The Latest Sonar Contact (September 2024)

 

Almost four years to the day, the Loch Ness Cruises company published another sonar image of interest at the beginning of this month. The actual incident was on Sunday 22nd September. This is the account as described by the Daily Telegraph on the 4th October (original link):

I found Loch Ness monster on ship’s sonar, claims captain

Large object spotted by underwater technology reignites speculation about mythical prehistoric creature

A captain has claimed he found the Loch Ness monster using the sonar system on his boat. Shaun Sloggie, 30, was preparing his Spirit of Loch Ness pleasure boat to sail last month when a large object was spotted on the vessel’s underwater sensors. The outline, which was detected nearly 100 metres beneath the surface of the Highland loch, bears an eerie resemblance to a plesiosaur, which many have speculated could be the reptile group the fabled Loch Ness Monster belongs to. The footage has reignited speculation that Nessie, the creature alleged to inhabit the large body of water near Inverness, might really exist.

“I said: ‘What the hell is that?’” recalled Mr Sloggie of the sighting on Sept 22. “It was bigger than anything else I’ve ever seen. We’ve seen all sorts of fish that shouldn’t be here, but this? This was different. You should have felt the chills on the boat.”

Speaking to the Daily Mail, he added: “I’ve worked here for nine years and never seen anything like it. And sonar doesn’t lie, the boat hasn’t been on five whisky distillery tours before going out on the loch, it’s just doing its job.”

Mr Sloggie, who works for Cruise Loch Ness, said the object remained visible for two to three minutes and that he and maritime pilot Liam McKenzie, 29, were able to take a screenshot before it disappeared from the dashboard. He said it appeared in different colours, which are thought to indicate pockets of air and heat signatures which would suggest the object was alive. A previous sonar image captured on Loch Ness in 2020 was said to be the most “compelling” evidence yet of the existence of Nessie.

Mr Sloggie said the previous image was believed to show a creature “eight to 10 metres [26 to 32ft] long and one metre [3ft] wide” but speculated that the new object was “a lot bigger than that”.

The image was captured while the boat was close to the mouth of the loch, which Mr Sloggie said was the ideal location for a large predator to catch salmon and other fish going in and out.

“There are fish in the loch that shouldn’t be here. There are prehistoric creatures living in the loch and unknown codes of DNA, so there is room for mystery. This could change the angle of science on the loch. But how do you find out what it is? I’ve always known there’s something there. What it is, is a mystery. But it definitely springs open people’s imaginations. It’s not just about tourism, there’s real science in studying the loch.”

The shape of the sonar contact certainly stirred the imagination as some saw the shape of the classic plesiosaur in the picture. Indeed, who would not admit to seeing the long neck to the right, progressing to a bulky body with indications of flippers below and finally what looks like a short tail to the far left?

As to size, Mr. Sloggie offered an estimate bigger than “eight to 10 metres", which was the estimated length of the object in the prior sonar contact of 2020. He was later interviewed on TalkTV where he revealed that the sonar data had been sent off to the equipment manufacturers for expert analysis. We await the result of that investigation, but some were not content with waiting for the experts. Over at the Loch Ness Exploration Facebook page, we have this comment:

In fact, Dick has been busy on this topic trying to explain it away. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion and it seems not a few on these forums await Dick's verdict when such events arise. He latches onto some words Sloggie made in the Daily Express version of events (link) where it is said that the strange image "flashed up on the sonar on September 22 this year as they prepared for the arrival of another vessel."

Dick then concluded that reflections from the sonar device on the other vessel led to interference on Mr. Sloggie's sonar device and a compromised display image. So is it a matter of case closed, move on and no need for the manufacturers to get involved? Not quite, because Dick has not completed the enquiry in a scientific manner. He proposed a theory, but he did not test the value of that theory.

Since he does not seem willing to complete the scientific process himself, I will do it for him. Firstly, it has to be asked how close the other vessel was when the sonar image was seen? The answer is we do not know - based on the text quoted. Another image from the Daily Mail article shows what appears to be a GPS location image of the vessel Mr. Sloggie was on.

Given that the sonar depth of the object was given as about 300 feet, that is a depth consistent with bathymetric readings for that area of the loch. Why would his boat be waiting for the arrival of another boat from there? The likely explanation is that the narrowness of the canal into Fort Augustus meant another boat was ahead of them going into the canal. 

The next question is how close do two vessels have to be to one another to produce meaningful interference? Does Dick know the answer to that question? I would guess pretty close given the size of the sonar cone beams. An important side question might be the minimum distance the authorities require between boats to avoid the possibility of a collision.

Moreover, interference requires that the two transducers have to be operating at the same frequency. The transducers are configured to tune into a narrow frequency band and looking at the bottom left of the sonar image, the boat was set to 200KHz. Note also the text "B260/M260" beside it which indicates the possibility of two transducers, one attached under the hull and the other on the inside of the hull. That may mean there are two beams of different widths complementing one another, but I do not have enough information to be sure of that.

So, the matter is far from closed on whether another vessel disrupted the sonar input and I am unclear as to whether the vessel used CHIRP multi-frequency sonar. In fact, interference seems unlikely consulting the words of others on the Internet. One website said this on proximity of other vessels:

When two or more echo sounders are operating in close proximity and at the same or similar frequency, it is possible for each to receive false returns from the others transducer. In such cases the operator will see noise and clutter, false returns, dotted lines, multiple bottoms or other video anomalies on the screen. This is most common in and around marinas or harbors where there may be multiple fish finders operating at the same frequencies.

This is accompanied by a drawing of such a display:

Does the Sloggie image show such patterns of interference? I would say it does not and that would make sense to me. After all, why would the intersection of two large beams result in changes to only a small area of the display and not affect any other part of it? The object of interest occupies less than 1% of the entire water column on view, surely we should be seeing more than that.

But herein lies a problem. For decades, such sonar images have been dismissed along the lines of corrupted sonar signals. We get words such as reflection, refraction and interference bandied about, but that implies such people have conducted calibrated tests to produce these images so as to use them when assessing future images.

In fact, the remit of the Loch Ness Exploration run by my colleague Alan McKenna is to record instances of common objects and effects producing hydrophone signatures which can be used to evaluate future recordings. I would suggest this extends to sonar. But why re-invent the wheel? Go to Adrian Shine and Dick Raynor to get their sonar data library on images known to have been produced by such sonar effects.

Now as for that tantalizing plesiosaur shape of the image, Dick further says:

The horizontal axis is indeed scaled to time, but it is not true to say that it provides no information on form or shape. I was wondering if the cruise boat had Raymarine's 3D visualization tool installed and ever use it? This is from Raymarine's Facebook page:

The lower 2D image may initially look like a jumble, but it is actually not far from what it actually was when reconstructed in 3D. Of course, it helped that the wreck was stationary on the sea bed. We do not know whether the object from Loch Ness was moving or just suspended in the lower depths. So, I await what Raymarine have to say about this and it would be great if some kind of 3-D rendering was possible.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

    

Nicholas Witchell and the Natural History Museum

 

Anyone with an interest in the Loch Ness Monster will know that 1975 was a pretty manic year. Much has been written since about those murky underwater pictures taken by Robert Rines and his AAS team back then and the furore they caused. The Times newspaper recently published an article on Nicholas Witchell's exuberant part in that media frenzy. The article is shown below.

What we learn in this article is how Nicholas Witchell laid upon the experts at the Natural History Museum the duty to classify the creature and take the necessary steps to back up the government in protecting it. Leaked excerpts from his then forthcoming book led to the doors of the museum being assailed by the media for more news.

Witchell later apologised to them for his over-enthusiasm. Years later he made the leap from enthusiast par excellence to complete unbeliever when he replied with the words "Absolutely not." to the question as to whether he believed there were unknown animals in Loch Ness. He then replies in a paradoxical way by saying he was still puzzled as to what those "many decent people" had seen. Can you believe there are no unknown animals in the loch yet not offer an explanation as to what they saw?

Adrian Shine is quoted and he is in less doubt than Witchell and even warned him of his doubts concerning the pictures. They only showed silt clouds and a tree stump and this was "blindingly obvious" to boot. We can agree with Adrian over the "gargoyle head" and the tree stump found, but it is a non-sequitur to conclude the rest are therefore misidentification.

The above picture still stands in my opinion. Was it a tree stump or a cloud of silt? I don't think so. Was it a pattern of debris on the loch bed? So where is the rest of the loch bed when it is more logical to conclude it is out there in the water which surrounds it? Attempts will then be made to say it is smaller than one may presume. Those calculations were done at the time and concluded it was no small object.

This for me means that nearly fifty years on, this segment of the Loch Ness mystery is not over until the sceptics offer more than simplistic explanations.

Comments can be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

 

Bumping Into Nessie?

Stories of alleged collisions with the Loch Ness Monster are a rare class of report indeed and normally involve the larger vessels that have traversed the loch over the decades. But like the proverbial bus, you wait a long time for one to turn up and suddenly two arrive. Given this unusual rarity (whether it was Nessie or not), I am noting them down in the "incident log" or should I say incident blog? First up is Duncan Roberts as printed in the Daily Record dated 18th September 2024 (link here).

A swimmer in Scotland has claimed he felt something brush up against him in Loch Ness. Duncan Roberts, 39, from Australia was bracing the icy waters of the iconic Scottish loch for a charity challenge. The daredevil was swimming to the deepest part of Loch Ness when the chilling encounter occurred. He commented:

"The depth and the darkness of that water plays tricks with your mind. There is some weird energy at play in that water. And during my swim I experienced a bump half way across. It was something big. The water is pitch black and I had my eyes closed a lot of the time as the depth and darkness terrified me so I didn't see anything. I just felt it, a big thud in the chest."

Speaking to What's The Jam, Roberts added: 

"I think anyone who swims in the deep part of the loch is lying if they say they haven't thought about the monster. I was focused on getting across as quickly as possible so the hit was a shock. I was already nervous enough before the swim. If I knew something was going to bump into me halfway across I would definitely have been having second thoughts."

Roberts is one of only five people in the world to have skateboarded 870 miles around Iceland. However, he stated that the swim across the fabled Scottish loch was far tougher. He said: 

"It was one of the toughest things I've ever done mentally. I live in Australia and surf all the time often with Great White Sharks. I was way more scared of getting in the Loch Ness water. It was one of the toughest things I've ever done mentally. I flew all the way from Australia so it would've been tough to back out. The loch is beautiful but definitely has a vibe about it that makes you freeze at the thought of swimming in it. Not to mention that it is roughly six to 10C.

It also has the sensation of pulling you under a little. I think because it is fresh water and so deep. It is very different to salt water. I was hoping to not have an encounter. The deep dark water alone is scary enough, let alone worrying about what else might lurk below. There were definitely moments of awe and beauty as I caught glimpses of the length of the loch while I took breaths during the swim. But I wanted to get to the other side at Urquhart. Swimming into the castle shores was pretty magical."

However, the swim was only half the challenge. Roberts then got out of the loch and donned a kilt. The daredevil proceeded to climb Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Great Britain. Once at the summit, he played the bagpipes and climbed back down all in one day.

Then we move onto the second "collision" but this time involving two canoes. This is taken from the Daily Star dated 24th September 2024 (link here).

A father and son duo claim they were attacked by the infamous 'Nessie' while canoeing on Loch Ness. Geoff Potts, an experienced guide, and his son Chris were each paddling in their own canoes when they were both struck from below. The sudden impact almost caused Chris to lose grip of his paddle. Geoff, 53, and Chris, 24, are no strangers to the famous loch, having canoed there numerous times, but this time was different. Geoff shared:

"I guide canoe trips on the Great Glen. I've done around 40 or so in the last few years. A few weeks ago while I was out with my son Chris something bumped my canoe hard from below. And when I mentioned it to Chris he said he hit something with his paddle which nearly took it out of his hand. I didn't see anything. I just felt a big thump against the bottom of my boat. In nearly 40 Great Glen crossings I've never experienced it. Chris saw nothing too but he also hit something hard with his paddle which nearly made him drop it. I've completed around 40 crossings since 2021 including the first recorded non stop solo crossing that I'm aware of in an open canoe."

He added that the impact felt different from hitting a log.

"Loch Ness has an impressive presence about it - I mean it's huge, As I've completed it so many times it was confusing to get a thud which sounded dull. I have hit logs before but this was not like hitting wood at all. You immediately wonder what it was. But the water is so dark you can only see down a foot or so."

Looking at Duncan Roberts first, I was not certain what swimming route he took, although it looks like he started at Dores and swam diagonally down loch to Urquhart Castle for a swim of about five and a half miles. Using Google maps to draw a line to his finishing point at Urquhart Castle allows us to mark the rough halfway mark where he says he collided with the object.

Duncan talked about the uncertainty of swimming in a loch with a reputed monster in it. He certainly made me think of the old phrase "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know". Where the devils he knew where the great white sharks he has swum near and the unknown one was lurking in Loch Ness. Whatever he may have been hit by, a primal psychology can kick in which leads to a surge of emotion and perhaps confusion.

But for some reason he doesn't actually tell us how he reacted or what went through his mind. What if the next bump proved to be more violent? Dare he look down into the water to see what the object was? The closest we get is that if he had known this would happen, he would have had second thoughts. 

Looking at the map, that right turn at the halfway point is a third of a mile swim to shore as opposed to the remaining 2.5 to 3 miles to the castle. If you have received a worrying shunt, does your more primal self not scream to take the shortcut or by sheer effort of the will you plough on, telling yourself it was just a tree log and that no one has ever been killed by such a beast? If I thought something huge had put in a first hit, I would be doing a rapid right angle turn towards the nearest shore!

So what could have hit him? He merely says it was "a big thud in the chest", but pronounced enough for him to say "it was something big". Nothing was seen and perhaps he didn't want to look down into the inky depths. It would have been useful to know if this was a short, sharp collision or more prolonged, like something rasping along your mid rift. It sounds more like a sudden event to me, as if something came up vertically from below and then receded back down.

Was the "big thud" bigger than a thud from a pike, ferox trout, log or seal? A thud can be as much a product of speed as mass, but again how extended was the "thud"? It was unlikely a seal was in Loch Ness and if it was a log, I would have thought it more likely that he would have collided with it head first? If there had been heavy rainfall a day or two before then there could be a fair bit of debris floating in the loch, though generally nothing one could call "big".

I think I need to ask Duncan some more questions and I noticed he was posting on Facebook and he himself is not excluding larger fish as an explanation. But I move onto the canoeists. This is certainly on the face of it a more interesting story as we have two experienced canoeists who have some credentials as regards familiarity with the paths along the loch surface. One gets the impression they had gone over this route before and certainly no experienced canoeist is going to go into shallows where a barely submerged rock is going to hit them and cause some serious damage.

The sequence of events looks like it collided with Geoff's canoe first and then his son hit the object with his paddle just as Geoff was asking Chris about it. I have taken a few pictures of canoeists with my trap cameras and they tend to travel in a line, one in front of the other which would suggest to me that the object was moving in the opposite direction to the canoes, hitting Geoff's at the front first. Whatever the story, it was lacking in detail and so I contacted Geoff and/or Chris Potts on their commercial adventures website with more questions. The answer I got back from someone saying they were Chris Potts was:

This never happened…. I’m still wondering why on earth my photo is in the newspaper!!

Okay ... so I noticed that Geoff was already on social media telling his story on Alan McKenna's Loch Ness Exploration Facebook group. He stated this happened two weeks before his posting on the 14th September, placing it on about the 1st September. He joined the group on June 21st 2024 and further commented on the 26th that "My money is on a large freshwater sturgeon". So is he saying his canoe collided with a sturgeon? Just in case anyone didn't know, there are no sturgeons in Loch Ness.

Duncan Roberts had joined the group on the 10th September, three days before he posted. This leads to a few questions. What held up Duncan for four months from publicizing this story? Geoff had been on the group since June 21st without a word as far as I can see, then has his alleged encounter on the 1st September, but says nothing on the group until yet another rare collision story coincidentally turns up 12 days later from Duncan? I welcome any corrections to the timeline as I see it.

Does telling potential canoe trip customers that you might collide with Nessie a negative or a positive for bookings? Maybe it is time to move on from these accounts for other reasons. If it was one of the creatures, then such collisions stories are, as said already, rarer than rare. Other accounts I have gathered over the years are boat collisions from 1978 and 1943 which I detailed in this article. The curious thing is that the owner of the 1978 boat was called Stephen Roberts, surely not related to our swimmer, Duncan Roberts? I also covered an article from 1969 regarding the Vickers Pisces submarine being jolted by unidentified objects (link here).

There is also Alex Campbell's story about how he was out in his rowing boat when something suddenly heaved up his vessel from the water below and then settled back down again. You then have speculations about other boating accidents being caused by the monster with no one at the time suggesting anything other than normal but tragic circumstances.

That is four stories from the past eighty years prior to these two recent accounts. There may be other stories out there and one must point out that none of these accounts mention seeing the cause of their collision apart from the 1943 story from Lt Commander Francis Russell Flint. So that gives a huge gap in such accounts since 1978.

Animals in general do not go out of their way to crash into other objects, it tends to reduce their health points, so to speak. But animals do collide with boats as has been seen on various phone videos of whales breaching and dropping onto nearby vessels and so on. They also collide when they deliberately attack prey or competitors.

Under what circumstance would a Loch Ness Monster crash into something or somebody? Maybe that dark peat stained water is too opaque at times? Or maybe the given creature was sick and disoriented? Or perhaps it just wasn't paying attention and was distracted by a tasty passing salmon? Since 1978, they seem to have managed to avoid hitting anything, even a Nessie won't win an argument with a Jacobite Cruise Boat.

If Duncan or Geoff wish to make further comments, they can join the conversation at the link below.

Comments can be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Alan Wilkins and his 1975 Nessie Photograph

 

Another Nessie fan emailed me recently asking if I had any of Alan Wilkins photographs which were taken in July 1975. I recalled that at the time, as a teenager, I had seen one such picture on the front page of the Sunday Express, cut it out to keep, but today I had no clue where it had gone. So the hunt began ending with me finding a scan of it in my files and some other items.

Regarding Alan himself, he was one of the understated monster researchers during those heady days in the 1970s. He was in fact the man who helped coin the term "Nessiteras Rhombopteryx" back in 1975 using his knowledge of Latin as a classics teacher in the south of Scotland. A letter written from Sir Peter Scott to Alan in November 1975 shows the conversation that was ongoing before the famous unveiling of the Rines/AAS underwater photographs a month later (my thanks to Howard Pate for this image).

The main reference to Alan Wilkins' experience on the day he took the above photo is laid out in an article in the Field magazine published on the 27th November 1975 entitled "The Monster: Four Vital Sightings".  This recounts what was an unexpected day for Alan on the 18th July 1975, when he had not one but four sightings in the space of 15 hours. This began at 7:20am, one and a half miles south of Invermoriston, where he saw a long dark line appear on the surface which was followed by a black shape which submerged in a swirl of water. However, this was observed at about a distance of two miles through 10x50 binoculars (Alan's sketch below).

Later at 10:20am, Wilkins reported seeing what looked like an inflatable boat moving in the haze off Fasagh, two and a quarter miles away. He took some photographs and a few seconds of cine film. Sketches based on the photos are shown below. On seeing the photos, Alan classed it as a two humped object changing into a one humped object.

Three minutes later at 10:15am, an object appeared in the same area, which his wife through the binoculars, first described as a man in a boat, but which then submerged, re-appeared and progressed across the loch. A sketch of that is shown below.

By the time Alan had refocused the binoculars, he observed a line of three humps as sketched below. A man from the next caravan in the camping site also confirmed seeing three humps with his own binoculars as did a couple called Roger Selwyn and Sylvia Williams. Wilkins surmised the distance between the single hump and the other two suggested two animals.

These objects progressed for another fifteen minutes until at a range of 3450-3800 yards away. A further burst of cine film was taken and this particular sighting lasted 28 minutes. A second article was published in the next Field magazine on the 4th December detailing the other two sightings. At 9:25pm, Alan saw a black patch in an area of boiling water and two triangular humps surfacing and then submerging. This was also seen by two of the previous witnesses and is sketched below.

The final sighting occurred at 10:25pm when a series of three humps was again seen and proceeding out of Invermoriston Bay about one mile away under the light of the moon. Wilkins watched this via his binoculars mounted on a tripod. The humps progressed before turning at a right angle to travel away from them. He estimated them as being about four feet high and as one animal as they moved in unison. His sketch is shown below and I think this was when he took the photograph at the top of this article.

At this point he observed some interesting transitions as the humps changed from three to two, back to three, to two, to one and so on. Another previous witness, Sylvia Williams, also observed these, calling out the same changes as Alan in unison. Thus concluded the sightings which were then investigated by members of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, including a certain Dick Raynor who tape recorded eyewitness testimonies. Tim Dinsdale and others accepted the genuineness of the reports.

Not surprisingly, considering the previously stated large distances and evening hours, most of the photos and cine film were rendered inconclusive, except for one or two images. A set of some images, plus some taken by co-witness, Roger Selwyn, were sent to the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, USA for image enhancement - in the similar alleged manner as the 1972 "Flipper" picture. These would then be passed onto JARIC for further analysis.

What the outcome of those processes were is not known, but the LNIB accepted the genuineness of the sightings. And with that, Alan Wilkins seems to disappear from the Loch Ness scene. I see no reference to any further activities by him in Rip Hepple's newsletter. The Rines underwater pictures would soon swamp any attention his own pictures may have received and it seems he eventually moved onto other things. What did he eventually make of his sightings as time progressed? After all, at up to two miles away, one would normally hold such accounts lightly, if he had not employed binoculars and taken some images.  

And what did he think the creature was back then and what does he think now? I imagine, if he is still with us, he would be aged around ninety years old. With all this in mind, I have attempted on several occasions by letter and phone to contact Alan without success. I believe he still lives in the Dumfries and Galloway area and has spent recent years in the subject of Greek and Roman history, publishing works such as on Roman military equipment. I even found a more recent photo of the man himself.

So, Alan, if you read this, get in touch with me. I would love to speak to you.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Frank Searle's Last Photograph

 

The year 1976 was a mixed year for Frank Searle. First he had seen the publication of his book "Nessie: Seven Years in search of the Monster". This was a small but certainly not a modest work packed with photographs claiming to be the best ever taken of the creature. While he was basking in the publicity of that book, a bomb dropped on it, transforming into a work that no one now takes seriously.

It was no coincidence that the expose by the Scottish Sunday Mail happened just weeks after his book was published, designed to cause maximum mayhem in the unique world of Frank Searle. There was no comeback and even Searle's attempts to dismiss its claims were doomed when the two images below  performed the slam-dunk. The image on the right was a postcard of the time showing a brontosaurus or similar dinosaur. The left hand image was taken by Frank just five months before his book's publication. No doubt this was a piece of great timing to boost those book sales.

Despite all this, Frank tried to get an updated version of his book published three years later in 1979. However, the threat of litigation by those he panned in the book was enough to kill off that particular project and after this Frank Searle began to fade into obscurity with him finally leaving the loch to go treasure hunting across Britain in about 1984. But before that, we had the last hurrah of Frank's final "Nessie" photograph.

You can see it at the top of this article. It was said to be taken in August 1976, which was too late for his first book and too late to be taken seriously by any potential buyers. Frank relates the event of August 22nd in his unpublished work:

Among my visitors the previous evening had been school teacher Maureen Butler from Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire and her friend Sara Hanson from Harpenden. They had a small car and were spending a couple of weeks camping around Scotland. After looking at my display and putting the usual questions, they asked where they might camp for the night. I directed them to a spot with easy access to the beach near Foyers Point.

Next morning I was out on the point with my cameras at first light. About 6.45 a.m., the two ladies came walking alone the beach, saw me there and stopped for a chat. And got a sighting. Just like that! The beast broke the surface about 400 yards away. What looked like a double "hump", but was probably the back and part of the neck. The light wasn't too good, but the picture I obtained distinctly shows the two "humps" and the far bank in the background. And it was in colour. Maureen and Sara both had small cameras, but they thought about using them as much as they thought about swimming out after the beast. They were far too excited.

And once more, that element of luck. This was my first sighting since February 26th, and I'd put in about a thousand hours of watching since them. The two ladies had been in the area since the previous evening and had actually been with me on the beach for about five minutes. In fact, if I had not directed them to that camping place, they wouldn't have been there at all.

I don't think any real assessment of this account is required as it did not happen the way it was told. Frank names two women as co-eyewitnesses and even gives their towns of residence and names one as a school teacher. I suspect this was a tactic used in order to give any photographs greater credibility. Either that or they were really there. In that regard, I wrote an earlier article on Frank's 1972 pictures that got him the widest publicity (link here). There he also had a female school teacher as a co-eyewitness, but this one was from Australia.

A look around the Internet revealed nothing about any of these three women, now or back then. That does not conclusively prove he made up some bit players for his stories, it may be more subtle than that. However, I don't accept that they didn't follow his example and employ their own cameras. Moreover, I would expect it to be more likely than not that a local newspaper in Hemel Hempstead or Harpenden would eventually carry the extraordinary story of these two ladies.

A zoom in of the object makes one wonder how the deed was done. Perhaps a dark overlay like the infamous brontosaurus postcard or perhaps some simple item planted in the water? We may never know and as I have said before, if Frank really did put in that thousand hours of watching and more every year, he should have seen something. But as we know, anything genuine has now been long lost in the deafening noise of the fakes.

Was this indeed Frank's last photo? Maybe it wasn't, but it is the last one mentioned in his unpublished work. Between October 1972 and February 1976, Frank claimed to have photographed the creature on at least six occasions. That is on average one event every seven months. Then the period of over three years between February 1976 and the end of 1979 produced this one single photograph. The reason for this seems clear enough. Once the newspaper exposed his works as fraudulent in the Summer of 1976, no one was going to buy his pictures, so why should he go to the bother of making any more?

I would speculate that this double hump picture was a previous "stock photo" which Frank pulled out of his portfolio and he dated it to just after the newspaper expose as an act of defiance as if to say "I am still getting those Nessie pictures!". A brief mention should be made of another alleged photo Frank took around this time when it was claimed in a documentary that Searle had offered a newspaper a photograph of Nessie but with a flying saucer in the same picture! I haven't seen this item and needless to say, the newspaper editor declined the offer.

In closing, I wondered if those fake witnesses were just random names or was there a rationale to their selection? Why pick Maureen Butler, Sara Hanson or Carole Kennard? I even thought they might be anagrams for something like "Monster hoax by Frank S." in true "Nessiteras Rhombopteryx" fashion! I will leave that one for the puzzle lovers amongst us.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Quest 2024 and Webcam Images

Back at the end of May, it was off once again to Loch Ness for a bit of Nessie Hunting and a bit of Nessie Fellowship. To borrow from a TV program about another mystery, it was the Fellowship of the Hunt. Loading the equipment into my car, I headed off from Edinburgh and up the familiar route of the M90 and A9 roads.

THURSDAY 30TH MAY

Towards the evening, I turned into Drumnadrochit where I would stay at the Loch Ness Hostel. I usually go camping on the other quieter side of the loch at Foyers, but since most of the action was going to be around Drumnadrochit plus Foyers was about a 25 mile drive away, it was no contest.

The "Quest" is organised by the Loch Ness Centre and they had invited anyone involved to a meet up at the Loch Ness Inn just a walk away from where I was staying. There I met up with Alan McKenna, Chie Kelly and some of the Loch Ness Exhibition staff. Alan heads up the LNE and Quest surface watches while readers will remember Chie as the lady who took that very interesting sequence of photographs in 2018 which were released last year.

So we spent the first part of the evening examining Chie's pictures and offering various opinions and observations concerning them and the very good stabilized sequence of those dozens of images further released this year. I admit I have to still to publish a follow up article based on that sequence and another meeting with Chie was organised for the days ahead.

It was at this point that exuberance entered the room. By that I mean the lively Ashley from Washington State who had travelled all that way to join the Fellowship of the Hunt. She is a die hard Nessie Fan and was keen to play her part in the loch watches that were coming up. We welcomed her into the fold and made sure she was part of the team and justified her effort to make it over here to Bonnie Scotland.

In fact, after dinner and a rest, Ashley, Alan and myself headed down to Temple Pier just before midnight to try out some equipment. In Alan's case, it was his trusty hydrophone and in my case, it was the Flir thermal camera. There were a number of boats berthed in the pier, some with occupants. Looking out across the pier to Urquhart Bay did not reveal much to the naked eye, but the FLIR infra-red revealed all as the buoys stretched out into the distance (below). However, nothing anomalous was apparent beyond these man made objects.

Alan dropped the hydrophone into the shallow waters and we listened in to the various noises it was detecting. We knew at that shallow depth and proximity to the pier that it was unlikely to be near any large aquatic creatures. So, Alan's ambition is simple yet complex - get the hydrophone out into the greater depths of mid-loch at night-time and free of all day time noises. All you need is a boat and a skipper who is qualified to navigate a boat at night-time. The complex bit is bringing all that together.

Meantime, on the active hydrophone, one persistent, gurgling noise was an outlet pipe discharging into the bay on the other side. One other noise came and went. We speculated it was someone on a berthed boat flushing their toilet. Well, the sceptics say you got to consider all possibilities. Only too happy to oblige, though Ashley thought it must have been one aggressive piece of flushing. This is a family blog, so I ain't going to enquire further into that! The fun ended at one in the morning and it was off to bed.

FRIDAY 31ST MAY

The next day started off with a solo walk around the area of Drumnadrochit. I actually had not taken a good look around the town for years and in that time it has undergone a major expansion in house building and that has not stopped as I passed by ground being cleared for further new developments. Having said that, as one walked around, it was clear that houses of various kinds had been built across the decades. It just seemed that things had accelerated.

I then headed from the new to the old, walking towards ancient Urquhart Bay for a bit of surface watching. Going through the woods before reaching the bay can be a bit of a maze before the loch comes into view. Once you get through the woods, you come to one of the rivers feeding into the bay. There is no bridge, so unless the river level is low or you have found a well placed tree trunk or stepping stones, you will likely get wet feet. Once over the river, it was a short walk and Urquhart Bay opened up before me (see image at top of article). 

There were quite a few sandbanks along the way and since there had been several accounts of large beasts coming ashore here and even leaving three toed tracks, I thought I would keep my eyes open for unusual depressions in the sand. One wondered how long such spoors would persist. In any case, only deer and humans prints to report.

I stayed there for about three hours watching the loch and any activity around it. A swan glided past into the bay (below). A guy with his family stripped to his pants and dived in the cold loch, Various dogs darted about, including one that misjudged the depth of the shallows and plopped out of sight before quickly reappearing. No sign of any larger creatures appearing out of the water though.

After this ended, it was back to the Loch Ness Inn at 7pm to meet Alan McKenna and Chie for a closer look at her photos. Later on, Dave from Birmingham turned up in his car for the Quest. I already knew Dave from his postings on various cryptids groups, so it was good to meet him in the flesh. Once we met up with Ashley, it was decided to go back out that night with the equipment, but a different location.

What Alan wanted to do was get to the jetty where various boats dock to let the tourists off at the castle. From the end of that pier, the water is deeper than what we were limited to at Temple Pier. Little did I know what an expedition this turned out to be. Alan, Dave, Ashley and myself parked up on the road by the castle and headed towards the pier only to be confronted by fields of prickly gorse bush and thick fern. However, we did beat a path to a wire fence which barred our way to the pier.

It was eminently scalable, but not everyone was onboard with vaulting over it, lol. We headed the other way towards the shore, but the drop was too steep and slippery plus it was getting dark. Prior to that Dave had dropped his mobile phone somewhere along the way, but the Fellowship of the Hunt proved their hunting skills in tracking it down. If only Nessie was that easy to find! So with sodden socks and a few marks from being assaulted by the gorse bushes, we defaulted back to Temple Pier where we showed Dave the gadgets we used twenty four hours before.

SATURDAY 1ST JUNE

The "Quest" began the next day at 0930. The media scrum of last year was not so evident and it looked like volunteers just picked up any guidance from online. In fact, those late nights at Temple Pier must have had their effect as I turned up late. Alan and Ashley were heading off to help on the Deepscan boat, so I offered to head off with Dave around the loch stopping at the various designated observation points as well as a few other spots.

I was also a kind of tour guide and would point out to Dave various events of significance as we went along in his car and its complement of Godzilla figures adding to the monster atmosphere. First up was Altsigh where John MacLean had his famous sighting back in 1938 where he spotted this beast.

By now the weather was beautiful as the sun shone down upon us in complete contrast to the downpour of last year. We went down past the backpackers hostel to the spit of beach at the mouth of the Altsigh stream where McLean had his encounter. Dave is a expert in photography and filming who lectures on the subject as well as making his own documentaries. So, he brought some heavy duty equipment with him ready to capture in high quality anything that stirred on the loch.

One thing we discussed was Adrian Shine's theory that McLean only saw an otter which fooled him as he was looking across the loch almost eye level with the water and hence lacking a frame of reference. I demonstrated to Dave how this was wrong as McLean is documented as pointing across the mouth of the Altsigh to the same shoreline he was on and where the creature was. In other words, the near shoreline provided a frame of reference not far behind the creature which itself was twenty yards away. Add the fact that McLean was a regular and experienced angler at the loch and one wonders what could possibly go wrong? 

The only fallback as ever is to declare he was a liar but sceptics are averse to doing this as it comes across as simplistic and lacking in any critical analysis skills.

So we were off to a good start and next up was the Horseshoe Scree on the opposite shore where Torquil MacLeod had his encounter with a large creature half out of the water. This was an official observation point and so we scrambled down the bank to get a better view. A man and his son joined us later and a conversation ensued about the "Quest" and the famous monster. Famous accounts attract sceptics and as with the McLean case, so it was with this account. Another sceptic has attempted to debunk this one as well. 

After that it was a short drive to the layby near where Roy Johnston took a sequence of detailed photos back in 2002. We again made our way to the shore and scanned the area comparing it to one of the Johnston pictures for scale, distance and other similarities. The most frustrating bit was when a small boat appeared to our right approaching the spot where Johnston's creature surfaced. We waited in hope for it to cross over that spot for a good comparison shot.

But alas he turned and headed off in the wrong direction. I understand Alan might soon be taking to the loch waves with his own boat. I wonder how open he is to navigate anywhere we send him 😏? And, yes, you guessed it, Roy Johnston has also been targeted for debunking. Pressing on, we had a pit stop in Fort Augustus and made a brief visit to the official observation point at the pier there. It was here that an opportunity to speak on the accounts of Gregory Brusey and Alex Campbell presented itself.

But time was against us as I had to be back at the Loch Ness Centre by 5pm. So we drove onto Foyers to visit the Tim Dinsdale site. When we got there and I pointed out the loch, Dave was surprised how far away we were from the loch. Dinsdale stated he first spotted the object 1300 yards away, which is about three quarters of a mile. Below is a still from one of Dave's videos. We again took footage, sized up the problems involved and then took note that time was running out.

So it was a final stop at Dores and we checked out the photographic metrics of the Chie Kelly photos. More on that at another time and we got back to the Loch Ness Centre by 5pm where I would prepare for a Loch Ness Debate with Alan McKenna, Richard White and Jenny Johnstone as MC. Nessie fans may recall that Richard White took an interesting series of photographs back in 1997 (below).

The debate began with our short biopics and Richard White's account. Now I must admit I have not really covered Richard's photos on my blog, His account is certainly credible and I learnt more that evening than anything before. So I hope I may cover his picture sequence in more detail in a future blog. We certainly didn't discuss his pictures during the debate, mainly because no one asked about them!

That aside, we fielded questions on our opinions on the best photograph, the effect of hoaxes on research, what to do with a captured Nessie, funding for technology and so on. If you're wondering what we would do with a captured Nessie, we would record every square inch, get the DNA biopsy, attach radio tags and release back into the loch.

WEBCAM IMAGES

At the debate I noticed our webcamming friend, Eoin, was in the audience with his wife. After the debate we had a discussion on his recent activities. The webcam he usually watches was offline and we both did not know why at the time. I have encouraged him to try out the webcam at the Clansman as I think it is a better camera for resolution and position.

A week after that, Eoin emailed me with a four minute clip from the Clansman taken on the 9th July just before 8am. What appears to be one object with a small forward protuberance to the left and a longer disturbance behind moves slowly but uniformly from the far right to left (up the loch) before it moves out of range of the webcam (which pans across the Clansman parking area).

You can view the complete video clip here. What could it be? A floating branch with the tip at the front and some of it horizontal behind? The fact that it retains a regular distance between small and larger disturbance does indicate it being one object, which Eoin estimated at about 16 feet long and 100 yards out. Opinions are invited.

I also received some webcam images from Andrew Williams who took them from the Airanloch B&B webcam at Lochend about 7am on the 27th May, just three days before I arrived at the loch. It seems seven in the morning is a good time for webcamming. Andrew told me:

The object captured in the images was moving at quite some speed creating a well-defined wake. Looking at the distance from Webcam to the object I don't believe it to be a bird as it's two big plus the speed it was going would be much too fast for a bird. It reminded me of a torpedo with something dark just breaking the surface. I also captured what appears to be two objects swimming together? 

There is no doubt the wake is being produced by an animal and Andrew discounts smaller creatures like birds. My first thought was whether it was an otter as they would be active around dawn, but there is nothing solid I can see that breaks the surface. The double object picture shown next does not appear to be connected to the wake and could be two small animals.

Andrew sent me two timestamped images which facilitated an estimate of wake speed. The first is above and the second below. Using the objects on the far shoreline as reference points, then one can produce an estimate of distance covered. How far out the wake is can be more of a guesstimate, but I will put it out halfway across the loch. So, the time lapse between the two images is 137 seconds and using the Google Map scale in the bottom right gives a distance covered of about 110m which gives a speed of 0.8 metres/second or 1.8 miles per hour. This is not very fast and could be achieved by a variety of aquatic objects.

The closer the wake is to the shore then the slower it will be and vice versa. The issue with all webcams is the same issue for all cameras and video equipment. We need to see something large and solid break the surface to take this further. That is what we all want and I thank Eoin and Andrew for their contributions. Keep up the hunt, people. You may be the person that captures that large object rising high and mighty from the depths!

Going back to the Quest, Alan then headed off on holiday to Loch Morar with his wife. I await his report from that trip! Meantime, Ashley, Dave and myself tried to find somewhere to eat about 9:30pm  in Drumnadrochit. Not much chance of that, so we ended up with burgers and kebab in a local chip shop. Ashley was tired and called it a day after that and I gave her a final farewell and thanked her again for her heroic trip from all that way from Washington state.

With some energy left, Dave and I returned to the A82 road by Urquhart Castle for more infra-red watching till midnight. Dave rediscovered the IR option on his video equipment and that looked pretty good on the viewfinder display as you can see below. Apart from a bright heat spot on the far shore which we figured was perhaps a camp fire, it was finally off to bed.

SUNDAY 2ND JUNE

The next morning I packed up and had breakfast with Dave, discussing ways ahead. He had taken a good bit of video footage of which you have seen some stills here. We made some resolutions to investigate some items further (once we can afford it 😁) and with that I said my goodbyes to him. Hopefully, the Fellowship of the Hunt will meet again on the next Quest, if not sooner!

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com