example. So how long would it take the silt to normally bury a Nessie skeleton?

Not knowing what species the Loch Ness Monster may belong to, I will stick with a candidate whose skeleton is well known, the plesiosaur. The largest bone would be one of the main vertebrae and I doubt any of its dimensions would exceed 20cm. At a deposition rate of 4mm per annum, this, the last bone of the carcass would disappear after 50 years.

At our faster rate of greater than 1cm per annum, it is gone in 20 years. If an event akin to the 1868 flood occurs, it is probably covered in a matter of days. You perhaps begin to see how greater a problem this is on closer analysis.

PROBLEMS WITH THE SEARCH

But you may retort that there is more than one Loch Ness Monster and they must die on a regular basis, thus making them more amenable to a search. I would agree with you on that matter. Nobody knows when this creature entered the loch, but in the estimated 20 metres or more of deposits laid on the loch floor since the last Ice Age, there must be a good number of bones in varying stages of decomposition. Indeed, it is hoped that if the bones are encased in the clay quick enough before the slightly acidic waters totally breaks them down, there is a good chance of many examinable bones being found. I say that with a degree of optimism since I am not even sure if bones of known animals have been found in the various core samples collected over the last 20 years.





So let me indulge in some arithmetical speculation. If the loch contains a population of thirty monsters of varying sizes with an average lifespan of thirty years, then one carcass gets deposited every year. If it takes 50 years to completely silt over one carcass then this suggests there are fifty carcasses on the loch bed with varying degrees of exposure.

Concentrating on the floor of the loch and not the sides, the loch is 26 miles or 42 kilometres long and the width of the loch floor is at least half a mile or 0.8 kilometres. This gives an approximates floor area of 33.6 million square metres.

If we assume the area of the floor bed covered by a carcass is 10m by 1m, we get a carcass surface area of 10 square metres. Total up our fifty carcasses and we get no more than 500 square metres. This means the carcasses cover 0.0015% of the total floor of the loch. The probability of a ROV or diver submerging and alighting on one of these carcasses by chance is therefore about 1 in 67000.

Even if a ROV started at one end of the loch with a lit up search area radius of two metres and went to the other end of the loch, the odds of seeing anything is still 200 to 1 against. I am not aware of any such vehicle coming close to achieving this task in practise.

I am not saying this is the most accurate calculation, but in terms of showing the magnitude of the task, I think it has done its job. The bottom line is that it could be one, ten or a hundred carcasses lying on the loch floor or even none. It all depends on the population and its birth and death rates, though one would assume the two rates are nearly equivalent for a stable population.

However, since you or I do not know what this creature is, then it is not the Loch Ness Monster we are critiquing, but the various models put forward to explain it, and there are plenty of them! Indeed, there are monster theories that predict zero or next to zero carcasses. If anyone tells there "should be carcasses", ask what model they are using and why.

DREDGING AND OTHER TECHNIQUES

Of course, the odds could be improved by dredging up tonnes of the loch floor and panning for bone debris like gold prospectors. Sticking to our one a year carcass assumption, that gives an upper limit of 1000 carcasses buried in the sediment over the last one thousand years. If 1000 years of silt deposition gives us 2 metres of clay then the search volume is about 67 million cubic metres.

If a typical carcass takes up 10 cubic metres then the probability that a dredged up volume of 10 cubic metres contains anything is 6700 to 1 against. Of course, it is possible that the bones may generally be scattered over a wider area. Readers may wish to comment on whether that makes any difference whatsoever to the search.

Now some kind of dredging was attempted by the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau in the 1960s or 1970s. I have no idea how deep or wide that experiment went, but based on these odds, I doubt they had much chance of success.

Today, the sediments of Loch Ness are regarded as something of a scientific treasure trove for other reasons. The lack of water movement on the loch floor means sediment is laid in an orderly chronological fashion and hence provides a valuable natural journal of local and global events stretching back at least to the last glaciation and possibly beyond. In that light, it is unlikely we are going to see any serious dredging operations.

Attempts to search the loch for carcass material has been ongoing for decades, though it has tended to be haphazard, sporadic and limited to the shallower side regions. Anyone who goes down 200 metres to the floor of the loch for a sustained search is going to be susceptible to the bends without careful decompression procedures.

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that any activity on the bed of the loch may stir up the sediment into impenetrable clouds of silt. Any search would have to be careful to maintain a certain height above this volatile surface.

Underwater searches of the loch bottom certainly go as far back as Operation Deepscan in 1987 when Osprey low light video cameras were sent down to investigate sonar hits.  Hours of observation were achieved with no "monster" success. However, it is to be noted that next to nothing at all was observed on the fine silt surface. Only the occasional twig was observed, not even logs were seen. If your search can't even find a common log, how can you expect to find a Nessie skeleton?

That lack of observation of even presumed common objects was somewhat rectified in later expeditions. A number of visits to the loch with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) have occurred in subsequent years (see clip below). If a sum of the total operational hours on the loch bed could be added up over the last 25 years, one may begin to get an idea of how close or far they have got to beating the long odds.

But note, operational hours does not equate to productive searches. Most forays into the loch have been primarily for the purposes of testing equipment, not monster hunting. If the ROV merely dropped to the bottom but did not move around much and focused on testing its robot arms, that is of little use.

THE 2005 RINES SEARCH

In practise, the one expedition that caught my interest was the 2005 search by Robert Rines, his Academy of Applied Science team and others. A summary of their search was presented to the Oceans 07 conference in Aberdeen seven years ago. Armed with a side scan sonar, some ROVs and underwater video cameras, they towed the transducer down the loch at a depth of 150 feet looking for targets of interest as it mapped the bottom and sides. Presumably anything above the transducer was not recorded (hence it was not a whole loch scan as some aver).

From this, they identified over one hundred objects of interest, which brings us to the first point. Sonar does not distinguish between skeletons and known debris that litters the loch. The normal gas filled cavities that register strong signals with living animals are not present and even decomposition gases will be short lived and small at greater depth. Doubtless, there were other sonar features which were more numerous and deemed not of interest. There appears to be a high noise to signal ratio in what was essentially a loch contour inspection.

One sonar hit was described as resembling straight long neck vertebrae. When the ROV got there, it was nothing more than staggered layers of shale rock. Other hard signals from under the Horseshoe Scree proved to be massive rock cliffs and chasms dropping to 600 feet below. So the second point is that multiple echoes from the sides were causing so much ambiguity as to make interpretation of the images difficult.

It was not stated how many of the one hundred targets were located in this potentially ambiguous zone of interpretation. Perhaps they would have more luck on the flat bottom. Below is a sonar hit at 112 feet and the corresponding tree trunk that was found by the ROV. Admittedly, this was well off the maximum depth of the loch, but it demonstrates the sonar potential.

    

Does this surface mapping approach reduce the long odds mentioned above? Yes it does, depending on the resolution and interpretation of the images. Assuming the axes on the sonar image are in metres, that would suggest that objects down to our 20cm vertebrae would be on the borderline of resolution. The problem is our hypothetical bone would not be readily distinguished from a 20cm stone or lump of wood and so there would be a drain on resources investigating each one.

So, it appears that Robert Rines' strategy was to look for larger, whole carcasses where some degree of structure definition could guide precious ROV deployment time. This particular tree trunk arrangement covered a length of about 14 metres - a good monster sized target. Whether any of those one hundred or more targets was a carcass is a moot point. The point being that unless a diver or ROV is sent down and comes back with a sample, it is all conjecture.

As it turns out, one of the ROVs went AWOL and the other two had to be diverted into finding it. Because of this, only a few targets were investigated before they had to pack up and go. Some might say that the Loch Ness Hoodoo struck again but it would have been interesting to have seen what was made of these other targets. In fact, just seeing the candidate sonar images would be a start!

I would also liked to have known whether there was any targets in the deepest parts of the loch and how signal attenuation affected interpretation of sonar returns.  Also, as a control experiment, it would have been interesting to see if any seal, human, sheep, cow or deer bones were found. After all, if you can't find them, it is unlikely you will find rarer Nessie bones. All in all, this was an expedition which showed promise but events constrained them. Nevertheless, future ventures of this kind may yet be fruitful.

CONCLUSIONS

Talk of finding Loch Ness Monster skeletons has always been a bit of a subjective affair. Critics tend to issue words like "should have" or "must have" without giving any solid reasons why. I hope the numbers above give a sense of the magnitude of the task. But looking to the future, the task of going to the bottom of the loch to conduct an intensive search is an unlikely event.

Past searches have always been thin and opportunistic due to lack of funds. If that was the way it was when the climate was more receptive to a monster in the loch, what will it be like in this more sceptical environment?  Let's just say I am not holding my breath.

Monster hunters such as myself, Gordon Holmes and others cannot carry the can on this. The loch bed is hundreds of feet below us and those that have influence are not going to help us in any attempt to dredge something up. If one invested in diving equipment, then side searches along the shallower regions offers some chance of finding something. But with over 50 miles of shoreline going down to a searchable depth of 70 feet, this could become a thankless task.

But perhaps there is another route in the search for traces of the Loch Ness Monster. I am referring to the recent advances in DNA analysis. A year or so back, it was revealed that a Dutch study had managed to discover the various species resident in a number of lakes by examining their DNA traces in a sample of water. To put it in their own words:

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most endangered habitats on Earth, with thousands of animal species known to be threatened or already extinct. Reliable monitoring of threatened organisms is crucial for data-driven conservation actions but remains a challenge owing to nonstandardized methods that depend on practical and taxonomic expertise, which is rapidly declining. Here, we show that a diversity of rare and threatened freshwater animals—representing amphibians, fish, mammals, insects and crustaceans—can be detected and quantified based on DNA obtained directly from small water samples of lakes, ponds and streams.

We successfully validate our findings in a controlled mesocosm experiment and show that DNA becomes undetectable within 2 weeks after removal of animals, indicating that DNA traces are near contemporary with presence of the species. We further demonstrate that entire faunas of amphibians and fish can be detected by high-throughput sequencing of DNA extracted from pond water. Our findings underpin the ubiquitous nature of DNA traces in the environment and establish environmental DNA as a tool for monitoring rare and threatened species across a wide range of taxonomic groups.

So how applicable is this technique to the mysterious animals of Loch Ness? The first problem is to decide what constitutes Nessie DNA. Since it is not known what this might be, the analysis of any sample would have to eliminate the known species and see what is left. Anything which is unknown would clearly be of great interest and could at least be compared to species with similar DNA sequences.

The second problem is whether the vastness of Loch Ness and the potential Nessie biomass makes sampling possible. Loch Ness may be more oligotrophic than the lakes tested for this sampling technique and hence less suitable. The way ahead here would be to first of all test whether all known species are indeed detectable using this procedure.

Finally, samples would have to be taken from various locations underwater since it is also not known where these creatures are most likely to frequent. So we are talking here about samples from the open pelagic regions, the littoral, abyssal and benthic regions.

Undoubtedly, this would cost thousands of pounds to process. Who would foot that bill? The ideal people, in my opinion, would be the owners of the exhibition centres who take in revenues of millions of pounds per annum because of this mystery. Will any of this happen? At this point in time, I have no confidence it will.

Depending on your preferred model of the Loch Ness Monster, there may be zero or more bodies awaiting discovery. If no bones are found after intensive searches, that certainly puts any vertebrate model of the Loch Ness Monster under pressure. To others who believe in no monsters, paranormal monsters, invertebrate monsters or travelling monsters, this will merely serve to strengthen their position.

That Recent Sonar Image

Okay, so the recent sonar image from Jacobite Cruises was five years old. I updated the article to reflect that shortly after, but it seems the real image has been published in what was deemed a cock up. Original article here.

The image was taken off Urquhart Bay on the 27th April 2014. A zoom in of the screen grab is somewhat indistinct, but it seems to be showing a target hit at about 30 feet down which has a crescent shape that is reminiscent of the crescent shape we see for smaller fish all the time. Note that in the case of fish such as charr or salmon, it is the swim bladder that registers the strongest echo. The crescent shape is caused by the relative motion of the fish to the sonar.

This sonar image is not a small fish. What it is on an initial inspection is difficult to say and I have seen various strange sonar hits from nearly all the cruise companies now. The normal answer from them is to say it is anomalous and I guess that is where I will have to leave it myself!

Thoughts on the Loch Ness Kelpie

Ten years before anyone had heard of a Loch Ness Monster, M. Oldfield Howey published his "The Horse in Magic and Myth" in 1923. It was reviewed in the 4th April edition of the Aberdeen Press and Journal. You can read that review below to which I shall add some comments after.

Note first the comment that "Loch Ness, it seems, was a special favourite with kelpies ..." to which we add our own "Amen". In my book, "The Water Horses of Loch Ness", I collected such accounts and found them well ahead of any other loch with a tradition of the Each Uisge, I was not aware of this book, so am glad to add it to the growing list. Doubtless, others will turn up as the months and years pass.

The other point is the link between the Kelpie and the Boobrie. The shape shifting between the aquatic and the avian is only hinted at in one or two tales, but this reference reinforces that link. It makes one wonder what the folklorists thought the actual basic form of the underlying entity was?

The final thought concerns the idea of the Kelpie spending time on land. This seems as counter intuitive as the idea of a horse spending time in water. Though it is not mentioned here, the main reason for these ventures onto terra firma was as a predator lying in wait, its true intent hidden from the victim and the end as swift as the strike of a cobra.

So why would a creature which reigned supreme in the water be framed as a greater danger out of the water? Why not do the obvious and have it grabbing its hapless victims as they walked by the shore or as they worked in their boats? My own opinion is that real land sightings of these creatures were the kernel for this departure from the obvious modus operandi of a water based beast.

Mr. Howey has his own interesting theory that it was actually native, wild horses that may have seeded the story of dangerous, supernatural equines. However, this idea seems to be limited to the far extremities of the north of Scotland in Sutherland and it is not certain when such animals were ever extant in Scotland.

Though written ten years before Nessie, the two sides of the arguments are still visible. Was it a creature just beyond the ken of men or a simple case of misidentification? Some things seem destined never to change!

Ted Holiday's Little Monster

Back in the 1960s, when the modified plesiosaur theory held sway amongst Nessie believers, we had Ted Holiday and his little monster. The letter below from Ted Holiday to the Inverness Courier on August 16th 1963 laid out his general invertebrate theory and makes for interesting reading (click to enlarge).

However, in 1966, David James gave Ted an article on a new fossil find. This led to a train of thought that produced his main work, "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" two years later. That fossil was Tullimonstrum Gregarium, a strange creature found fossilised amongst the carboniferous deposits of the coal strip mines some 50 miles south of Chicago. The first find was made in 1958 by Francis Tully, to whom he lent his name to the fossil ("Tully's common monster").

The resin model below is representative of the small size of this creature which has ranged from three to fourteen inches and you can pick up the occasional fossil on eBay for a reasonable sum. Some fossils also had a suggestion of an orifice below the "paddles" which lent speculation to the "neck" passing prey to this mouth. The creature continues to puzzle palaeontologists as to which phylum it precisely belongs to.

Holiday was convinced this was the solution to the Loch Ness mystery and "bet his shirt" on it in his Orm book. The problems were obvious though and the passage of four subsequent decades of palaeontology has not altered this.

Firstly, the creature is far too small compared to the typical thirty foot of a mature Nessie and even Holiday knew talk of these fossils being larval was a bit of a stretch.

Secondly, these fossils have continued to be only found in the state of Illinois, a long way from Loch Ness.

Thirdly, these creatures have been extinct for about 300 million years.

Morphologically, the basic Tullimonstrum is no Loch Ness Monster. Only two front "paddles" are present instead of the accepted four limbs and it is a favoured interpretation that these are in fact eyes set at each end of a stiff bar structure.

Ted Holiday would try and find parallels with these bulbous structures in the Hugh Gray and Kenneth Wilson photographs as well as descriptions of appendages in such cases as the Spicers. Certainly, the two side objects in the Hugh Gray picture continue to generate speculation, but even if the Wilson picture was not a hoax, I doubt a case for any appendage could be made from it.

It should also be borne in mind that despite talk about lobes on the Spicer beast, Tullimonstrum was most likely incapable of locomotion on land. The alleged lobe on the Spicer monster is another source of speculation. The sceptic suggests a deer's head, the opposite camp has tended to it being the tip of the creature's tail.

So why was Ted Holiday so wedded to this creature, despite the difficulties? Even though the plesiosaur theory had its challenges, it certainly seemed to be far more plausible than this creature. Holiday was certainly an original and lateral thinker who was prepared to think outside of the box, but even this would seem to be a speculation too far.

Eventually, Holiday moved over to the paranormal camp, though it seems he still tried to synthesise his worm theory with this paradigm. Therein lies further problems and one wonders what Ted's final thoughts were before he died of a heart attack in 1979.

Personally, I never quite embraced Holiday's idea of a giant worm. His general proposal of a gastropod of the nudibranch family had its attractions, but the main problem was always size precedence. I don't think species of this class ever exceed one metre in size.

Meantime, reptile, amphibian or mammal advocates could at least point to something big that was living or extinct that indicated size possibilities. Nevertheless, Ted Holiday was an original thinker and if this mystery is to be solved, then it is going to require some more of that type of thinking.

New Sonar Image of Nessie?

I noticed this image appeared on the Highland News today. It was captured on the sonar equipment of the cruise ship, the Jacobite Queen which runs along the top half of Loch Ness. You can read the article here. Jacobite Cruises also mention it here, but currently without further detail.

Somewhat frustratingly, no analysis is done and so one is left wondering what is being looked at. Clearly, the crew who use the sonar are not used to seeing such a trace, hence their curiosity but also their non-commitment to an interpretation. If I may add my own observations, the "753" in the bottom left presumably refers to a depth of 753 feet which places us firmly in the deepest parts of the loch, perhaps around Urquhart Bay. In fact, the maximum depth of Loch Ness is a bit of a movable feast, Wikipedia states it as 744.6 feet but another source states 786 feet. Wrongly configured sonar can record excessive depths.

I have seen several sonar traces presented by cruise operators over the years with interpretations which ranged from "the monster" to "zooplankton on the thermocline". More often than not, a simple "I don't know" is the response. Given that we don't even know if the Loch Ness Monster has a swim bladder, lungs, inflatable humps or no gas filled sacs at all, this would seem the best response.

POSTSCRIPT:

Thanks to regular reader, Jake, it has been established this sonar image was recorded in 2009 when British actress Vicki Michelle was on the Jacobite Queen. The original story is here. Sigh! We had the old Apple satellite image and now this. How about something new, media?

The Surgeon's Photo Eighty Years On

It was eighty years to the day on the 21st April 1934 that the Daily Mail introduced the most iconic image of Nessie to the world. The Surgeon's Photograph as it was dubbed caught the imagination of the world and has ever since been the lead image for the monster.

Almost immediately, the photo gained acceptance amongst the monster hunting fraternity as Rupert T. Gould approvingly included it two months later in his work "The Loch Ness Monster". That was the way it pretty much stayed as Constance Whyte gave it prominence in the 1950s as did Dinsdale in his later works and into a plethora of authors throughout the 1970s and beyond.

As the photograph was scrutinized for further hidden clues, things became somewhat strained as Dinsdale thought he saw a concentric ripple near the object indicating further monster activity. Meanwhile, Ted Holiday, in his book "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" claimed to see monstrous appendages in the shadows which bolstered his invertebrate theory of Nessie. The less well known monster author, Edward Armstrong, made a somewhat better effort in claiming a print defect was in fact a seagull flying past the monster, thus making it about seven foot high. To complete the list, there was also the story from the 1990s by Nicholas Witchell of whiskers being visible on a computer enhancement of the photograph.

Sceptics may chortle at these failed attempts, but in their desire to look more clever than they really are, they too made themselves look a bit silly in hindsight. Roy Mackal, in his book "The Monsters of Loch Ness" pronounced the photograph to be no more than a water fowl. Maurice Burton decided it was perhaps an otter's tail caught in the act of diving, whilst the Linnean Society of London decided the object was a tree trunk thrust to the surface by erupting gases.

To be fair to Tim Dinsdale, he cooled a bit on the photograph in later years, but it was the research of another monster believer, Alastair Boyd, along with David Martin that finally exposed the story behind the picture nearly sixty years after its creation. It seems the whole affair was a model neck stuck to a toy submarine concocted by Marmaduke Wetherell, Christian Spurling, Maurice Chambers and Kenneth Wilson.

I won't go over the details of this oft repeated story, but suffice to say the case is closed for me and the majority of Loch Ness Monster researchers. Some unanswered questions remain, such as the nature of the less well known second photograph of the object submerging. To this day, there is no satisfactory explanation for this, and given the various failed sceptical theories about the first photograph, I wouldn't assume they have a grasp of the situation either. Critics may often accuse "believers" of accepting any old evidence, but I think that ad hominem has been disproved in this case (well, perhaps some still accept the picture as evidence).

But what of the man himself, Robert Kenneth Wilson? In an article from the ANZ Journal of Surgery published in December 2007, some more facts are revealed about him. Born on the 26th January 1899 into a medical family, he developed a love of firearms and joined the Royal Artillery in 1917, only to be wounded in action on the Western Front in 1918 (which left him with a slight limp for life).

Gaining the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1926, he established a practise in Queen Anne Street near Harley Street, specialising in gynaecology. His expertise in firearms led him to be an expert witness in court trials and his expanding collection occupied three walls of a special room at their Highgate residence. The outbreak of war compelled him to donate the guns to the Metropolitan Police as personal armouries were outlawed. He also wrote a book on the subject of firearms.

The Nessie hoax with his shooting partner, Maurice Chambers, was a mixed affair to Wilson. The Daily Mail bought the picture from Chambers for £100 (over £6000 in today's money), but the British Medical Association fined Wilson £1000 for allowing his name to be associated with the picture! This was deemed as advertising and therefore improper for what his wife Gwen deemed a "silly prank" to their children.

It was claimed in this 2007 article that Maurice Chambers had confessed to all in his will after he died in 1944. I have examined a copy of the will obtained through the usual means, but have found no such confession.

Wilson again fought for his country in the Second World War, seeing action in France, Germany and the Far East. For these he was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and the Royal Orange Order of the Netherlands.

Having moved to Australasia in the 1950s to continue his medical practice (picture below), he retired in the mid-1960s after a stint with the Australian Petroleum Company. Our short story ends with Kenneth Wilson dying on the 6th June 1969 in Melbourne from oesophageal cancer.

Kenneth Wilson was obviously a brave and talented man, but even he and his co-conspirators could not summon the courage to come clean on a photograph that unexpectedly swept like wildfire around the world. Such is the power of the appeal of the Loch Ness Monster and eighty years on we look back on his part in this appeal with mixed feelings.

Nessie on Land: Predator

It is back to this blog's occasional series on land sightings and there is one interesting aspect to the Loch Ness Monster on land and that is its role as hunter. Of the thirty five alleged land cases I know about, three are reported with an indication of prey being carried away.

Now sightings of a large creature in Loch Ness are interesting, stories of this monster lumbering about on land are even more fascinating. But stories of the monster helping itself to cows, sheep, deer and other animals around the loch boggles the mind and may make some a bit wary of  wild camping along secluded parts of the shore! Critics have often complained there are not enough fish in the loch to sustain a group of large predators, but what about on land? It is now time to indulge in some wild speculation!

The first case of these three is the famous story of the Spicers, though the suggestion of predation here is not so clear. George Spicer had reported seeing something like a lamb on the back of the creature but this was transformed into a tale of the monster carrying off a lamb in its mouth. However, the Spicers had never claimed to have seen the head of the creature. The picture below by the talented Gino D'Achille sums up how the media culture overlaid this sighting into a story of a prehistoric monster carrying off some hapless livestock.

As an aside, I remembered this painting from a book I owned in my youth and it was only a few days ago that I found the book in a charity shop in Edinburgh for a couple of quid. It was Mysterious Monsters by Daniel Farson for those who collect these things.

The second such story is attributed to a Mrs. Eleanor Price-Hughes in 1933. The oldest source for this story comes from sea serpent researcher Oudemans in 1934 who wrote an article on the Loch Ness Monster with these words roughly translated from the Dutch:

1933 (no date). Mrs. ELEANOR PRICE-HUGHES, Stanford, Surrey.

Her husband saw it, coming from a thicket at Drumnadrochit and disappear into the loch, with what appeared to be a baby in its mouth; are not baby seals pinkish?

Commander Gould wrote to me, dated 5th June 1934 thinking it was a mere hoax. On what grounds? Because he believes that the Loch Ness creature is like a giant salamander. This "flesh-colored baby" was probably a big .... ?

The last word is lost on my copy, so could be anything that lives by the loch side (certainly not baby seals). So it was not Mrs. Price Hughes, but her husband who allegedly witnessed this event. I suspect the original source for this story lies in an article or letter written to an English newspaper at the time. It appears that Oudemans accepted this report but Gould did not.

Since the loch is not visible from Drumnadrochit, this story is more likely to have taken place around the rivers feeding into Urquhart Bay just beyond the village. I have scouted around this area several times which is the location for several land sightings. There are pathways winding around the area, though other parts need a bit of an effort to get to.

Of course, the mention of the emotive words "baby in its mouth" may well have motivated Gould to have pronounced this a hoax. Portraying the Loch Ness Monster as a man-eater excites the imagination, but would it do much good for tourism or credible research?

One sceptic suggested this story may have been a seal with a pink salmon in its mouth or a cow with its pink tongue hanging out. However, the credibility of these suggestions is predicated on the witness catching only the briefest and inconclusive of glimpses of the creature. The text of the report suggests otherwise. The creature was seen to emerge from a thicket and disappear into the loch. Clearly, it would help to see the original account, before forming a better judgement.

The third account is similar to the Price-Hughes story. The story is found in Paul Harrison's "The Encyclopedia of the Loch Ness Monster" and though he does not state the source, it seems clear it was a local newspaper report. An anonymous witness described as a "very trustworthy man" was driving north of Foyers at about 5:30 in the morning of 15th May 1971. It is then stated that he saw a large grey animal appear from the woods to his left dragging itself into the loch. In its mouth were parts of an animal, possibly a cow. It was described as lizard like, 30 foot long and 6 foot tall with an oily sheen on its skin.

Sunrise is at about 5am at that time of year and the driver must have been driving south for the creature to appear from his left. I have no idea what kind of livestock grazed around that area in 1971, but if this story was true, it could equally be a deer.

So that is it, three reports or more likely two mentioning a Loch Ness Monster as a land hunter. It is not much to go on, but are they indicative of a behavioural pattern of the creature that is barely known?

First it has to be said that aquatic creatures hunting land based creatures is no big deal. The YouTube clip below of crocodiles taking out gazelles will be familiar to watchers of wildlife documentaries.





Looking more closely at flipper-based creatures, who can forget the spectacular shots of killer whales driving themselves onto land to capture seals?





On a more sedate level but perhaps more relevant is this intriguing clip of catfish sneaking up on pigeons for an unexpected meal.

No doubt there are other examples, but I think I have got the point across that certain species of water based animals are not limited to what they can find in the water to survive. But how relevant is this to the Loch Ness Monster? 

Clearly, there are no reports of any such displays of predation at the loch shoreline. The stories we have here are of the beast moving inland to seek out prey whilst these clips have the predator staying within its preferred domain.

If there is anything to this aspect of the Loch Ness Monster, then it has to be a behavioural trait that occurs at night time. I have already stated my belief elsewhere that Nessie is largely a creature of the dark.  This is borne out by the fact that a higher proportion of land sightings occur in hours of darkness.  

But the question has to be asked why the Loch Ness Monster would take to land at all? What motivates any creature to behave in certain ways? Since animals are primarily driven by the instinct to survive, I would suggest this boils down to the matter of food. The other factor is reproduction, but I see that as a less likely candidate here. In other words, it is not just these two or three stories about the monster with food in its mouth that are relevant, the whole genre of land sightings has "food" written all over it.

Now the first thing to dismiss here is the idea of Nessie chasing cows and sheep around the fields of Loch Ness. It is just not on when you consider the nature of the beast. The motion of the creature on land is described variously as waddling, lumbering and jerking. I suspect even a pregnant cow could easily evade a land bound Nessie.

No, the modus operandi must function along the lines of the animals mentioned above. Just as  crocodiles, orcas and catfish cannot pursue gazelles, seals or pigeons on land, neither can the Loch Ness Monster. Our little gedankenexperiment must also embrace the concept of the ambush.

The ambush can operate in two domains, at the shoreline, like other aquatic predators, or further inland. In both cases, our dark skinned creature lies inert in the darkness waiting for its quarry. At the shoreline, it lies in the shallows as deer come to the loch to drink. Inland, it lies amongst the trees, indistinguishable from the rocks around it.

In this imagined scenario, the long neck of the beast comes into its own. The deer approaches the peat stained waters seeking to slake its thirst. Unaware of the dark mass about six feet away, it is suddenly seized in the leg by a long, sleek neck that thrusts from that black lump. The last thing the deer sees are the receding trees as it is dragged into the loch to a watery death. The ancient Kelpie legend of victims being taken into the loch takes on a new meaning.

The inland version of this is similar in its execution, though since more energy and risk is required in this venture, it makes it seems a less likely episode to me. Not impossible, just less likelier than staying at the shoreline waiting for the victims to arrive. Having said that, the night time hunt by the shore is less likely to be observed by potential witnesses from the road.

As I said, it is speculation, but if there is a Loch Ness Monster, it is a possible one. How much food could land based creatures provide for a monster diet? I cannot say, but an entire deer is a major meal, more than a goodly number of fish.

And what does this mean in practise for the seasoned monster hunter? The frequency of land sightings is down over the decades. Increased fencing, thicker foliage and noisier roads all act as deterrents. But I already have my night vision equipment, I just need to stake out the appropriate beach at the dead of night. Just be wary of those dark rocks which don't quite look right .....