Classic Sightings - Gordon Powell

Date: June 21st 1936
Time: 5:30pm
Location: Urquhart Castle
Witnesses: Reverend Gordon Powell
Type of sighting: Head, neck and two humps in water

Following on from our tale of the monk and the monster, another man of the cloth is behind our latest classic sighting. This sighting is not one that can be found in the standard Nessie text books but it nevertheless has all the qualities that constitute a classic sighting as we shall relate.

In fact, this story may well have remained in a dark corner if it was not for the labours of Paul Cropper. Paul, though he believes there is something unexplained in Loch Ness is primarily a Yowie man. For those who wonder what a Yowie is, go to Paul's website at this link. The following transcript and photographs are under Paul's copyright.

Paul had heard that a man by the name of Gordon Powell in his native Australia had seen Nessie and made arrangements in 2001 to interview him about the sighting. By then, Rev Powell was long retired but the memory of the event was still there for Paul to record.

The Reverend Doctor Gordon Powell himself was born in 1911 and was ordained into the ministry in 1938. It was a scholarship to Glasgow University in 1935 that brought him to Scotland. He went on to a successful ministry in Sydney as well as a popular radio ministry. He died in 2005 aged 94.

Gordon Powell begins with the background to the sighting in 1936:

I was a student at Glasgow University at the time and I was with two other students. We were on a camping trip around Scotland and we’d camped beside Urquhart Castle. And one of the significant things I found in investigating the whole thing was that the local people have a superstition that Nessie brings bad luck and the only way to avoid it is to not talk about seeing it.

I took my wife back in 1960 and hoped that she would see it as I did. And I said to the young man in the Drumnadrochit Hotel, I’ve seen the Loch Ness monster and I was going on to explain I wanted my wife to see it. And he shook, he really trembled all over, he said “don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it”. And he refused to talk about it.

Well, by the extraordinary coincidence there had been a death in a family that morning, we were all theological students and we’d gone to church, and I’d say the service lasted from 11:00am ‘til after 3:00pm. It was a six monthly communion service and half in Gaelic and half in English.

And anyway, we met Mrs MacDonald who was distressed because her brother-in-law had died and she couldn’t get to the house. And the other two chaps offered to drive her there. And they left me alone. I was writing a letter home and I was sitting on the bank and it was a perfect day for the viewing.

The paragraph concerning his wife is a paranthetic about his second visit to Loch Ness in 1960 but I can concur with his statement about local fear of the monster having researched the Water Horse aspects of the creature for my book.

Then the Loch Ness Monster appeared to unsettle his quiet solitude.

The sun was behind me and the water was so calm that in Urquhart Bay it was like glass. And I happened to look up just in time to see a disturbance in this glassy area, and then a head came up like a calf. From that distance I couldn’t see any horns or ears, it was very smooth, the head, and a long neck. And then it looked just the one way and then looked straight towards me, and then it looked at what was ahead. And my theory is it spotted a school of salmon.

It was the salmon season of course, the middle of summer, and it chased something anyway, whether it was salmon or something else, at tremendous speed. And at least three humps came up, possibly a fourth, and there was a lot of spray. It was very much alive. It was very large. It swam very quickly, it bucketed along the surface very quickly and after … well I grabbed my camera and I took a picture after it had gone I suppose perhaps two or three hundred yards, and then it swam on for a similar distance and then dived.

I wrote in the letter a few minutes later that it looked like an enormous eel to me. But then I thought about all the spray that it sent up and I thought well an eel wouldn’t send up a lot of spray, something with flippers might do it. And well that was as I saw it then.

Wondering what he had seen, a subsequent visit to London helped form an opinion:

A week or two later or some … no, it was on the second trip I was in London and I went into the Victoria and Albert Museum and I didn’t know what I was going to see. But I went into one room and I gasped “..there’s Nessie!” It was a skeleton of a plesiosaurus and it had a long neck, a small head, a long tail and a big body with four flippers. And there it was in skeleton form. I don’t know if it was a plesiosaurus but it … some people say it could be. I suddenly thought well this is a … be surviving for about 50 million years.

Helpfully, Gordon drew a picture for Paul of what he had seen which is shown below with the man himself.


The form of the beast seen is very much the classic sighting - long neck, small head and a number of humps following. Paul asked for more details concerning the sighting. Powell said the creature emerged beyond the centre of the bay at over 500 yards and moved nearer until at the point of submerging for good, it was only 200 yards away.

The head and neck were visible mainly at 300 to 400 yards. The neck was estimated as six feet out of the water.

The duration of the sighting was put conservatively at between 30 and 60 seconds.

Gordon also mentioned that he took a photograph of the sighting. Did he capture the head, neck and three humps on film? The answer is "No" in the sense that no such detail is visible on the print but it is reproduced here for completeness. The arrow marked "1" is where the creature first appeared and "2" is where it was at the point of the picture being taken.

Mr. Powell supplied a better picture with further comments attached which we reproduce below.



So ends the story but I add my own research and thoughts at this point. Firstly, a trawl of newspaper archives revealed that this sighting had featured in a 1977 article on churchmen and monsters. The article is from the 7th September edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. The text of his sighting is below which pretty much agrees with what he said to Paul Cropper 24 years later.

The water was calm like a mirror. Suddenly there was a bulge in the bay and this thing shot up; its neck was about six feet long and a foot thick. Its head was smooth, without horns, and reminded me of a calf. The body was dark brown or black. The creature looked around, dived, and swam at great speed towards the castle. There were three or four humps. I grabbed my camera and took a picture which showed the wake. My reactions had been slow because of the shock.

Reverend Powell then quotes Job 41:31 from the Bible concerning Leviathan:

He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

A fitting Biblical allusion to the power the Loch Ness Monster is said to exert on its surrounding waters.

One final comment by Gordon Powell in his interview with Paul led me down a final avenue of research. It was this comment:

Next day in the newspaper, three other people reported seeing what I saw at the same time in the same place.

Naturally, if one witness corroborates another's story then that lends weight to the overall testimony. Mr. Powell does not state what newspaper he read so some guesswork is involved here. I went to the Inverness Courier microfilm archives at the National Library of Scotland and examined the issues beyond the 21st June 1936.

As it turned out, the next edition of the paper on the Tuesday ran an article in which three reports of Nessie were claimed over that weekend. Two were on the Saturday but one was on the Sunday in which Mr. Powell claimed his sighting. The newspaper relates thusly:

One of the best views of the "Monster" was obtained on Sunday afternoon by Miss H. MacFie, 5 Porterfield Bank, Inverness, and Mr. J. Fraser, Firthview, Auldcastle Road, Inverness. They were cycling along the east side of the loch in the direction of Foyers, when suddenly they saw a large object rise about the middle of the loch and travel in the direction of Urquhart Castle.

Although a considerable distance away, both were certain it was the "Monster", for it created a great disturbance in the water by splashing. They watched its movements for fully four minutes before it ultimately stopped, and seemed gradually to sink below the surface.

It would seem that Mr. Powell's sighting took off from where Mr. Fraser's sighting finished as his creature headed off towards Urquhart Bay. The time of this sighting is merely stated as the afternoon which could place it anywhere between noon and 6pm (depending on how you define "afternoon"). So it is possible the two groups of witnesses were witnessing two parts of one overall Nessie journey.

An effort to resolve this matter further could be made by examining other Highland newspapers for that week since the Courier was not the only paper which took an interest in the Loch Ness Monster. I will update this posting if I find anything of interest.

But we are happy to add this "new" sighting of the Loch Ness Monster which lay hidden from the standard Nessie text books and web sites for years and again we thank Paul Cropper for his diligence in bringing it to our attention.

Spotting the Loch Ness Monster

You have arrived at Loch Ness. Perhaps you have come to admire the grandeur of Highland scenery, go fishing, visit relatives or are passing by on your way to the next town. Whatever your plans, you now have some time to scan the loch and perhaps see its famous resident.

But what are your chances of seeing Nessie? As it turns out, the probability is quite low of the Loch Ness Monster putting in a special appearance for you.

Various personalities associated with the Monster have had varying degrees of success.

Alex Campbell, who worked as a water bailiff for over forty years at Loch Ness claimed something like 17 sightings.

Winifred Cary who had a house overlooking Urquhart Bay claimed 16 sightings over 59 years.

Famous Nessie hunter Tim Dinsdale had a more meagre harvest of two sightings during his 25 years of searching.

Current resident Steve Feltham has watched the loch for nearly 20 years and has had only one instance of what may be a Nessie encounter.

Ted Holiday (who wrote The Great Orm of Loch Ness) claimed four sightings over 6 years.

And then you have the thousands of claimed sightings by people who perhaps visited the loch once for possibly only minutes but just happened to be the lucky "Nessie Lottery" winners.

The aforementioned Ted Holiday even calculated how long he had to watch the loch in order to see the beast arise. Based on his own logged hours and sightings this amounted to 600 hours of surface watching between sightings.

Applying that logic to Alex Campbell would have required him to have watched the loch for 1 hour per working day for 49 years to achieve his 17 sightings.

For Winifred Cary, it works out as 27 minutes per day for 59 years.

But it is not as simple as that for various factors apart from how long affect the seeing of the Loch Ness Monster.

First is the quality of observation as opposed to the quantity. Ted Holiday was an experienced watcher of Loch Ness. He scanned the visible area of the loch for signs of activity. He would use binoculars to focus on areas of interest. He had learned what was normal and could be ignored through over 1000 hours of observation.

Moreover he was focussed on the task at hand with no distractions (although things could get rather boring and the odd tea break and chat helped). Contrast this with the casual observer who glances at the loch, looks across a narrow range, is distracted by things around them, etc.

Then there is the quality of time itself in terms of when one is watching. Some think that the monster is more likely to be seen at dawn whilst other go for quiet dusk hours.

The place itself may be of importance as plotted sightings tend to congregate around spots such as Urquhart Bay. This is somewhat disputed as more people tend to stop there to view the castle, but certainly sightings are not uniformly spread out across the loch.

Then there is the quality of the environment as some think Nessie is quite noise sensitive and hence they go for the secluded watch spots on the southern shore away from noisy boats, cars and tourists.

So if you want the best chance of seeing Nessie, perhaps you need to rise at 5 am, park yourself on a secluded spot on the south side of the loch but with a decent vista and of course spend the whole day there with your sandwiches, binoculars and hopes ...

The Loch Awe Monster

My attention was drawn to a post recently which concerned a modern sighting of the monster of Loch Awe. The original post was by Lindsay Selby and can be found here.

One of the comments was posted by a person named "Sallyumbo" which goes as follows:

Around Easter 2000, my husband and I were driving north past Loch Awe for our first weekend away together. As we drove alongside the loch, I saw to my amazement something that looked to me exactly like pictures I'd seen of the Loch Ness Monster. A long neck and head sticking out of the water at the front, and two humps behind it. It was moving quite swiftly through the water.

I was completely astonished. I had never heard of any monster in Loch Awe. I actually said nothing, thinking that my new fiancee would think I was completely mad if I announced I could "see the Loch Ness Monster" so I just watched in silent wonder. A couple of hours later we stopped for lunch at a pub. There was tourist info available in the form of leaflets there, and one was about Loch Awe.

Imagine my feelings when I read, "Loch Awe is said to be home to a monster like that of Loch Ness". "It does!! I saw it!!" I yelled, beside myself with excitement. Needless to say my fiancee thought I was crazy. But I'm sure I really did see what people call the Monster of Loch Awe.

Now to add to what Lindsay said about a tradition of a creature in Loch Awe, the recent book "The Water Horses of Loch Ness" surveys the historical traditions of strange creatures in Scottish Lochs and though Loch Ness is first by the proverbial mile on the list, Loch Awe comes in a respectable second. So it seems that the folklore of old points back to something in the loch which echoed through to the beginning of this new millenium.

What "Sallyumbo" saw follows in that tradition of creatures. I did a cursory survey of the books I have and found no other modern era sightings of a beast in Loch Awe. Let us hope another sighting occurs soon to seal this monster's return.

Using the information provided by her, we can actually pinpoint the general area of the sighting in the map below.

A view of the loch from that stretch of road can be seen here using Google StreetView (though the witness' exact location as the car moved is not precisely known):

We can make a few further observations about the Loch Awe Monster.

The first is that any creature in Loch Awe has an easier access to the sea than the Loch Ness Monster would. Note the River Awe in the top left of the picture which connects to the sea loch Loch Etive and hence to the open sea. Loch Ness is harder to traverse due to the locks of the Caledonian Canal (though not impossible). So any arguments about not enough food supply are irrelevant if it can swim in and out of the loch (though I do not know the existing fish stocks in Loch Awe).

Secondly, she saw an extraordinary creature in an ordinary loch. So what you may ask? The point is this - critics of the Loch Ness Monster say people see monsters because they want to see monsters. This overstretched theory is always trotted out to allegedly explain how ordinary birds, wakes and deer can turn into extraordinary creatures with just the right psychological impairment applied to witnesses' minds. No doubt some will think "Sallyumbo" merely saw a bird swimming along in the water.

But how does that theory apply to this case? Quite simply, it does not.

Our witness states she had no knowledge of such a creature until after the event happened. No hyped up expectations, no strange things happening to the observational faculties. Likewise, we take the view of people looking at Loch Ness. To make my point via hyperbole, they are not hyperventilating with mad expectation as they approach the loch and do not jump up and down excitedly like three year olds whenever something appears on the loch. I suggest people are sensible and not given to dubious interpretations. They are not stupid ...

I do not doubt people mistake things for the Loch Ness Monster amongst the 10,000+ alleged sightings of the creatures but frankly not enough to explain everything strange that goes on in Loch Ness ... or Loch Awe for that matter.

Previously Unknown Land Sighting of Nessie

Occasionally as I research the subject of the Loch Ness Monster, the odd shiny piece turns up in the dross. I was in the National Library of Scotland recently and was perusing some old Scottish publications in search of new Nessie information.

Amongst other items, I reserved some copies of the Scots Magazine from 1990 for the reason that a land sighting of Nessie from 1932 had been featured in the June issue by a Colonel Fordyce. That particular sighting is already known to cryptozoologists but another one turned up in a later issue. My reasoning for this action being that when the Fordyce article was published it may have elicited a response in the "Letters to the Editor" page at a later date.

And so it was that a letter appeared subsequently in the August issue from the Reverend G. Mackenzie of West Chiltington, West Sussex. He was not the witness to this event, but he recounts how he was an Oxford Undergraduate between 1928 and 1931 and had been invited by his tutor with some other Scots to an evening with the Right Reverend Sir David Hunter Blair. The significance to us is that Sir David (pictured below) was once the Abbot of Fort Augustus Abbey on the shores of Loch Ness. At some point in the conversation, he was asked if he had seen the Loch Ness Monster. His answer was "no" but he said that one of his monks had seen it emerge from the woods and enter the waters of the loch. The Reverend Mackenzie adds no further details other than the description offered by Colonel Fordyce sounded very much the same as what he was told the monk saw. So ends our brief but interesting story.


What can we make of it? Firstly, my list of land sightings adds up to thirty three and this one was not in it. I am not aware of it being in the Loch Ness literature and so it looks like a new story and swells the ranks to thirty four alleged land encounters with Nessie. Rev Mackenzie's address was given in the letter but given the information in it, he would be aged about 100 years now and I suspect he is no longer with us.

Secondly, his letter implies that they were talking about the creature between 1928 and 1931. However, the monster did not become international news until 1933. One might presume an error was made in the date of the meeting, but since this blog believes that the Loch Ness Water Horse was known to locals (and monks) prior to 1933, we have no problem with this. It transpires that David Hunter Blair was abbot of the Abbey between 1912 and 1917 which suggests the event may have happened between those years. However, one cannot be certain of this.

Thirdly, a monk was claimed as the witness. Now this is the type of witness beloved of Nessie books. Someone regarded as honest, upright and not as likely to fabricate an account. For this reason, reports by clergy, policemen and other respected vocations are often held up above other sighting reports. This is quite reasonable as such people have more to lose if caught lying (though this does not preclude the idea that they misidentified an object as Nessie). So we quite like the fact that a monk was the stated witness (and told by another cleric - Sir David Hunter Blair).

Fourthly, we have the brief account itself. The story itself is not unique in its tenor, we have several accounts of large beasts with long necks and bulky bodies waddling/lumbering out of bushes in front of witnesses and then proceeding to disappear into the deep waters of Loch Ness. Where it may differ is in how Rev. Mackenzie says the description sounded "very much the same" as the Fordyce episode which describes an animal with a long neck, small head, humped back but with hair and hooved feet. Which parts of this strange Nessie description tallies with the monk's encounter we cannot tell. They may only agree in the long neck, small head and humped back of general Nessie lore but then again the hairy hide and hooves may have a part. So therein lies a mystery within a mystery.

Looking at a map of the area around Fort Augustus Abbey suggests a likely place for the encounter. The Abbey is at the mouth of the River Tarff (which was discussed in a previous blog). At this point there is a wooded area across the river from the Abbey and this looks the likely spot from which the creature emerged from the trees. Speculating, "x" would mark a possible place of the witness and the circled area is the forest where the creature may have emerged from in his view. Curiously, this proposed place of encounter cannot be more than a few hundred yards north of the land sighting of the beast reported by Margaret Munro in 1936.



But did our astonished monk rather misidentify what he saw? Could he have merely seen a deer or otter enter the water? Now I may be going out on a limb here, but I would have thought that a resident of the shores of Loch Ness would not have a problem knowing a deer or an otter when they saw one. Yet we are asked to believe that witnesses to such events do indeed fail to recognise known animals for something quite frankly astonishingly different. Methinks this is special pleading but then again such people would retort that suggesting the monk saw an extraordinary creature is also special pleading.

Pick your conclusion according to your prejudices, I say.

We would also note that this monk may have seen his creature prior to the media frenzy of 1933. Skeptics of Nessie have this theory that once a person enters the environs of Loch Ness they undergo a temporary metamorphosis which warps their perception of reality and they begin to see monsters where there are none. Once they are somewhere near Inverness, their brains are handed back to them and normal service is resumed. But as for local residents such as monks, had they undergone a permanent disabling of their mental faculties? I would not think so and their testimonies need to be given due weight.

Interestingly, Sir Hunter Blair wrote an article for the Catholic newspaper "Universe" in January 1934 which hints from its title that the monk's experience was not forgotten:

THE ELUSIVE MONSTER OF LOCH NESS - WHY IT MAY BE CAPABLE OF LIVING ON LAND OR IN WATER

Let me say at once that by the above heading I do not intend for a moment to imply that I entertain the slightest doubt as to the real and objective existence of a strange and unknown beast in the profundity of the great loch which I have known intimately for more than half a century. Elusive he is and must be, as long as it remains unpredictable when or where he will make his appearance in the length and breadth of the vast sheet of water which is his habitat. But during the autumn weeks which I spent at Fort Augustus, and still more as a result of correspondence since, I became and remain absolutely convinced, on the testimony of a veritable cloud of credible eyewitnesses, which it would be absurd us well as unreasonable to flout or to ignore, that this weird and mysterious creature does really and truly haunt these deep waters, not as a casual visitor, but as a resident — of how longstanding who can say.

Since the Editor of the 'Universe' asked me to write this short paper, I have thought it well to confirm -the impression, or rather conviction, which I formed a few months ago by communicating with a member of the Fort Augustus community, who enjoys a high and just repute as one intimately acquainted with the habits, language, and folklore of the West Highlands, and also as an antiquarian and archaeologist of high attainments.

I asked for a concise answer to several questions, the first being, has the monster been actually seen by any members of the Benedictine Community? ''Yes," he replies, "by four or five (whom he names) independently and on different occasions; also by several of the employees and workmen attached to the Abbey. Two of the elder boys of the Abbey School, and also a clerical student, had likewise seen it". Two of the most, remarkable witnesses are first, an ex-engineer captain of the Royal Navy resident at Fort Augustus, a man of high ability, training, and experience, who himself saw the animal and who has been for months past collecting and sifting all the evidence on the subject; and, secondly, the owner of Invergarry (the old home of the Macdonnels), who was suddenly converted from entire scepticism by watching (with his daughter) the creature's revolutions and gyrations in the loch for a continuous period of 40 minutes.

It is perfectly obvious, from the letters of my learned correspondent at Fort Augustus, that he brushes aside as puerile and untenable the absurd theories which has been put forward as to this mysterious visitor to, or rather resident in, Loch Ness being either a grampus, a lizard, a conger eel, a sea serpent, an upturned boat, an inflated rubber bag, or a lump of seaweed!

All of which he being a sensible man, dismisses (to use Disraeli's memorable phrase) as merely 'the hare-brained chatterings of irresponsible frivolity.' What my friend maintains, after carefully weighing all the available evidence, and giving much thought to the subject, is, briefly, that this strange amphibian belongs to the far-back, but post-glacial period, when the great chain of lakes, Loch Ness, Loch Lochy, and Loch Oich of Scotland, were still connected with the sea. These denizens of the deep waters have in the course of ages become fresh water, not salt water, amphibians. This particular specimen, having been (according to the generally accepted theory) disturbed by the recent extensive blastings in connection with the road making around Loch Ness, found its way to the surface, and in the continuous sunshine of the past summer, took a fancy to the upper world, which it apparently still retains, though the summer is long over.

My correspondent believes the animal, on all the evidence, to approximate to the type of the Plesiosaurus. Let me record my own belief that it is a true amphibian, capable of living either on land or in water, furnished with lungs as well as gills, with four rudimentary legs or paddles, an extraordinarily flexible neck, broad shoulders, and a strong, broad, flat tail, capable of violently churning up the water round, it. I hazard the conjecture that it belongs to no existing species, but to the Devonian period, oldest but one in the history of the world, and dating back some hundreds of millions of years.

I have little doubt that Hunter Blair's contact at the Abbey was Father Cyril Dieckhoff - enthusiastic researcher of Nessie. The retired Royal navy captain was possibly Captain Donald Munro who also was a monster hunter.

But Mr Hunter Blair believed the creature to be amphibious and quite capable of being at home in water or land. Hence there is no surprise that this mysterious creature was seen lumbering out of a wooded area.

Our final enquiry would be why the Loch Ness Monster is drawn to venture into forest before returning to its aquatic home? Does it seek food on land? There are not many reasons why a brute beast would take to land apart from food, shelter and reproduction. One can speculate endlessly as to which one (or any) may be relevant to this creature.

One may even add the musings of the aforementioned Colonel Fordyce at the top of this article who suggested the monster could even be a land creature hidden in the Moidart Mountains to the east of Loch Ness, which spends its time between hill and loch in uncertain proportions!

Curiouser and curiouser ....

The Other Loch Ness

When you arrive at Loch Ness, just make sure you are on the correct continent. Apparently there is another Loch Ness but this one is in the USA and unlike its famous counterpart, this one is not likely to be familiar to anyone beyond Minneapolis in the state of Minnesota.

Residing to the north of the city beside Lochness Park, the locals evidently could not bring themselves to call an American body of water a "loch" and hence its full title "Lochness Lake". A zoom on Google Maps reveals its environs.

Now they will have to believe you when you say there is a Walmart beside Lochness. Unlike its 26 mile long and 750 feet deep Scottish counterpart, Lochness Lake is a mere 16 feet deep and covers only 14 acres. But apparently the fishing is good with sunfish and pike.

The only mystery is why they called it Lochness Lake? Did a Highland community set up here after the clearances and decide to rename local places after the old homeland? Perhaps they did, but if you turn the loch on its side, another reason may be forthcoming!

Follow Up on the Latest Sonar Contact

Following on from the initial post, I was reading through various email/website/forum talk and the emphasis was very much on the skeptical side of the debate. But that is no surprise since most people do not think there is a large, unidentified creature in Loch Ness and so any story like this is going to lead to "natural" explanations.

Of course, there may be a natural explanation, I would not be so fanatical as to class every story as "monster". Where I diverge is in my view that not all sightings are explained by natural phenomenon.

As it turns out the favoured explanation is a submerged log. It's a theory and it sounds plausible and most people would accept that without any further critical thinking and move on to the next thing. I prefer to persist with some critical thinking.

Aside from the rather important question as to whether a submerged piece of tree debris could produce the strength of such a sonar trace, there are some other things to consider.

One skeptical forum summed it up (link here):

"Page 61 of Radford and Nickell’s Lake Monster Mysteries. Jerry Monk, a British hydrographic surveyor notes that when a piece of wood is immersed in water, over time, it sinks. If there is a thermocline, it is possible for the log to float in mid-water on the denser layer of cold water. Or, the log may sink, decay and form methane, which makes it rise again. The log idea, sinking and rising, degassing and sinking again was used to explain the Mansi sighting on Lake Champlain."

The thermocline is an area below the loch surface where the temperature drops rapidly creating a kind of partition between the upper and lower layers of water. For Loch Ness, it is usually stated to be at a depth of 40 meters but could vary between 30m and 60m depending on the season. Interestingly, the thermocline can be seen on sonar scans as well, which leads to the question as to why it is not visible on this particular scan if it is claimed to be buoying up the supposed piece of tree.

This is an open question since it may be a matter of sonar calibration and sensitivity but it does suggest that the "log" (which is 25 metres below the surface) is well above the thermocline.

Note that the quote mentions that the theoretical log would "float" on the thermocline. However, this target is moving at such a speed that the trace soon disappears off the screen. Can underwater currents achieve this rapidity? Yet another open question which suggests a log would tend to drift rather than speed.

Finally, the quote mentions vertical ascent and descent of a log due to water saturation and then gassification and renewed buoyancy from methane gas decay. Aside from the fact that the object moved horizontally, such a scenario is unlikely at Loch Ness. Decay of organic matter happens at very slow rates at the bottom and indeed tests have shown little gas production to stimulate ascent.

At this point, I have tried to contact the witness for his view on the matter and whether the tree debris he has seen in the past matches this. I suspect the answer would be "No". For me, talking to witnesses is important - unlike too many a number of critics who completely disregard verbal testimony (unless to find inconsistencies to discredit them)!

Another "natural" explanation often put forward are echo effects from sonar beams bouncing off the sides and bottom of the loch. These do produce strange effects such as vertical lines but it is unclear whether they would be capable of producing the trace in question and from the moored, stationary position he was at. Regular users of sonar equipment would be able to recognise such a pattern.

Other causes of unusual patterns are boat wakes. However, this would require a boat to pass fairly close by and again would be recognisable to a regular user (though as with side echoes it is unclear that they could even produce the pattern in question).

The Latest Nessie Sonar Contact

They just keep coming thick and fast these Nessie stories. On the back of two intriguing photographs these past four months and a head-neck sighting, a sonar contact has entered the fray.

This story appeared in the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail for Thursday 15th September 2011. It looks like it did not make the UK website of the Mail, so it is reproduced here for those outside of Scotland.

But first the basics on sonar. I do not claim to be an expert but it is an important tool in the hunt for the Loch Ness Monster. However, like normal photographs and pictures, there are degrees of interpretation, misidentification and, yes, hoaxes.

A sonar contact is a picture made from sound waves instead of light waves. The sonar device sends pulses of sound at various frequencies depending on how deep one wants to go. The reflected echo is processed to form a snapshot of the area within the sound beam.

However, being a continuous series of pulses, the sonar picture is more like a film than photograph and each successive echo builds a trail of images as the targets in the beam move. In fact, one could argue it is more like a picture taken with a very long time exposure.

So if an object is moving it will describe a trail of some shape and thickness. This thickness is not the girth or height of the whole object but whatever returns the strongest echo. This depends not on the size of the animal (for example) but the difference in density between the water and the object. In the case of the fish, the greatest density difference is between the swimbladder and the water since it contain much less dense air (or some other gases). The rest of the fish is closer to the density of water than the swimbladder. In the case of mammals and reptiles, one main area of interest would be the lungs.

The Daily Mail story now follows.

THERE is no sign of the trademark elongated neck, or the signature green humps. But the experts believe this almost unfathomable sonar image could be a breakthrough in the hint for Nessie that began in earnest in 1934.

Surrounded by fish, the ‘blip’ has a girth of about 5ft, though there is no way of estimating its length as it was moving. The image was captured by the quick thinking skipper of a pleasure boat who took a picture of the reading while waiting for his customers at Urquhart Castle, in Inverness-shire. Marcus Atkinson, 42, knows Loch Ness like the back of his hand and spends every day on its waters — but said he had never seen anything like this before.

He added: It's very weird. It was obvious it wasn‘t a shoal of fish and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. This thing is completely different from anything I've seen before.’ Mr Atkinson, of Fort Augustus, Inverness-shire, was idling in the bay when he saw the unusual sonar image. He said: ‘it's one of those moments where you just think, “What on earth is that?" I grabbed my mobile phone and took a picture before it disappeared of the screen. it's all very bizarre.‘ Mr Atkinson's picture shows a cross-section of the loch, with the boat itself at the top right of the picture.

The bright green area on the bottom right of the sonar screen is the bottom of the loch, which rises as the boat gets closer to shore. The small green flashes scattered across the monitor are deepwater fish. But the part of the picture that is exciting interest is the long, thin streak - that looks a little bit like a propeller - between the 20 and 25 metre depth markers. The measurements show it is about 5ft thick - but there is no way of telling how long it is as, if the object was following the boat, it would show up on every ‘blip’ of the sonar.


Expert Nessie hunter Steve Feltham said: ‘This is a sonar contact that defies all explanation — it's a huge object. ‘it’s fascinating, because the camera hasn't an imagination — it just shows what's there.’

So ends the account and I wrap this latest sighting with some comments. The first is that the captions editor makes a howler in comparing the elongated pattern to a sleek, lithe plesiosaur. If they had read the article, they would have gone for a different picture for (as said in the intro) this is a trace built up over a succession of sonar pulses.

The other observation is that the stated 5ft girth is not necessarily the complete height of the object because if it is an animal, it will be the lungs or swimbladder being measured. But then, five feet of lung or bouyancy organs points to one big creature.

I presume the five feet measure is taken by comparing it to the 20-25 metre depth scale in the picture above. Using my trusty ruler, I get an average estimate of 2.5 feet "girth" which is still quite a measurement. I would add that if this was Nessie and we assume a true girth twice as much as my measurement (i.e. giving us five feet) and apply classic Nessie proportions based on numerous eyewitness tesimonies and analysis, then a total tail tip to head length would come out as about 30 to 35 feet - which is a typical Nessie size.

So what was it with a minimum girth of 2.5 feet that was moving at a depth of about 70 feet? No doubt some will have a rational, non-Nessie explanation for this odd signal. Was it some human artefact somehow floating at a great depth? Was it a strange effect of sonar bouncing of the underwater sides of Loch Ness? Or was it the famous and mysterious denizen of Loch Ness?

As for us, this goes into our log of claimed Nessie sightings.

ERRATA: I just remembered "girth" is the measurement around an object as opposed to its thickness. So assuming a circular type girth, a rough girth estimate given a thickness of 5ft would be Pi x 5ft which is roughly 16ft.