Some Trap Camera Pictures from Loch Ness

Having had the trail cameras out and about at various times and locations, I thought I would put up a gallery of some of the more interesting images. Note if the Loch Ness Monster is in any of them, I can't see it! You can click on each image for more detail.

First we have a pleasant day at Loch Ness with some people out on a fishing excursion.

However, Highland weather can be quite temperamental as this next shot shows. Not quite great Nessie spotting weather.

The next picture is one I was hoping wouldn't happen but then again, I am half glad it did. Someone had found my trail camera but clearly they left it else I would not be showing you these pictures! So I thank the person for their honesty but clearly I will have to find a more covert location. I though it was well embedded and out of the way from tourists but then again, those boats I just showed could possibly notice it from afar and come back later to investigate.

As is usual the loch stirs itself and begins to attack the shoreline.

The sky begins to darken and the loch becomes more unsettled and harder to interpret. Is that a long hump at the centre left or just a wave?

The next camera I put on the roadside for one night just to see what happened as darkness descended. As it turned out a UFO (Unidentified Furry Object) came into view at midnight. I must admit I have no idea what it is. Perhaps a fox or rabbit? Too small and furry for Nessie, that's for sure.

 I then moved the camera to a spot just north of Fort Augustus.

Things got interesting when this critter turned up at 10:36pm.

"What was that little red light I just saw?"

"I think I better investigate this ...."

"... and give it a good sniff."

I was wondering what this "UFO" was. A ferret, polecat, weasel? Actually, I think it might have been a Pine Marten which is itself not a common creature. It seems our Loch Ness animals are pretty aware of these devices, which I don't mind so long as they don't sit in front of them all night!

More pictures as and when interesting things pass in front of them!

Nessie on Land: Making an Impression

Moving on from our overview of Loch Ness Monster Land Sightings, we have an aspect of these cases which turns up now and again and is best exemplified by the one case ascribed to the late monster hunter, Ted Holiday in 1962.  We take up the story in his own words from his book, "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" (p.11 1st Ed).

Passing the stony beach I moved on to prospect the wooded shore beyond Inverfarigaig which is hard to reach and seldom visited. A black fir-wood led down to a tract of bracken which ended in a beach. It was narrow, steeply-angled and overgrown with saplings. I examined this beach for some distance in both directions but the only organic object discovered was the drowned carcass of a wildcat. However, at one spot there was a curious patch of bent and broken bushes several yards wide beside the water for which it was hard to think of an obvious explanation. Years later, I learned that local people do occasionally find these patches and they associate them with the Orm.

The "Orm" was Holiday's own name for Nessie. The maps below shows the houses of Inverfarigaig and the circle is where I think Ted Holiday's beach was (I take "beyond Inverfarigaig" to mean west towards the shore and not south on the road). Though it may not be the only candidate it certainly is out of the way of the main road and looks hard to get to. Some may think the locals were pulling Ted's leg but whatever you think of this story, it stands to reason that if the Loch Ness Monster takes to land then it is going to leave evidence of its journey.

Therein lies an opportunity for research, albeit a very rare one. But what is the opportunity and how does one know they are looking at it? Several of our cases mention forensic evidence of the creature's fleeting appearance on land. The Margaret Munro case mentions a large depression being found on the beach by her employers when they went to investigate her claims. The E.H. Bright case mentions a three toed foot impression being left by the creature and the Alastair Erskine-Murray case involves a large depression the size of a "bull walrus". Meanwhile, the story of Alec Muir has our witnesses following a trail through the undergrowth to a a bubbling loch surface. We also have the case from the 1970s involving teenagers camping and hearing strange noises outside their tent at night which revealed crushed vegetation around them in the morning.

After Arthur Grant's famous encounter in January 1934, H.F. Hay (a fellow of the Zoological Society of Scotland) visited the spot with Grant and claimed to have seen evidence of body and appendage marks on the beach. The Grant case had the misfortune to have the yet to be discredited "hunter" Marmaduke Wetherell getting involved. There is a photograph of him and Arthur Grant examining wool or something similar attached to bushes. On the subject of tracks, Wetherell is associated with the infamous "Nessie footprints" found on a beach between Foyers and Fort Augustus in December 1933 (picture below). The footprints were declared by him to be genuine but the Natural History Museum examined a plaster cast and decided it to be the right foot of a hippopotamus! Wetherell and the Daily Mail investigation folded shortly after and Wetherell apparently vowed revenge (which seemed to imply the Mail was in on the act but had made Wetherell take the bullet alone). Years later in the Surgeon's Photo expose by Alastair Boyd and David Martin, it turned out that Wetherell had owned a silver hippo foot cast made into an ashtray.

So much for fake tracks but what about the genuine articles? There are three ways the Loch Ness Monster could leave evidence of its terrestrial lumberings, the first are ground depressions left by its body, the second is fecal material (i.e. droppings) and the third is organic material. We will look at each in turn.

DEPRESSIONS

Depressions can be any marks in the ground left by the creature. The problem is what do they look like and how rare are they? Primarily we are looking for main body marks and secondarily appendages due to their lighter and smaller impressions. In that light, we are looking for either oval, concave impressions and possibly gully like impressions for more serpentine morphology. The "canvas" of such impressions is important and indeed we should regard such depressions as rare given the shoreline features of Loch Ness. We can class the types of potential ground as:

• Heavy and light shingle
• Sand
• Grass
• Bracken type undergrowth

As far as my investigations went, the typical shoreline will consist of some feet of shingle or sand beach followed by level or slightly rising grass or undergrowth which is itself terminated by road or rockface. In fact, because of the roads, the combined  beach-vegetation strip may not be very wide at all and may only be a few feet across. The problems with depressions left by large creatures weighing one tonne or more becomes apparent on closer examination. With grass and heavier undergrowth, there is a time limit on depressions as the vegetation's resilience will spring back to close the gap. In other words, after days or even hours, one may not be aware that anything huge passed that way. The only exception is undergrowth snapped and killed by the sheer weight. Note that the type of undergrowth we are talking about would perhaps be less than two feet high, a large creature with a low centre of gravity and limbs designed primarily for moving underwater is not going to be a great negotiator of typical Loch Ness shoreline.

The problem with shingle is that heavier shingle will not be sufficiently moved to produce anything noticeable. Referring to the Margaret Munro case, her employers noticed the depression in the ground after hearing her story but if she had said nothing and they went for a walk on the beach later, would they have noticed the depression and attached any significance to it? Lighter shingle (i.e. stones less than a few centimetres) and sand offer the best hope of an out of the ordinary depression which would have a long time limit to it (until it is broken up by waves, humans, animals). As it turns out such beaches are not common at Loch Ness but this at least helps focus ones attention on where to look. Sand beaches are the least common compared to shingle but would offer the best hope of tracks being left which have some detail to them. Clearly, the bigger the stones get, the more detail is lost.

By way of example, I came across some curious marks on the shingle beach at a spot on the south side of the loch recently. The photographs below shows a kind of 20 foot long arrow head shaped arrangement of shallow trenches converging at a bush. A comparison photo of the beach further down is shown last.

Now I would normally just say that wave action was depositing lighter shingle on top of heavier but I would then expect all lines to be parallel, so to my uninformed mind, something else was at play to produce these marks. It was also unclear to me how far the water could forcefully progress up the beach as the loch level rises with rainfall and stormy weather. Now I am not saying that this was produced by a serpentine like creature writhing on the beach, I am rather saying that coming across depressions on the beach needs some thought applied to it rather than jumping to conclusions. An examination of the depressions did not reveal any further clues but it would be interesting to visit the marks in a few months time to see if they have been eroded away by natural and artificial means (I saw a group of canoeists dragging their canoes onto shore at that time though I felt the marks were not made by lightweight canoes).

FECAL MATERIAL

Moving onto fecal material, it is clear that if Nessie eats then Nessie defecates. As with Bigfoot hunters, finding such material could prove to be decisive in the Loch Ness Monster hunt as DNA material from intestinal cells could be obtained, but what exactly does one look for (or smell for)? What do Nessie faeces look like? Does she even do her "business" on land? Pertinent questions I am sure have raced through your mind many a time! One would normally give a dung heap a body swerve, but a Nessie one? It's worth its weight in gold!

Assuming faeces do end up on land, they will be even rarer than the actual land excursions themselves. But unlike the creature, they do not go back in the water. If the dung is slurry like (as it is with animals such as sharks in the clip below), then it will be absorbed into the ground and the thin layer of solids will eventually be washed away by some typical Scottish rain or dry and flake off.  Nevertheless, if people actually look for these things, there may be a chance of finding one.





 If it is more solid, the chances of discovery heighten. In fact, one would have presumed a large pile of solid Nessie faeces would have been pretty noticeable after 79 years unless people are mistaking them for livestock dung! My bet is that Nessie faeces are more slurry than solid (and I managed to type that while eating my lunch).

ORGANIC MATERIAL

But the prized item above all is a piece of the Loch Ness Monster. By that we would mean a piece of skin, tooth or claw being found in or near our depression site. Finding these small items in any other context would be next to impossible in my opinion. Indeed, it seems quite unlikely that a piece of tooth or claw would find its way onto the shore - animals tend not to shed teeth and claws as they are important to survival. But skin is a different matter, some animals shed their skin at regular intervals as they outgrow them. This moulting process occurs with snakes, lizards, salamanders and frogs. The skin can either come off in one piece or fragments. 

Whether the Loch Ness Monster sheds its skin as it grows is unknown. What is clear is that a lot of moulting animals eat their shed skin for nutrition so the evidence may be eaten as soon as it is produced! However, as such a creature drags itself along the rough shingle ground, it is possible that some skin would come off and be left behind. These may be quite small and may even be scales, again a thorough search of the suspected depression area (including under shingle) would be required.

THE STATISTICS OF THE SEARCH

Looking for depressions, faeces and skin fragments - the theory is simple enough but the practise may not be. There is approximately 85,000 metres of shoreline along Loch Ness. The beach and vegetation may extend out 2m to 10m and more from water to road or rock. Using an average of 6m gives us an initial surface coverage of about half a million square metres. That is about equivalent to the area of 100 American football fields and very inaccessible in parts. Some parts are very difficult to access such as beyond Foyers to Fort Augustus and Urquhart Bay northwards due to no road access or sheer height. These stretches alone take out a third of the available shoreline so we have more like 57,000 metres.

However, thousands of tourists access the shoreline every year (albeit for very short periods of time and not to look for faeces and skin). What are the chances of something being found? If one creature takes to the available shoreline (340,000 sq m) every month at random at night then one depression of say 6 sq m is made. Assume also the depression erodes away within that month. Now one trained and dedicated person actively searching this shoreline full time for one month would find the depression (assuming the creature does not land on the beach he has just surveyed!). However, such a person does not exist and so we are down to a mix of tourists, locals and monster hunters.

Take Steve Feltham as an example. He is a dedicated monster hunter who lives on the beach at Dores. Assume he surveys 200m of his shoreline every morning for a month. The odds of our creature landing on his stretch in any given month is about 285 to 1 against (57000 / 200). In other words, it would take 285 months to happen or 24 years. Steve has only been there 20 years so perhaps his time has not yet come!

Now take 10,000 tourists over one month parking their cars randomly along the loch and going down to the shore to spend a few minutes taking pictures. Their survey area is much shorter as their focus is on the loch ahead of them but let us assume 5m either side of them (i.e. 10m). However, their coverage is greater than our lone person due to their dispersal around the loch but in practise they tend to focus on key areas such as the location of parking laybys. So their coverage is not 10,000 * 10m but something less than that, I would say less than 5% given how far apart laybys are. That gives them a maximum coverage of 5,000m which suggests the odds of a Nessie depression being near a tourist is no better than 11 to 1 against. That suggests it would take at least a year for a tourist to be within eye shot of a Nessie landing spot. Thereafter other factors dictate:

• the individual's powers of observation to notice the depression as being noteworthy
• the quality of the depression given the sand/shingle/bracken factor
• the odds that the tourist will realise the depression has Nessie significance
• the odds that this event will get reported and be investigated

Of course, one can play around with the numbers and come to some other conclusion, but I hope I have put across the idea that it is not a given that something will be easily discovered or even make it into the public domain.

CONCLUSIONS

During the heady days of Loch Ness Monster expeditions in the 1960s and 1970s, I think it is fair to say that searching for land markings and other traces was not high up on the agenda. In fact, I am not even sure it featured at all. Given that those water based searches did not produce the final evidence, what have we got to lose by moving the search onto the shore?

Admittedly, the resources required to do this are large and so I do not expect any large scale effort in these more sceptical times. Indeed, even finding a "plesiosaur-shaped" depression may just elicit explanations that range from natural formations to someone digging it out. The marks I found myself could almost be a test case in that regard, natural, human, what? Going back to Ted Holiday's crushed bracken, we can never be quite sure when it comes to these slightly less than obvious intrusions on the loch shoreline. The prize may ultimately lie in what is found in the immediate vicinity.

However, I hope I have added a useful task to the list of those dedicated and occasional Loch Ness Monster hunters who still make their way to the loch looking for that decisive piece of evidence.

A Strange Sight in Loch Duich

Whilst perusing some old copies of the popular Scots Magazine, I came across this in the Letters page of the November 1959 issue.

Dear Sir,

I was interested to read the article about Killer Whales (September issue). In July 1953, when at Letterfearn, I took a photograph of a strange creature in Loch Duich. I saw the dorsal fin several times as it travelled - quite fast - first up the loch (to the right of the picture) and then down.

I would estimate the distance from the shore at about thirty yards, and the height of the fin at two feet or more. Since reading J. L. Campbell's article I have wondered whether it was not a Killer Whale that I photographed. I would say it had most of the characteristics ascribed to the Killer Whale. The whole aspect of the animal and its movements were belligerent beyond doubt, and had I been in a small boat in its path my first reaction would have been to get as far away from it as possible.

Its movements in Loch Duich recalled these of an otter in a river pool - to seek and kill on sight. Unfortunately, it did not surface sufficiently to allow the skin markings to be seen. It came up only when it had to, and went straight back to the job on hand which seemed to absorb it completely.

Yours faithfully.

W. H. Findlay.

The pictures above are what Mr. Findlay took that day. Admittedly, if he had not stated what he saw in detail, we would be left with a photograph that would be described as a serpentine head and neck by some. However, the blunted top of the appendage plus Mr. Findlay's own account of its motion does indeed suggest it is a killer whale of some description. In fact, some of the blighters were shot (with a camera) in hot pursuit of dolphins only a week ago further up the Scottish coast. See article and photograph here.

Of course, killer whales have never frequented Loch Ness at any time, so we do not include them as an explanation of Nessie sightings.

A Story of Loch Ness Eels

I came across this multi part story while searching on the Internet a few days back. The reason I had not seen it before was because the stories had only been posted in the last two weeks. My comments below contain spoilers, so feel free to read the originals first. Note this is a fictional work. I initially thought it might have a grain of truth, but as the author has posted instalments and the plot has developed, it is just as well it is just a story!

Part One can be found here.

Part Two can be found here.

Part Three can be found here.

Part Four can be found here.

Part Five can be found here.

UPDATE: The author has removed these chapters but hopes to put them back in at a future time.

The story concerns a man who was a keen angler who had received a call for help to go up to Loch Ness to help a friend who had bought a hotel in or around Foyers. While up at the loch, he was regaled with a few interesting tales by the local fishermen such as the Fort William boy who was trapped in a coil by a giant eel and the submersible under Castle Urquhart that fled from eels bigger than itself. Suitably sceptical, he decided to try out his fishing rod in the loch at Foyers but only pulled up a dog like rib cage. Walking over the Foyers river later he noticed a line of eighteen inch eels foraging their way up the river. The systematic way they did this was unusual but he did not think much more of it.

On a return visit to the Loch, he brought his fifty pounder line to have a go at the Loch Ness pike he had been told about. His first venture back with two lines at night ended with a trout head being reeled in after something big grabbed it and ran the line out. The second heavier line with a piece of mackerel on it was reeled in but then with a jolt began to run deep. It turned out to be a seal but a local incident elsewhere with a dead seal later made him think it was his hook that injured the seal but the vet told him the seal had died from a bite from something else in the loch which had led to an infection.

The story develops until finally our angling author hooks a huge eel which leads to a fish expert joining the hunt and we enter a world of cannibal eels which attack anything in their path yet flee from a humble torch when it lights on their strange pale eyes.

It's a fascinating read whether it is true or not. If it was true, I agree with the author's sentiment that he would never swim in Loch Ness again, let alone canoe (well, I was already of that opinion!). However, the creatures portrayed in the story are to say the least vicious and come across as the Loch Ness version of piranhas.

From a purely Loch Ness Monster Theory point of view, I found some parts of the story interesting.

• The pale eyes of the eels suggesting a nocturnal creature.
• The slime marks on a bank near a landed creature which suggested some terrestrial mobility,
• The ability to expand their bodies with gas which spoke of high buoyancy (the author suggested eels do this as a decompression guard against the bends).
• The cannibalistic nature of the animals which spoke to the food supply issues.

So enjoy the story. I suspect there will be further instalments which may see these creatures and the truth of the matter develop with the storyline.The only remaining question is who wrote this story? Perhaps someone already known to the Nessie community?

Nessie On Land: The Overview

What is the largest land animal on this planet? The answer is the Loch Ness Monster when it comes out of the water to make its rare excursions onto terra firma. In making such a statement, we enter a twilight world of strange and misshapen giants seen by incredulous and terrified witnesses reclining on pebble shores, dashing across roads and slithering back into murky depths. They are derided as ludicrous by sceptics and hailed as important by believers. The genre stretches back to the ancient days of the demonic Water Horse waiting on land for its next victim and it continues right up to the present day.

These are the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in Loch Ness cryptozoology, such is the fascination they hold with people including myself. Back in 1933, it was a land sighting that catapulted the creature to national and international fame and there has been a steady stream of tales of lumbering leviathans that has intensified the mystery as to what this beast could possibly be.

Against this backdrop, I gave a talk on land sightings to the Edinburgh Fortean Society back in January. At the end of it, I had a pile of Powerpoint slides which I had presented as well as some I did not have time to show plus various items of research which never made it to Powerpoint. So, in that light, it seemed sensible to put the material out to a wider audience and begin this series of articles. It is a subject this blog is not unfamiliar with. If you check our steadily growing section on Classic Sightings you will find articles referencing two such incidents involving the Spicers and Alec Muir. However, the list of land sighting stories I have currently stands at 35. There is clearly more to relate concerning this aspect of Nessie lore.

The picture above exemplifies the mystery. It is a reproduction of what George Spicer and his wife claimed to have seen back in August 1933. Using Google Maps and Street View, an approximation to the witnesses' location is made. A modern car is in place about 200 metres from our "creature" to give an idea of scale and the superimposed picture of the beast is taken from Alan Jones' painting which is itself based on the drawing the Spicers sent to Constance Whyte for her 1957 book "More Than A Legend". You can click on the image to enlarge it.

In the months ahead we will showcase various stories and ideas but for now we give the overview of cases. The tight textual columns of blogging does not lend itself to detailed tables so the spreadsheet of land sightings I have is supplied as an image which you should click on for a readable view. Credit is given to Fortean researcher Mike Dash who supplied the initial table to which I added further data. By data we mean all the incidents claimed over the years. Undoubtedly, some of them will be hoaxes or misidentification. The Grant, Hughes and Dallas cases are certainly claimed as hoaxes (I pass no comment at this point) but it is our contention that misidentification is far less likely in these cases than water based sightings.

The key facts from this table can be summarised as follow:

• These sightings occured over a 130 year period.
• This works out at one case every 4 years on average.
• Land sightings are at least 30 times rarer than water sightings.
• There were seven sightings before the "Nessie" era.
• Fifteen sightings occured during the 1930s "flap".
• Thirteen sightings are noted from the 1960s.
• There are "silent" periods from 1937-1959 and 1980-1993.
• Many cases are close up  (less than 100 metres).

Note also that the cases will vary in degree of "strangeness". For example, three cases are based on discoveries of depressions while others are just a bit too strange (I think of the Fordyce case). The close proximity of many sightings underlines the lesser margin for error. Of the 17 cases where a distance is mentioned, 11 (65%) are stated to be at 100 yards or less. On the negative side, 26% occur at night time which makes observation of detail less likely. However, estimation of overall size is easier when the creature is seen against various frames of reference such as roads, trees, rivers, etc.

Morphology is also an interesting factor but we will leave that for another day.

The distribution of sightings as best as I can figure are plotted on the map below. One place of interest is what I jokingly call "Monster Alley". It is part of the road on the south side which runs between the villages of Foyers and Whitefield. This six mile stretch of the B852 has 32% of all the reports yet consititues only 12% of loch side road. It also carries less traffic than the other side of the loch and hence less potential witnesses. At a guess we would suggests a third less over the 130 year period (even less during the modern era). This gives an expected ratio of only 4% of total sightings - yet it carries 32%.

Why would this be the case? It is to be noted that the loch is much closer to the shore and road than it is elsewhere. By this we mean there are no sheer drops but it is also to be noted that other stretches such as beyond Inchnacardoch Bay to Invermoriston have similar topography but zero incidents. So why is this stretch of road more significant to sightings?

Perhaps the underwater shelf of Loch Ness is shallower along this stretch allowing easier water to land progression for such creatures? Again, a look at a 2003 Kongsberg sonar map I have shows no advantage in this area. In fact, the shallower areas tend to be at the river outlets (Oich, Moristion, Enrick, Foyers and Ness rivers) and the top end of the loch. Until a better explanation is forthcoming, this remains a statistical anomaly.

However, there are also higher "spot" concentrations of incidents in the Fort Augustus and Urquhart Bay areas. One may argue this is because these are higher population centres but then again Invermoriston and Foyers do not seem well represented in that case.

Finally, what about deer population versus monster incidents? How often do deer go near the loch side for food and water? The answer is nobody knows for sure but since some sceptics claim these witnesses are seeing only these normal but largish animals it is worth a further look.

One avenue of research is deer roadkill incidents. It is a reasonable assumption to say that incidences of deer road kill is proportional to the presence of deer on or near the shoreline. I emailed the National Deer Vehicle Collisions Project for data along Loch Ness roads and was supplied with a map from which I have created the following map. Deer kill recoveries are in white while Monster incidents are in red. I would note first that the DVC data covers reported recovery of deer carcasses from 2003-2010. Secondly, it is to be noted that since car traffic is less on the south side then there has to be some weighting factor to account for this. What that factor is has proven to be somewhat difficult since we have to take into account car traffic volume, car speed, blind spots and deer population compared to the busier north side. In the end, I went for a weighting factor of 3:1.

The main thing to note is the lack of correlation between deer incidents and monster incidents. If people were mistaking deer for monsters we would expect more red on white but this is not the case. This does not preclude a few making that mistake but certainly this should not be considered a major explanation of claimed land sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. The other point to make is why these land sightings only occur once every four years if they are purely down to deer, etc misidentification.

In terms of chronology, of those reports where we reasonably know the time of day, 53% occured in daylight but 26% occured at night which is yet another interesting statistic considering how far fewer people are out and about at night. This would suggest the creature is far more likely to come ashore when it is dark. If we assume a 10:1 weighting of people out at day:night, the nighttime percentage should be more like 10% than 26%.

In terms of dates, it turns out that February was the most frequent month taking in 25% of all reports where the month is known. This compares to the statistical average of 8%.

So from these it seems that the best way to see the Loch Ness Monster on land is on the stretch of road between Foyers and Whitefield at night time in February. I would suggest your chances go up 130 fold (32/4 * 26/10 * 25/8) which means you have an 11 day wait instead of 4 years. Doesn't statistics make everything sound so optimistic? Good luck with those freezing 3am February watches north of Foyers!

So the game is afoot as we pursue the monster (in digital form anyway). I will finish this introduction with two contrasting quotes. The first is from Loch Ness researcher and sceptic, Tony Harmsworth, who has this to say about land sightings at his website:

"I must say, here, that I find it quite incredible that anyone can believe any of these ridiculous land sighting reports. Surely they do nothing but confuse the whole subject?"

But we leave the last word to a land sighting witness from 1994 (as quoted from "The Encyclopaedia of the Loch Ness Monster" by Paul Harrison):

"I saw what I saw. It was the monster of the Loch all right ... The scientists at the Loch have got it all wrong, I'm telling you."

Who should you believe the most? The sceptic or the witness? Let everyone be persuaded in their own minds.

Loch Ness Monster Audio Interview

A few weeks back I was interviewed by Tim Binnall who runs the paranormal website "Binnall of America". The subject was, of course, the Loch Ness Monster. The interview ranged far and wide and we covered a lot of ground and it will hopefully inform people more about the creature. 

The interview can be found here for your listening consideration. I was discussing the subject "ex tempore" so any facts or figures you think are inaccurate we can correct here.

Frank Searle and Baby Nessies

I spotted an article by a Malcolm Robinson who writes on mysterious and paranormal subjects. This part looks at the Loch Ness Monster and although much of what he says is not new, he does include the transcript of an interview he did with Frank Searle some time in the 1970s or early 1980s.

You can read it at this link and I make a few observation here. 

Firstly, Frank claimed 38 sightings of the monster which of course will be subject to some dispute by Nessie cryptozoologists. This is more than double the total claimed by such Nessie personalities as Alex Campbell and Winifred Cary. How many of these might have been genuine, I have no idea.

Half he claimed to have a co-witness with him but Lieve Petin whom we mentioned previously said she never saw anything (as far as I can tell). If anyone did co-witness a sighting with Frank Searle, send me an email!

The other interesting piece (which was also in his book) was the claimed sighting of some "young" Nessies in a river measuring about four feet long. Now one may scoff at this report but the general theme holds - if there is a breeding population (as opposed to a visiting creature or something paranormal) then there will be smaller, juvenile creatures.

Here's one particularly cute version (credit to artist Tom Barnfield at www.runninghead.com):

Another more plesiosaur like one is here, though I cannot be sure who painted it.

Clearly, these smaller versions of Nessie have proven to be even more elusive than their adult counterparts as very few reports mention creatures of that size. However, this is to be expected for several reasons.

The first is because of their small size and this means they are just harder to spot. Compare it to how rarely otters are seen at Loch Ness and then extrapolate that to an animal that rarely surfaces (Searle himself saw the creatures as water-breathers with surfacings being purely accidental as they pursued fish, etc).

Secondly, apart from being difficult to spot because of their size, they are also less likely to break the surface.

Thirdly, since we have no idea of the life-cycle of a Nessie, who knows whether they spend the first part of their lives remaining in the depths, out of the way of potential predators.

Just my rambling thoughts ....