An interesting catch near Loch Ness

I found a couple of old clippings from 1934 which show that anything above a certain size found in that region of Scotland was up as a likely candidate for the Loch Ness Monster. So it was that this interesting photograph was published by The West Australian on the 29th June 1934 (click to enlarge).

The text reads:

"A strange sea creature caught by a fisherman in Moray Firth (Scotland). An opinion is held that it may have found its way into the firth from Loch Ness. The creature is 13ft long and about 1ft in diameter at its widest part."

A big beastie indeed for those parts of Scotland and the Singapore Free Press took up the story as well on the 13th June 1934 with this story (click image to read enlarged text). You may have also noticed by these foreign newspapers how much interest Nessie was generating worldwide!

The rather stiff looking nature of the beast is explained by the article's reference to the body being kept in an ice shed. A Mr. Cooper offered the slightly strained suggestion that the Surgeon's Photograph could be explained by this creature being caught in the act of diving with only its tail visible. This reminds us of a similar diving otter theory for the same photograph. However, as to its identity, an expert in the article suggests the oarfish (picture below).

I don't think that quite fits the bill as the head looks different in shape. However, a likely candidate is perhaps the conger eel though whether the eel can reach such a big size is a matter for debate. I mentioned on a previous post how eels up to 7 feet have been caught around the area but this one is nearly twice as long! One therefore presumes it was caught out in deeper water.

What do readers think?

RECENT BLOG POSTS:

The man who saw Nessie underwater
New witness corroborates 2011 sighting

SOLD!

The classic "Courtship in Loch Ness" painting by Sir Peter Scott sold today for a price of £4,750 ($7,353). The estimate was £1,500-£2,500 so it sold for well above expectations.

I wonder where it will end up? On public display in some Nessie related museum or in a private home hanging over a fireplace?

Auctioneers Link

Classic Sightings - Robert Badger

Date: August 8th 1971
Time: afternoon
Location: Temple Pier, Urquhart Bay
Witnesses: Robert Badger
Type of sighting: Underwater

Continuing our classic sightings series, we come to a most unusual encounter. Surface sightings of Nessie are rare, land sightings are even rarer but the rarest encounter of all are those experienced by those under the waters of Loch Ness. Looking back over the history of the loch, perhaps there are three claimed encounters in the last 130 years or so.

The first was in 1880 and (quoting from the book "The Water Horses of Loch Ness"):

An experience by another MacDonald in 1880 was of an altogether different nature and terrifying in the extreme. As a diver, Duncan MacDonald was sent down to investigate a ship that had sunk in the Caledonian Canal entrance at Fort Augustus. Not long after, he sent urgent signals on his line to be immediately brought back to the surface. Shaking and ashen faced, he refused to say what he had seen for several days. When he had sufficiently composed himself, he told the tale of how he had seen a “very odd looking beastie ... like a huge frog” lying on the rock ledge where the wreck was lodged as he examined its hull.

He refused to ever dive in the loch again though it would appear this encounter was where Loch Ness ends and the canal begins.

The other encounter is one I would like to know more on as my information is sketchy and concerns a diver who saw a large serpent like creature slinking away amongst the underwater rocks.

And going further afield there is the famous story from The Scotsman of 25th October 1933 and the divers in Loch Treig who

"came up with terrible stories of the weird creatures they had seen in the underwater caves"

But our main story concerns Robert "Brock" Badger who had an encounter with the Loch Ness Monster whilst swimming in Urquhart Bay on Sunday 8th August 1971. My attention to this exceedingly rare encounter was brought by an old story from the Glasgow Herald (dated 8th March 1999). It was recounting recent events at Loch Ness but Robert's story received the most attention. Intrigued to find out more, I managed to track down Robert and engage in an email conversation which he has kindly given permission to reproduce here today.

THE ENCOUNTER

I first mentioned the Herald article which claimed he had seen and touched the skin of the Loch Ness Monster. His first reply was that he had indeed encountered the beast underwater but

"... the Herald article is nonsense, I certainly did not touch anything. ... The only totally correct story was by dear old Alex Campbell, the water bailiff, in the Inverness Courier on Friday 13th August 1971."

It always pays to talk to the original source where possible and clear up any media hype. We are also gratified to see that only the late Alex Campbell faithfully and honestly recorded the event for the Courier. I say this against the background of those who claim he exaggerated his reports to the Courier at other times.

In fact, I went to the National Library of Scotland to get that article and reproduce it here for your edification.



However, I asked Robert to retell the story (albeit after the passage of forty years) and this is what he said:

Narwhal was to be moored in Urquhart bay. A lump of concrete with a mooring ring was acquired together with a galvanised mooring buoy and chain to attach them together. A group of us took the gear in one of the vans down to Temple Pier from Achnahannet, and as there were no changing facilities at the pier, I travelled kitted out in a wetsuit.

We did the job of placing the mooring, and as the others loaded the tools and dinghy back into the van, I did a bit of snorkelling so the wetsuit did not get ripped on the gear. I swam out from the small floating jetty which was there in those days. A hundred yards or so from the jetty, the floor of the bay suddenly nose-dives into deep water. I had just passed this point and was about 10 or 15 feet below the surface, but was now in deep water and was thinking that I should turn and go back when I saw an object in front of me.

The water is of course full of peat and is like thick tea. As I got closer I could see a top and bottom to the object, but it extended left and right out of my vision. The surface of the object was rough textured and rounded in cross-section. I saw no protuberances in the part I could see. I'm not sure how far from the object I was, maybe 15-20 feet. It was moving from my right to my left, that is towards the main loch. This sounds like a long drawn-out sighting, but in reality it occupied only a couple of seconds. I realised what I was looking at, and decided that I should not be there. I have size 13 feet and my swim flippers are large and strong. I surfaced quickly and made for the pier as fast as I could.

Simon Dinsdale's eye was caught by me surfacing, and he said I was moving so fast that I was aquaplaning on my chest. As I made my way in, I was terrified that I was being chased, but I noticed Mr Menzies' nephews playing in a boat tied to the pier, and his black labrador coming into the water to meet me, so I risked a look back and realised that I was alone.

Simon and the others asked what had happened, and I told them that I had seen something. Later at Achnahannet, I sat down with Tim Dinsdale and completed a sighting report form and he interviewed me on tape. He and David James decided to make the story public, and the press came to Achnahannet and did the interview. This resulted in as many different versions of the story as there were newspapers represented.

A lot of people said that I was too shallow to have seen anything, but when we discussed it, we realised that this is exactly where Nessie would look for fish, as close to the shallows as possible, but still in deep water.

THE ANALYSIS

The Courier account adds that the estimated diameter of the object was about six feet. The Simon Dinsdale mentioned is the son of the famous monster hunter Tim Dinsdale who subsequently interviewed Robert. What Tim Dinsdale said about this encounter also adds some weight to the truth of this testimony as he recounts the tale in a later edition of his book "Loch Ness Monster". His conclusions about the now subdued and troubled Robert were that:

He had made no attempt to publicize his experience, even among the expedition people. At the time he had merely said ‘I thought I saw something underwater’, adding that he ‘wouldn't go back in the water’. As he was in no more than 15-20 feet of water at the time, some felt it was too shallow for the Monster, but I did not consider this to be the case. I was absolutely convinced of Brock’s sincerity, and his ability to describe his experience objectively.

It was later found by sonar that the loch side shelves precipitously at that point and so the beast could patrol close to the shore and yet be in deep water. It is to be noted that the salmon and trout entering and leaving Loch Ness tend to move close to the sides of the loch.

So what can we say about Robert's encounter? Sceptics suggest that he merely saw a tree trunk floating past him. I put this possible explanation to him to which Robert replied:

"As for the idea that I saw a log, well I'm not familiar with six foot diameter logs in GlenUrquhart."

Which we consider a good answer. I would like to read the LNI sighting report and listen to the audio tape interview. In that respect, I ask the current owner(s) of the LNI material how I may achieve this.

Robert could not see the entire length of the creature as its huge size filled his goggles' field of view but based on the six feet diameter and a standard 6 to 7 ratio of total length to diameter gives us a suggested head to tail length of 36 to 42 feet. In other words, a considerable beast and no surprise that Robert beat a hasty retreat back to shore.

However, whether Nessie would have made quick work of Robert is unlikely. The old Water Horses in Loch Ness were certainly labelled as man-eaters and livestock-stealers but the modern Loch Ness Monster has no record of attacking anyone we know of and even if she did, there is no way of proving that a person's disapperance is connected in that way. Mind you, that is easy to say when you are in front of a PC rather than in front of a 40-foot lake monster.

AN IDEA

Quite topically, the recent sonar contact made by Marcus Atkinson (see story) was also made near the spot where Robert had his encounter but at a deeper depth of about 70 feet.

Now since this blog believes the Loch Ness Monster is mainly a benthic/littoral resident (i.e. it frequents the sides and bottom of Loch Ness and not open water) then such encounters come as no surprise. In fact, this is why the road blasting operations of the 1930s and the dumping of debris down the sides of the loch forced the creatures off the sides and bottom into the relative safety of open waters and led to the highest per annum sightings of all time.

It is also ironic that if the creature does stick close to the sides of the loch then it is more difficult to detect with sonar. Perhaps this form of Nessie hunting is not as effective as made out.

Indeed, if it also stays close to the surface (another difficult area for some forms of sonar), we have the somewhat unsettling situation that the creatures could be coasting a mere 10 to 20 feet below the surface and along the sides in opaque peaty water with no one just above being any the wiser to their presence.

As I understand, most divers stick close to the shore of Loch Ness and do not tend to swim out to the hundred yards extent that Robert did. So a suggestion as to a new avenue of monster hunting:

Employ a team of scuba divers to swim and patrol out to 100-200 metres from shore at a depth of 3-7 metres over deep water. Supply them with radio devices back to surface boats so as to maintain a narrative. Arm them with cameras and biopsy darts to collect any samples and then patrol the area looking out for any strange forty foot objects looming at them out of the darkness. Note that biopsy darts/harpoons are not a new idea at Loch Ness. Roy Mackal designed one for attachment to a submarine, but I understand they were never called into action.

So when the creature comes into view, shoot with the biopsy harpoon and head back to the shore ... as fast as you can.

A bit toungue in cheek and I must admit I would not volunteer for all the tea in China, but in theory the idea has some merit. Some might have done the odd foray into the loch but clearly in a loch this size, one would need a lot more than that as the beast could pass 40 feet past you and you would have no idea it was there.

Such is the darkness and mystery that is Loch Ness as Robert Badger found out on that day forty years ago.


POSTSCRIPT

A little extra information on other divers' experiences at Loch Ness. I had completely forgotten about the famous "Beppo the Clown" case in 1959. Beppo aka Jon Newbold was monster hunting as part of a publicity stunt by circus ower Bernard Mills when he was brought up after 10 minutes semi-concious. What he said after hospitalisation has entered the apocryphal (or from his circus' media machine) as tales of bright eyes staring at him from the depths or even a tentacle grabbing him have been mentioned. Betrand Russell in his book "Fact and Fiction" gives us this summary:

John Newhold, aged 31, of Stafford, known as Beppo, the clown; was detained in hospital yesterday alter diving into Loch Ness in a frogman's outfit to try to get evidence about the ‘monster’.

He made a dive lasting ten minutes and surfaced in a semi-concious state. He was taken aboard a yacht belonging to Mr Bernard Mills, the circus proprietor, and recovered partly ater artificial respiration had been applied. Mr Newbold, who was unable to say what had happened while he was underwater, is an experienced high diver and swimmer - he had made several practise dives to a depth of more than 20 feet before yesterday‘s attempt. The water is several hundred feet deep at this part of the loch.

While the Milwaukee Sentinel of 15th August 1959 (these stories get around you know) printed this:

On the matter of the other diver seeing a huge eel-like creature, it seems the diver's name was Michael MacRae and this also may have happened in the 1970s. For now, I know nothing more. Any help here would be appreciated.

RECENT BLOG POSTS:

More information on last year's sonar contact
New witness corroborates 2011 sighting

One day it might end like this ...

From some less than accurate editions of the Weekly World News (1992 and 1995). One wonders how this mystery will finally end. Sceptical minded people will say it is already solved, but we prefer to keep an open mind. More than likely, it will be Nessie roadkill when she performs one of her rare land crossings in front of a speeding Ferrari. Then again, I wouldn't wish that fate upon her ....

More information on last year's Sonar Contact

The Inverness Courier has gone online with the sonar contact we covered last year (here and here). The original article is at this link (I put this on the blog just for the record as news links can disappear forever after variable time intervals).

A FOURTH contender has been accepted into the competition for the Best Nessie Sighting of the Year, which has a £1000 cash prize up for grabs.

Quick-thinking pleasure boat skipper Marcus Atkinson captured a photograph on his mobile phone when an unusual sonar image appeared on his fish finder screen.

Mr Atkinson, of Fort Augustus, said the image, which shows something about 1.5 metres wide and 23 metres below his boat, was taken while in Urquhart Bay, Drumnadrochit.

The "sighting" will now be judged against three previously-reported Nessie encounters in the competition to be decided by Inverness Courier readers in an on-line vote.

It is the first time in several years bookmaker William Hill is presenting the award, following a dearth in encounters with Loch Ness’s most famous resident.

However, 2011 proved to be a bumper year with three "good" sightings reported to the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, which first launched the annual competition in conjunction with William Hill in the 1990s.

Although Mr Atkinson’s sighting was not registered at the time with the fan club, it was reported to full-time Nessie hunter Steve Feltham who is based at Dores beach.

Mr Atkinson’s encounter happened on 24th August while he was on his boat, Ness Express, waiting to pick some customers up from Urquhart Castle. "The time was around 11.30am-ish," he recalled. "I know this because we only do one trip that includes a stop off at the castle and 11.30am is when I’m bobbing around waiting for them to return."

He was approaching the shallows in Urquhart Bay (depicted in the bottom right-hand side of the image) after being over deeper water (bottom left-hand side).

"I could see loads of fish — the small speckles all over the screen — but as I got closer into the shore, I was surprised to see the long solid echo starting to appear on the screen around 23 metres down," said Mr Atkinson, who quickly grabbed his mobile phone.

"I took the photo as I seemed to go over the end of it and went around again going over my track using the GPS to put me in the same place. The fish were there but the white blob had vanished.

"I have been a skipper for most of my working life and I know that this is a very unusual echo. I don’t know what it was."

Although he acknowledges the photograph of his fish finder screen contains a lot of reflection, Mr Atkinson says it definitely shows something.

The sonar image shows a slice in time of about three minutes below the boat.

Nessie hunter Steve Feltham maintains the image is "the best bit of evidence" there has been for several years and dismisses any notion it could be the rudder of a boat.

"If you look at the chart, it is at a depth of between 20 and 20 metres," Mr Feltham said. "It is massive."

Sonar is an important part of the Monster Hunting armoury and many anomalous contacts have been made over the decades (though people will continue to debate what they actually mean). However, it has its limitations in that it is a blunt instrument. It can point towards the presence of large objects in Loch Ness but it cannot identify them as there is not enough data to make such a decision.

But then again, one could say the same about surface photography because only a portion of the creature is above the surface and the loch is so big that it more probable the creature will be further than closer to a decisive camera shot position.

RECENT BLOG POSTS:

New Witness Corroborates 2011 Sighting

More on the Hugh Gray Photograph

New Witness Corroborates 2011 Sighting

I was going to post another item this weekend but I felt this partly finished article ought to go out now. The reason is because of the William Hill award for the best Nessie sighting of 2011 and there are four contenders including the sighting in this title. The winner will be decided at the end of January and I thought it best to complete the story on this sighting so that whoever judges will have a fuller picture.

Note, I have no interest in who the eventual winner is and I do not stand to gain financially from it! The award candidates do not even know I am writing this. In fact I have been looking into this case since July and was awaiting further information, but so be it.

Back in July I was at Loch Ness and stopped at the shop of the Hargreaves at Foyers to buy some provisions (I documented that in an older posting). So I talked about their sighting with them and before I left the lady said that an Ala MacGruer had seen something too. I noted the name and headed south back to Edinburgh.

When I eventually found and got round to talking to Mr. MacGruer, he did indeed confirm that he too had seen a strange creature around the same time that day but closer to the shore. He was driving along a local road further downhill when his attention was taken by an elongated object in the water. He stopped the car to have a look and described an "eel-like head" with a neck about two feet out of the water.

He described it as going at quite a fast speed towards Sand Point. In other words, the creature was heading in the general direction of the loch where the Hargreaves saw their head and neck. Eventually it disappeared past Sand Point. Mr. MacGruer estimates it was up to 300 yards away from him and so substantially closer than it was to the Hargreaves.

I hope that is as accurate as I can state it as it was conducted over the phone and then by letter and with my lack of knowledge of local small roads in Foyers. Ala sent a drawing of what he saw.

Ala MacGruer is a pensioner and has spent his life living by Loch Ness. He is an experienced angler and has spent many, many hours fishing on Loch Ness and beyond. His knowledge of the loch and what can fool a person is therefore above the average witness standard. I asked if he had seen anything like this in his life before but he said he had not. He recalled how one could be fooled by birds observed in mist and hence giving a wrong impression of size, but that day such conditions did not prevail. Those who may suggest that he merely saw a seal ought to give him some leeway given his lochside experience.

Clearly, Mr. MacGruer's account adds weight to what the Hargreaves saw and diminishes the chances that something was misidentified - especially with a good witness at a shorter range. Reports of the Loch Ness Monster seen by multiple witnesses are good. It is even better when they view the creature independently and unaware of each other's situation.

As an aside, readers familiar with the history of the Loch Ness mystery may recognise the surname MacGruer. Indeed, without me prompting him, Ala declared that his uncle William MacGruer had seen the creature on land as a young lad. I told him that this was no surprise to me as that case from almost 100 years ago is part of the Loch Ness Monster lore.

That particular case was reported in the Inverness Courier on the 3rd October 1933 and describes how a group of children playing on a bay near Fort Augustus were surprised and terrified to see a large creature with a long neck and a camel like head lurching out of the bushes and entering into the loch. It seems that his uncle stuck to that story to his dying day.

So I give you Mr. MacGruer's account and hope it adds to the credibility of what happened on that day on the 15th June 2011.



RECENT BLOG POSTS:
More on the Hugh Gray Photograph
Parthenogenesis and Nessie

More on the Hugh Gray Photograph

I have still a few things to say about this classic photograph of Nessie redeemed from the jaws of the Labrador dog. We pointed out the real possibility of a head being visible to the right which had been hidden for decades by over-contrasted reproductions, but there is more to come as we wrap up this important piece of evidence.

These concern the place taken, the time taken and the reaction to the picture by the media. In this post we consider the last point and an interesting newspaper item from page 15 of the Courier Herald dated the 8th December 1933.

The photograph had made international headlines and naturally people speculated as to what it may be showing. Curiously, no one mentioned Labrador dogs with sticks in their mouth and we put that down to having a superior reproduction of the photograph to hand. The article is shown below.


An animal with the body like a whale, a head like a seal and an elongated tail. Did someone say a head like a seal? Where did they get that from? I would suggest they spotted the head which we highlighted on this blog last year. It's nice to get some corroboration and from a source mere days after the picture was taken.

The only difference is that he takes it to be seal-like rather than our eel-like speculation. The truth is that we are not sure what head it represents, but it is there as far as I am concerned. It is no surprise, meanwhile, that the self-appointed experts of that day utterly failed to see any thing other than "wreckage" in the photo.

P.S.

I toned down my berating of those who think this picture is a Labrador Dog. However, a cursory look at various sceptical forums/websites will leave you in no doubt that no one is perfect in the matter of courteous debate (albeit with an allowable modicum of mild sarcasm).

Vote for the best Nessie sighting of 2011

The Inverness Courier has some voting buttons on its website for readers to choose from the three best sightings of 2011. These are Jon Rowe, William Jobes and the Hargreaves. We have covered these sightings on our own list plus the Diane Blackmore sighting of August and the Atkinson sonar trace of September. There will undoubtedly be other sightings of Nessie in 2011 which did not make it into the local and national media (in fact, we'll bring one soon on this blog).

I guess it has been a good year for Nessie sightings, especially considering the Jobes and Rowe sightings included pretty good photographs. However, the report log is a far cry from the record year of 1934 and people began to wonder whether the Loch Ness Monster had gone off on some holiday somewhere or worse. Anyway, let us hope 2012 is a more successful year for evidence of the strange resident of Loch Ness.

Parthenogenesis and Nessie

The latest news on the BBC about a "virgin birth" shark reminds me again on how a Nessie population is sustained in the relatively small volume of water that is Loch Ness.

To recap, in the absence of a male shark, this female shark in a Dubai aquarium, has produced offspring for the fourth year in a row. It seems the descendants are doing well. and are not exact clones having some minor DNA differences There is nothing new in this scenario as various fish, reptiles and amphibians are known to reproduce asexually. However, the process has not been observed naturally in mammals.

This form of reproduction can be "turned" on and off depending on various factors such as a lack of males, seasonal factors, conditions that favour rapid population growth and so on. It has its advantages and disadvantages compared to normal reproduction. There is the reduction of the gene pool diversity and concomitant susceptibility to new mutations and diseases but on the plus side, there is no need divert scarce resources to develop males which cannot reproduce offspring themselves.

But does this have any relevance to the Loch Ness Monster? Curiously, the Nessie portrayed in the 2007 film "The Water Horse" (below) was asexual with a population of exactly one creature whose progeny were propagated by a single egg it laid. No problem with food stocks there then!



They say that "life always finds a way" but when it comes to one or more large creatures in a 24 mile long loch, scepticism adds "but not in this case". The question frequently levelled at Nessie "believers" is that there is not enough food to sustain a viable population of large creatures. Firstly, I don't accept this and shy away from the two dimensional thinking that goes on in this matter. However, assume that there is a prey-predator ratio issue for the moment.

Asexual reproduction would reduce (perhaps significantly) the number of creatures in the Loch. Certainly and statistically, half of them (the males) can go (well, some are needed if the females switch out of asexuality).

It would also eliminate inbreeding brought on by generations of the same pool of creatures inter-breeding. However, what the minimum viable population may be for such a group of asexual Nessies is pretty unclear. But there is an opening there for lower creature numbers. But what about lack of genetic diversity? Well, how often do Nessies reproduce? Once a year? Once a decade? The longer the generations, the less the impact of genetic diversity. There is also the matter of how stable Loch Ness is to changes that expose lack of genetic diversity. So what has happened at Loch Ness in the last 10,000 years that may endanger a small gene pool of monsters?

But it is all speculation when it comes to this decidedly odd beast.

So, was it the case 10,000 years ago as the glaciers retreated in Scotland that one or a few female Nessies became trapped in Loch Ness as the land rose from the burden of immense amounts of ice? Did asexuality kick in to preserve the continuation of the species? Did the creatures switch between asexual and sexual across the millenia depending on various environmental factors?

Who can tell? But as I said, such a scenario is not mandatory to explain how the Loch Ness Monster has survived to this day. The creature was moving between the seas, land and other lochs long before man ever became inquiring enough to ask such questions.

Loch Ness "world's biggest spirit level"

The BBC have posted a piece on how scientists have used Loch Ness to measure the minute effects of tidal forces on the loch's water levels. The sun and moon's combined gravitational force raises and drops the water level by as much as 1.5mm in a day. The other interesting note is that the Foyers power station alone does the same thing by 4cm a day.

I would add my own note that when using a trap camera before and after heavy rain, the difference in loch levels was even more noticeable.

Iconic Nessie Painting upcoming sale

As mentioned in a previous blog, the famous "courtship" painting of the Loch Ness Monster by Sir Peter Scott is going under the hammer on the 22nd January. The auction item is now listed online by the auctioneers Christies and can be viewed here.

The estimated price is £1500-£2500.

Happy bidding!

Nessie and the Fort Augustus Abbey boys

A Happy New Year to all readers, both believers and sceptics alike!

We'll kick off 2012 with an experience from 51 years ago. I was in communication with a former pupil of the school at Fort Augustus Abbey named Sean O' Donovan who lived as a boy at Easter Balnaban which is outside Drumnadrochit and up the hillside.

He places the sighting at perhaps August 1962 and in his own words:

"I certainly saw a 'something', although I was too far away (about 500 ft up a mountainside and perhaps half a mile as the crow flies) for any minute detail, moving out from beneath Urquhart Castle across the Loch. Whatever it was appeared to be the size of a decent sized rowing boat and left a wake. It vanished mid-way across the Loch. The monster?"

I put together a rough map of where this object perhaps first appeared and disappeared (but it may have moved further into Urquhart Bay than centre loch).

Having looked out that window many a time, we are sure than Mr. Donovan was familiar with the normal items that made their way across the centre of Loch Ness. I asked for more details:

"I happened to be gazing out across the loch when I saw a 'shape' (no more definition than that and no different in colour from the water) move out from the bank at perhaps 6 knots? It left a clear wake, as would a small boat and my first assumption was that it was indeed a boat in shadow but when it reached the midway point of the loch it vanished."

Do boats normally vanish as they ply their voyage? Obviously not, but then again perhaps a boat did indeed sink but we doubt that. A decent sized rowing boat can be up to fifteen feet in length and four feet across. Sightings of the Loch Ness Monster in its single hump aspect are often compared to the dimensions of a rowing boat.

Sean also has a theory about the Loch Ness Monster promoted by another Abbey boy called George Campbell in his book "The First and Lost Iona":

"I have since read an explanation for my 'sighting' and others. Basically it has to do with the structure of the Loch and the existence in it of two distinct layers of water. Around 600AD ( I think) there was a ship-burial of a Norse chieftain and the waterlogged keel of the ship would still exist as there is little oxygen in the depths to rot it.

Currents in the loch still bring this keel to the surface temporarily and the dragon's head with which such boats were often decorated would account for those who have seen a 'head' with the length of the keel accounting for those that see a 'hump'. Make of that what you will but it fits with what I saw."

George Campbell himself expands upon this theory in his book (from link):

The King’s Drakar re-surfaces

Looking out from the shore, the interested spectator will have seen an animal head with a long neck emerge from the water and travel through the waves for a few yards before sinking from sight again leaving, in many cases, an impression of a long curved back or hump before disappearing completely from view. Remind you of anything?

This is the only explanation for a Loch Ness Monster which fits the vast majority of sightings (the dinosaur-like creature crossing the main road at dead of night with a sheep in its mouth being a notable exception). There is unlikely to be more than one Drakar keel down there so whether one sees on the surface a long curved back or a shorter more pronounced hump will depend on whether the keel has any forward motion when it inverts.

He also think St. Columba encountered a bear rather than a water monster:

On Columba and the Loch Ness Monster

The Ness has always been a great river for salmon but man is not alone among their predators. It shares a similar latitude, a couple of degrees below the 60th parallel, with Kodiak Island in Alaska, a place that gave its name to a member of the best known species of salmon fishing animal in the world, the brown bear. In Columba’s time the bear had been extinct in Ireland for centuries so it is not an animal with which he and his fellow Irishmen would have been in any way familiar.

But although it would not vanish from Scotland for a few generations yet, it was by this time, in the latter part of the sixth century, a rarity. With so much impenetrable woodland for cover, it would have been perfectly at home on the banks of the Ness and, like its North American cousins, would seek its favourite food where the water is shallow, the flow narrow and the passing salmon most easily caught. Rising in the water from all fours onto its two hind legs, it would certainly give the appearance of a beast rising from beneath the waves, all the more so if viewed indistinctly through a screen of greenery.

More than capable of killing a man if surprised, or interrupted whilst feeding, a brown bear would generally seek to avoid contact with humans, thus its readiness to flee at the sound of Columba’s voice. Taken with Adomnan’s reference to the dead man having been mauled and the beast’s emitting of a roar, all the evidence points in only one direction and that is not towards a loch-dwelling monster. This was not the first recorded sighting in Scotland of a monster but the last recorded sighting of a bear.

I would presume a boat of these proportions would have been found with sonar by now. But then again, perhaps Loch Ness has more than one secret in those dark depths. But I am also afraid I disagree with Mr. Campbell's assessment of Nessie sightings and St. Columba's memorable encounter!

Another story but less serious from that period came from one of the old school boys and relates as follows:

"I always thought that the incident of Fr. John Baptist taking his boat 'The Goose' out on a fishing trip supposedly returning by 4pm, not returning until the next morning with a large hole in the bow. He claimed that his boat was damaged by a 'sea creature', in the middle of the night, This was in '54 just before tourist season when the fund raising was in progress for the church. When I asked him why he did not come back at 4pm when he was due he said I was too smart and not to mention that to anyone. After all a priest seeing the 'Sea Creature' would never be questioned."

Nessie Sighting from 2002

A fellow Nessie researcher drew my attention to this sighting from 2002 which I thought deserved a rerun and was worthy of a wider distribution in the cause of demonstrating that Nessie continues to be alive and well.

The witness is Tim Richardson and one of the reasons I like this sighting is because Tim is one of those people I would class as competent due to his long interest in angling. He has been a naturalist and big fish angler for 30 years with the emphasis on big fish such as catfish and carp. So, we would expect Tim to be familiar with most types of aquatic wildlife and not so easily fooled into thinking for some reason that they are Nessie. Tim takes up the story himself.

I myself experienced the creature's presence while standing by the freezing cold flat calm Loch on a bright sunny morning in February 2002.

The day was calm and sunny but temperatures were cold following a hard frost that morning. Standing on the jetty by the castle in Urquhart bay I felt an unprecedented irrational fear sweep over me and I backed off the jetty fast. I walked up the grassy slope feeling foolish not having felt such a feeling ever before strong enough to move me from standing over the cold peaty red - black water.

Now as a very serious fisherman I have spent 30 years intensively spending a great proportion of this time on the banks and shores of hundreds of lakes, lochs, rivers, seas, ponds, and stretches of water, most often all night long. But I've never experienced such a unique feeling of fear before even at 'haunted' locations or in fierce lightning storms or on the darkest of nights miles from civilisation.

I know fish behaviour pretty well and felt something was very 'wrong' when just then I observed trout leaping high out of the water. This was only 200 metres away from my position over far deeper water and these fish were in such a highly excited state, darting about everywhere as if looking to escape something unseen below them. I quickly felt in my bag for my binoculars when I realised I did not need them...

I am more than scientific when it comes to the 'unknown,' requiring measurement and evidence and past records to verify anything unusual. I preferably would experience things 'first hand' before analysing and concluding anything substantial. I did not really think the mythical 'Loch Ness monster' existed except in the minds of fantasists or locals benefiting from the tourist trade in the area.

The major 2 reasons for this was that the entire loch had been under ice during the last ice age, so most likely preventing anything from remaining from previous times. Not only this, but detailed surveys show 'insufficient' fish stocks present in the loch which would appear to not be able to support a population of large animals for sustenance.

Please picture this now, because this is what I observed next: As a fish turns its flank over and rolls just under the surface of the water, it raises the water above it. I have observed this hundreds of times over the years being a big fish angler (mainly of giant catfish and big carp) of 30 years experience. The width, depth and length of the fish is indicated by the dimensions of this water movement discerned by the experienced eye. What this indicated was a massive creature.

For example an average sized large 30 pound carp may move a significant oval shaped area of water at the surface of perhaps to 3 feet. Such a fish would be about 3 feet long and between a foot and a foot and a quarter deep. The surface water movement I observed was about 15 feet long by 10 feet across... I never saw what caused it but I've fished right next to large seals, seen deer swimming in a lake, know very well the depth of sturgeon and dolphins compared to carp and whatever caused this phenomenal water movement was none of these possibilities. This was no killer whale or known cetacean either if that's what you are thinking...

There was a weird fact about my camera which is not uncommon at this loch. It has never failed me in thousands of photographs taken on thousands of bright days or dark even misty nights or on the hottest to the coldest of winter night temperatures. I am very careful to keep the battery at least new or at least 'half full.' On attempting to photograph the water anomaly, the camera failed completely despite calmly retrying. Filming under pressure of speed is not at all new to me with this camera. No photo was achieved.

Once all was calm, as if nothing had ever happened to disturb the completely calm surface of the thousands of feet deep bay without even a ripple present, I tried the camera again. This time it worked; in the 5 years since then, it has never failed either. There is definitely far more to this place than is yet known and not merely electrical anomalies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/700232

I emailed Tim to get his permission to reprint and he expanded on his views. He is very much in the line of the famous Nessie hunter, Ted Holiday, in believing that the "thing" in Loch Ness is more than mere flesh and blood and has its origins in the paranormal. He also takes from the works of people like Paul Devereux who believe strange things occur along fault lines (such as Loch Ness) due to piezoelectric effects.

The one thing that intrigued me was how the creature managed to stay just below the surface and this made me immediately think of the recent Jon Rowe photograph and my speculation that something was just visible below the surface too and pushing up a thin layer of water (see link).

The failing camera is also classic Ted Holiday, he himself saw significance in such mechanical failures, as well as sightings which were just beyond the reach of LNIB cameras. Of course, we would also point out that, statistically, most photographs will be beyond "evidence range" purely by reason of the loch's vast size. If Nessie surfaces at the centre line of the loch, then it is already 800 to 1200 metres away from shore based witnesses!

Two recent cultural references to Nessie

People may not wholeheartedly believe in a large creature in Loch Ness, but the image of a prehistoric beast continues to pervade cultural imagery. Two items came up recently to demonstrate this. The first is the poster for the next Highlands Comic Convention in March 2012 showing Tank Girl, Judge Dredd, Dennis the Menace and Gnasher riding on a less than willing Nessie. (Note to US readers, Britain has its own version of Dennis the Menace). Full story at BBC website.

It is a source of confusion to me why Nessie is so often portrayed in green in cultural references when she is actually uniformly reported as various shades of grey. The artist has also dispensed with the long neck approach here.

The second is from the series of TV adverts created by the makers of "Scotland's other National Drink" - Irn-Bru. This drink is sometimes recommended as a hangover cure after imbibing Scotland's main national drink (i.e. whisky). The advert linked to YouTube below is a rerun based on the successful cartoon from the 1980s. Look out for Nessie swimming below around 30 seconds in!

Since the advert wishes everyone season's greetings, I will now take the same opportunity to wish readers a Happy Christmas and I will post again once the effects of the turkey, pudding and alcohol has finally dissipated!

Alex Harvey Presents The Loch Ness Monster

Alex Harvey and his The Sensational Alex Harvey Band had a string of hits in the 1970s but one album he produced in 1977 took an entirely different tack altogether. Entitled Alex Harvey Presents The Loch Ness Monster, his interest in Nessie is evident to see in this collection of eyewitness accounts.

Where this item acquires high status in Loch Ness Research is in its recordings of the actual witnesses recounting their experiences. Clearly there is an advantage to be gained here from listening to the actual people who claimed to see what they saw as opposed to reading it on a more dispassionate page. The following witnesses were interviewed:

Father Gregory Brusey
Frank Armstrong
A. Hewson
Sam Job
Alex Campbell
Mrs. Margaret Grant of Invermoriston
Frank Searle
Sandy Smart
Sgt. Nicholson
Mrs. Kathrine Robertson
Ian Dunn
Billy Kennedy

Some accounts such as Frank Searle will no doubt be viewed with disdain. Alex Campbell's account of something he earlier said was cormorants is controversial. The rest are people largely removed from the Loch Ness investigation scene and were just ordinary people going about their lives before being stopped by something regarded as extraordinary.

The album is available to listen to on YouTube in three parts via these embedded links: