Plesiosaur Eater

This newly named sea predator is doing the rounds. From io9:

Back in 2009 we told you about Predator X, a gigantic pliosaur whose fossilized remains were found in the Arctic. Now, after years of research, paleontologists have officially inducted the Jurassic-era aquatic beast into the science books. Its name is Pliosaurus funkei, a four-paddled apex predator that terrorized the seas over 147 million years ago. But as the researchers' investigation has revealed, the reptile was not as monstrous as initially reported. That said, it was still one of the most terrifying animals to ever appear on Earth. 

 Looks like "Nessie the Plesiosaur" has finally been upstaged!

Into The Darkness

Following on from a string of comments in a previous post and another item noticed on the Internet, the title of this post seemed appropriate.

A post recently appeared on the sceptic dominated site cryptozoology.com from John Gillies giving a link to a night vision video he took some days back. John and I have something in common - we are both Central Scotland Nessie hunters and we both have night vision equipment. His video got short shrift, but as one who has attempted the same, I can sympathise with the challenge of night vision hunting.

I tried night vision equipment for the first time back in April and you can read the details here. The video clip below shows what is achievable with entry level equipment. 

Now normal explanations such as boats and various local wildlife are absent at night time so they can be discounted (though obviously it is not impossible that someone could take to the loch without any giveaway torch light). Other misidentifications such as logs will still be around so there is always room for caution. John's clip shows two dark patches on the surface of the loch which do not appear to move throughout the sequence. My thought was that perhaps they might have been wind slicks which in daytime are patches of calmer water reflecting the darker opposite shoreline while the surrounding ripples reflect the sky.

However, what a wind slick with both dark sky and hills looks like through infra-red sensors is another matter. I don't know, but dismissing the clip without offering an explanation is not critical thinking.

My belief that the Loch Ness Monster is a creature of darkness suggests surfacings at night may be more likely. However, just because it is as dark above as it is below is not necessarily a reason to come to the surface. There has to be a reason for such behaviour and the usual suspects of food, reproduction, territory, etc would need to be considered. In the meantime, such tools of exploration should be encouraged.

The second domain of darkness is right at the bottom of the loch. My belief is that these creatures mainly dwell at the bottom in inert, energy saving states. I would also think they might burrow into the four metre plus sediment just like air breathing reptiles burrow into the soil to avoid the extremes of winter. In such a state, they would be completely undetectable which brings us to underwater television.

Plugging in a TV feed and sending it down to the bottom or sides of the loch on a mobile carrier was done in the early 1980s and was also used during Operation Deepscan. The technology has grown more sophisticated and the Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) used in the offshore oil and gas industry are impressive in their range of abilities and have been to Loch Ness more than once.

During the making of MonsterQuest's prematurely titled "Death at Loch Ness" in 2008, ROV manfacturer, Seatrepid, employed their Outland 1000 and SeaRover II in deep exploration of the loch. You can see the results below.

The company's ROVs also were employed in 2000 to pick up golf balls from the bottom of the loch!

But like other modes of Loch Ness hunting, it has its drawbacks. For a start, the extent of the area under light is quite small and so the ROV would have to travel quite a bit to cover more surveyable ground. It need not be pointed out that the bottom surface of the loch covers a lot of square miles. The first ROV clip above is a bit misleading in that respect as the two ROVs look as if they are near each other and doubling the amount of light levels.

Secondly, as you can see from the start of the first video, sediment disturbance can throw up quite a bit of a cloud which would obviously make visibility even worse. However, coming upon an area which suddenly throws up a cloud of silt is itself a curious if not exciting prospect!

Lastly, I am led to believe these machines are quite noisy. Clearly, things sound different underwater than they would in the air, but it has to be asked what the reaction of the Loch Ness Monster would be to such an approaching machine? Would it move away before the light hits or would it just stay still? Even if it did move off, one would expect a could of silt and again that would be anomalous in a normally inert environment (I am assuming currents such as seiches have a minimal effect on the abyssal region of Loch Ness).

But we can only go with what we know and have. It was assumed into the 1960s that sustained, wide camera coverage of the loch surface would solve the mystery. Reading F.W.Holiday's time as an LNIB volunteer, the problems were there to see - distance, weather and human error (see "The Great Orm Of Loch Ness").

The move to sonar and fixed underwater cameras in the 1970s was then mooted as the way forward but again the inky depths of the loch and the ambiguity of sonar interpretation defeated the endeavour.

Will night vision equipment or ROVs further the investigation? Perhaps, but considering such things are currently the domain of low budget amateurs such as myself or the whim of companies making brief visits to the loch, then confidence is not exactly sky high.

But consider this, the two exhibition centres at Drumnadrochit take in millions per year from tourists. The entrepreneurs who own these facilities seem to have done very well out of the Loch Ness Monster. The local economy is said to benefit to the tune of £25 million from Nessie. What have they put back into the investigation of this mystery that has rewarded them so well over these last 30 years? No doubt, something has been put in, but it seems research has been too dependent on visiting Americans or companies field testing equipment.

How much is a ROV? No doubt they can climb into a six figure sum. A casual google around found this ROV priced at $35,000. I don't know if this is suitable and it may require further modifications, but compared to the millions that flow into the Drumnadrochit coffers, it is not much at all.

The Murky Allure Of The Loch Ness Monster

On the 25th anniversary of Operation Deepscan, The BBC have run an article and podcast on the Loch Ness Monster worth reading and listening to. Adrian Shine is interviewed on his times at Loch Ness and his views on the 79 year hunt and what may constitute the Loch Ness Monster. Jonathan Downes of CFZ also contributes.

The theme of not quite "getting there" in a final theory continues to this day as Adrian looked back on those three sonar contacts from 1987 which he says he cannot explain to this day. In fact, the general tone of the article may be summed up in one quote:

Nevertheless, Shine says it is hard to dismiss "the honesty and volume" of eyewitness testimony of the Loch Ness monster. 

Now this raises a question with me. Adrian is honest enough to say he doesn't quite know what these sonar contacts are telling him. Yet, he could have simply said it was a seal or his favoured sturgeon. But it seems these explanations are inadequate as it was a bit deep for a seal (and did anyone in that mass of boats see a seal surfacing - as it must). As for a sturgeon, again I guess it did not pass muster.

So, fair enough, it was marked inconclusive. But 25 years on, should it still be marked inconclusive? After a quarter century, has no progress been made on what a seal sonar signature looks like or how a sturgeon would behave in Loch Ness? Perhaps the "inconclusive" tag is better served with a "waiting for an explanation" tag.

But if you run out of "normal" explanations, should there be a "sell by date" on them and tentatively conclude it could be an unknown and animate object?

P.S. They mentions "Doctor Who and the Zygons" which features a rather threatening Nessie. The sooner they get this on DVD the better ... perhaps next year?

Some Nessie Tidbits

I am finishing off part 3 of the Lachlan Stuart series, but came across some small items in the world of Nessie worth putting out.

1. DAY TRIP TO LOCH NESS

The Scottish Screen Archive has a piece called "Ferguslie Mills outing to Inverness, July 1936". You can view it here.

You can slide the film bar to 4:25 for a minute's worth of our works outing surveying Loch Ness at Dores Bay. They have a look out for Nessie and with a group shot at the end you see Dores Pier in a much better state to the few rotten posts that it is now. The blob in our still frame above is not Nessie!

 2. THE LOCH NESS SEAL(S)

Well, some people think the Loch Ness Monster is a pinniped of sorts. This photo seems to offer proof of a serpentine seal but is in fact a shot of appropriately lined up seals having some fun at Whipsnade Zoo in 1955. I don't think any seals that ventured into Loch Ness have ever pulled off such a stunt in front of those incredulous humans - but who knows?

3. PHYSICAL PROOF OF NESSIE?

Perhaps, but then again, maybe not. A current eBay entry makes this claim:

Legend has it that these are nose hair from the legendary Loch Ness Monster. We got these from a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who claims to have seen the monster on three occasions. A few years ago, it reared up next to his boat, its head only inches from him, he grabbed out at it to fend it off and grabbed some nose hair, before the monster returned to the murky depths of the loch. This man wishes to remain anonymous and this is all we know of the story. He passed them on to an ‘aristocratic’ collector who kept the hair for some years, in his collection of weird and wonderful stuff, he gave it an artist friend of his. He now has decided to sell them, he also wishing to remain anonymous has asked us to list them for him!

 

Those who have spent years, nay decades, at the loch looking for that final physical proof may be a bit miffed to be upstaged by an eBay entry beginning bids at £1. But if it's the real deal, expect bidding to go into the tens of thousands. This could be a valuable addition to a cryptozoological museum. No, I am not the seller and I don't plan to bid!

POSTSCRIPT: Nessie's nasal hairs sold for the princely sum of £6.50.

A personal "hunt" for Mokele-mbembe

One of this blog's long term readers, Erik Kristopher Myers, has been on a Mokele-mbembe quest for some time. However, it's not an expedition into the Congo, but something he saw as a kid on TV:

When I was a wee lad in the early 1980s, there was an American program called "That's Incredible!" that dealt with people, places, things and other assorted Nouns that were...well, incredible. This was just after I'd made the natural transition from a childhood Dinosaur Fixation to a Nessie Fixation due to the idea that maybe there were still living, breathing dinosaurs out there...! Such possibilities truly capture a young mind. 

At any rate, my parents, having seen commercial previews, made sure to sit me down this one evening for the latest episode of "That's Incredible!", as it was due to show what they mistakenly believed to be new Nessie footage. Turns out that while Nessie was name-dropped in the previews, the footage was actually of a purported Mokele-mbembe.

Said footage blew my mind in a way that no photo or motion picture before or since ever has (aside from the good ol' Surgeon's Photo). What was shown that night was captured by an investigator (whether African or African-American now escapes me), and clearly shows a head and neck rising from a mist-enshrouded swamp. My memory is colored by time, but what I recall seeing was unlike anything ever captured at Loch Ness, and was essentially the Sandra Mansi photo of Champ brought to life. 

At any rate, this has stayed burned into my mind for thirty years now. With the advent of the internet, I began digging for info, and the dig is ongoing. The bottom line is that the footage has gone the "Thunderbird photo" route and dropped off the face of the earth. The crypto books don't mention it; and it seems to be commonly confused with the "swimming elephant" Mokele-mbembe video taken above Lake Tele in the early 90s. However, there's a growing number of folks online who are also coming forward to say that they too remember this particularly striking video. Attempts on my part and the part of others to contact the show's producers or locate copies through independent channels has been fruitless.

This Mokele-mbembe mystery has become the stuff of legend, with so many crypto-heads "discovering" lake monsters via this film's one and only TV screening, presumably at a young (and very impressionable!) age. Seeing this still is disappointing in the extreme, and just underlines how unreliable the memory can be. A lesson to be remembered, I think?"

Erik's search has been partly fulfilled in the finding of an old article quoting Roy Mackal which sheds light on this old but forgotten video footage. The relevant words are shown below plus a still from that film which is now shown to be a fake. Note Dr. Mackal's other words concerning his belief that Nessie is an extinct whale called the zeuglodont.

If anyone can add the last piece to the jigsaw by providing a link or otherwise to the actual video then I am sure Erik would be grateful. Meantime, the hunt for the real Mokele-mbembe continues.

As a footnote, Erik is a film producer who is working on a script for a Loch Ness story which focuses on the monster hunters of the 1960s and 1970s. It's in its very early stages, as there is one film and another screenplay ahead of it. But if it ever gets to final release I know I will be in the queue to buy a copy!

By coincidence, Tabitca Cope has done a piece on Mokele-mbembe too, here. We can also expect a new book on the beast by Paul Harrison this year or next.

60th Anniversary of John Cobb Disaster

The Inverness Courier notes the gathering today of speed enthusiasts to mark the death of world land and water speed record holder, John Cobb at Loch Ness. On that day of the 29th September 1952, the 52 year old had exceeded the record with a speed of 206mph. However, before the second mile run which would have established the record, the boat broke up on hitting a wave and Cobb was killed. The events of those days are shown on this YouTube video.

The memorial cairn at which these people gather today has a simple plaque but it speaks of the bravery and determination of the man who pushed the boundaries of speed.

Between 2000 and 2002, the Loch Ness Project team and other experts managed to find the debris field of the boat at a depth of 200m (picture below from BBC). However, unlike the Wellington Bomber that was recovered from Loch Ness, I am not aware of any attempts to recover the remains of the Crusader.

The Crusader had hit an unexpected wake which led some to ask a single question. The fact was that there should have been no wakes to disrupt and endanger the boat. The loch would have been cleared of boat traffic and Cobb would have had as calm as surface as possible. Hence the word "unexpected" applied to the rogue wake. But is "unexpected" the same as "unexplained"? The single question asked was whether the Loch Ness Monster had moved just beneath the surface and produced the deadly wave?

The only Loch Ness expert I am aware of who it is claimed held to the theory of a Nessie produced wake was Tim Dinsdale. Terence Gallacher, a documentary film maker relates a conversation he had with Tim (original link here):

He claimed that John Cobb, who was killed while attempting a new water-speed record on Loch Ness, “was killed by Nessie”.

Tim explained that when a water speed attempt is made on a loch (or lake), it is necessary for all craft, of whatever size, to be stopped.  This is because the “line wake” of a craft is sufficient to upset the speed boat.  What is required is what is known as a “Jelly calm”.

We knew that Movietonews had a shot of the disaster that befell John Cobb.  It had been shot on 35mm film and showed the speed boat taking off just like a seaplane before it somersaulted and crashed back into the water.

I had the film step-printed to enable us to show, in slow motion, the very definite line wake and the bouncing of John Cobb’s boat when it arrived at the line wake.

This matter has never been resolved and it requires an answer.

One of this article's comments below pointed me to Tim's book "The Leviathans" ("Monster Hunt" in the USA). In this we read Tim's full investigation into the matter following a discussion with another Nessie hunter, Torquil MacLeod. You can refer to the book for further details of what Tim thought.

Clearly, if one believes there is one or more large animals in Loch Ness, then it is a possibility. However, what can be gained from following this line of enquiry is uncertain. Nicholas Witchell, in his book "The Loch Ness Story" suggests the reflection of the Crusader's previous bow wave was to blame but the Courier article linked above says the crash occurred at the end of the first run before such a wave became an issue.

In that light, the aforementioned Loch Ness Project team suggest one of Cobb's support boats was to blame. That is also possible though how one proves it is another question. Perhaps, it is best just to leave this minor mystery alone as it is the kind of Nessie headline that seems undesirable. To that end, we leave you with a photo of the man himself on that fateful day and again we recognise the bravery and determination that marked him out from others.

Some Nessie Webcam Images?

From time to time, readers will send in various items of interest pertaining to the Loch Ness Monster. That includes shots taken of objects at Loch Ness on the popular webcam found at this link.

So it was that from the dedicated army of webcam hunters, a Nessie watcher by the name of Ed provided me with a sequence of 40 snapshots he took on the 5th April 2012 between 1020 and 1036.  With a little help from some GIF file processing software, I managed to concatenate the images into an animated GIF which gives the files a video like quality. Click on the first image below to see the entire video properly.

The sequence is a bit jerky for obvious reasons as the time gap between snapshots is typically 30 seconds. Brief points where the object appears to slow down are more due to images with a shorter time gap between them. The same can be said in an opposite sense for faster portions where the time gap is longer.

Now it may appear that this is nothing more than a blob and in all likelihood just a boat heading north (Ed was willing the object to submerge before it disappeared past the hill!). However, apart from the interesting exercise of creating such an animation, there is something else eye catching about this object and that is the fact that it is changing its appearance in the animation. The video below is a zoom in of the object and allows you to see more detail. If you click on the video icon and then click the bottom right hand corner to go full screen, you will get a good view of the changing aspects of the image (you can also zoom in on the GIF file above if you open it in a new tab and type in a few "control +" characters).

As you observe the object, you will notice it seems to "grow" to the front as it makes progress up the loch and then go back to the "dome" appearance. If this was Nessie, you would conjecture this was the front part of the creature briefly surfacing and submerging again. The difference in the two is shown below - dome-like and then extended.

An attempt can also be made to estimate the speed of the object. We know the time elapsed is about 16 minutes and the object is roughly mid-loch. By projecting a line in the first frame through the object to the opposite shore and again as it disappears behind the hill, an estimate of distance and hence speed can be calculated. I estimate it travelled at least a mile giving a speed of about 4 mph but a final answer also depends on the webcam elevation and the precise distance to the object (the Google 3D map below give rough idea where lines AB and CD are possible object routes).

The other curious feature is the lack of a wake from the object. You would expect it from any motor driven boat but nothing is readily apparent in the animation. Once we get some dry days at Loch Ness, I will see if I can spot a boat in a similar situation on the webcam and report back. So what is going on here? Is this a crazy boat rotating about 360 degrees as it moves north? That seems unlikely. Is it a rowing boat which may account for less wake but again how do we account for the changing shape?

There is a long boat that goes up and down Loch Ness which is quite fast and manoeuvrable and that is the RIB boat that leaves Fort Augustus (below). However, it tends not to go north of Urquhart Bay and you can see that it would leave an easily discernible wake on the picture. As an aside, the boat cruising season had not yet started on Loch Ness when this webcam sequence was taken. This was Thursday April 5th and official cruises did not start until the Easter Weekend the following day. So, using a cruise timetable to pinpoint a boat in the area would be a bit haphazard (although I do not doubt some dry runs at "unofficial" times may have been happening). It is also to be noted that a lot of boats that cruise Loch Ness are white.

The other theory would be video artifacts in the image which could give it an extended appearance. I am not convinced of that explanation - especially when the image extension happens at the same point more than once.

Another objection may be why no else saw this object plainly moving up the middle of the loch for at least sixteen minutes? I would reply, how do we know no one else saw it? It is my belief that the majority of witnesses to strange things in the loch never report what they see or they do but it is never published.

On the flip side of potential witnesses, the tourist season had not started (as evidenced by cruise companies not running) and the rush hour was over so traffic volume was lower. Also note that so called loch observers who speed their way along the A82 carriageway are not focused on the loch and neither should be for road safety. A quick glance at the loch at a dark object may be simply ignored and dismissed as a boat. I would also add that the road at that point above the object is very high and the object was not likely visible from many points along the road (unless you got out at a layby).

So did anyone else see something? We simply don't know.

Or perhaps it is a trick of the light as the sun plays upon the surface of the object? A run of my favourite solar position calculator gives the position of the sun on that day and time. The sun is to the right of the webcam and so the object is somewhat in shadow. Could the sun be blanching out the front part of the object at various intervals due to that part being more reflective? The sun position does not suggest it and if this were the case, I would still expect to see a lighter area of pixels where the "extension" would be and be readily distinguishable from the rest of the object and open water. I don't see this in the sequence of images.

By way of update from a comment below from Tim, could the extended part simply be the shadow of the object? I thought about this and noticed some problems with this theory. Firstly, if you observe the sky in the top left, it gets steadily darker toward the end of the sequence but the form of the shadow does not seem to follow it. Secondly, why would the shadow completely disappear? Surely the sun's degree of shining is not that variable? Thirdly, if it was a shadow, then it is too long for that time of day. The elevation of the sun in the solar calculator is given as 33.86 degrees. A simple trigonometrical calculation shows that a shadow would be no longer than half the height of the object. However, the enlarged image above suggests the "extension" is longer than the height of the object. So, we conclude it is not likely to be shadow.

There are two other interesting points to make in concluding. Firstly, there was another reported sighting of something unusual in Urquhart Bay only 17 hours before and you can read that incident here. It would indeed be strange that the only two known "Nessie" incidents over these past 260 days of 2012 would be so close together!

The other point is that when examining the sequence I noticed another object making its way in the opposite direction! If you look at our dark object at the beginning of the sequence and look to the right and slightly up, you will see a whitish object which is presumably a water disturbance moving south and which disappears before the end of the animation. What is this, you may ask? Was it birds disturbing the surface or some other animal just breaking the surface as it moved? Comments and suggestions are welcomed.

So we have an interesting sequence of images here. As luck would not have it, I turned up at Loch Ness the next day! It seems spotting the Loch Ness Monster is often more luck than judgement.

But has Ed captured the Loch Ness Monster on webcam or is there the usual (and inevitable) alternate explanation for this strange image? You be the judge, I'll put it in the log of reported sightings for 2012.