Desperately Seeking Nessie

Back in 1992 as part of their "Video Diaries" series, the BBC broadcast the adventures of a man who had just arrived at Loch Ness to begin a new life on its mysterious shores in search of the Loch Ness Monster.

Twenty years on, Steve Feltham is still there living the dream and symbolises in more ways than one the continued search for a creature that refuses to bow down to science and identify itself. I visited Steve last week and discussed monster subjects and appreciate the cause he continues to pursue. Steve's one sighting of what may be Nessie happened some years back at Fort Augustus when he saw an torpedo like object plouging its way across the loch but just under the surface.

A few days later, someone put that documentary "Desperately Seeking Nessie" on YouTube, so enjoy a bit of monster hunting from twenty years ago.

The Lachlan Stuart Photograph (Part 3)

In our previous two studies on this famous photograph, the issue of Richard Frere's conflicting testimonies was examined and finally labelled as "inadmissible as evidence". As a postscript to this episode, I added this further point to the previous post:

A further damning statement can be found in Steuart Campbell's book "The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence" who attempted to track down Lachlan Stuart years later. The Forestry Commission had no record of him but the croft had certainly been let by them to him. Campbell then states:

'However, by 1952 he was no longer there.'

If Frere said he met Stuart at Whitefield no earlier than August 1953 ... that is a problem according to Steuart Campbell's book.

Leaving the Richard Frere testimony behind us now, I would like to now look at the second of the three arguments raised which concerns the alleged internal evidence of the picture itself. So take a look at the picture again.

Now move your eyes to the top right corner and observe the light, fuzzy patch in the sky. It is claimed that this is the sun shining up Glen Urquhart and since we are looking westwards, it must be in the evening. However, Lachlan Stuart claimed he took his picture around 6:30 in the morning when the sun would have been eastwards. This would imply Stuart was a liar and hence suggest the photo is faked. This theory about the sun being in the west was certainly mentioned in Steuart Campbell's 1996 edition of his book "The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence" but undoubtedly this view was doing the rounds before then.

Actually, there are several fuzzy patches scattered across this picture and debunkers may be referring to the other patch of lightness below it. I don't know, but whatever one is picked, it is irrelevant to the rest of this analysis. Now take a look at the next photograph below which I took this year at roughly the same spot as Lachlan Stuart (no one actually knows exactly where Stuart was standing).

So we have more fuzzy patches and an area of brightness in the top right in the direction of Urquhart Bay. So my question to you is where is the sun in this picture? Is it in the top right of my photograph?

The answer is it is not and it is nowhere. The picture above is the colour photo below passed through black-white, blurring and defocusing filters to bring it closer to the lower quality of the Stuart picture. The picture was taken at about 12:20 in the afternoon on the 9th April 2012. At that time the sun would have been out of view to the left of the picture. The solar position calculator below shows a yellow line denoting the direction of the sun on that date and time.

I would also have to say that I did not even take this picture with this fuzzy sun argument in mind. I just happened to be there and took the picture. If I had been more organised I could have got an even more relevant picture. But let me now make some further observations about this westerly-sun interpretation. 

First of all, using a cue from the Stuart picture we can work out the elevation of the alleged sun in the top right.  The leftmost hilltops in the picture lie in the area of the hill Creag Na h-lolaire which has a height of 245 metres. We also know the distance from Lachlan Stuart's position to the summit which is about 4400 metres. Using these, the angle the mountain subtends from the shore to summit in the picture can be calculated. Using the diagram below this comes out at 3.0 degrees. Note that Loch Ness is 17m above sea level and I presume the summit is measured in metres above sea level, so I subtracted 17m from the 245m figure (this decreases the value by 0.1 of a degree).

As a confirmation of this angle (and to demonstrate such investigations can be carried out at the loch or from one's desk anywhere in the world), I was back at Loch Ness this Tuesday past doing some research for the final part of this series. I also brought along with me a sextant to measure the aforementioned angle. It wasn't the greatest sextant in the world but it was accurate enough and gave me a similar answer of about 4 degrees.

With that angle, we can now estimate the apparent elevation or angle of the "sun" in the sky and that comes out at about 8.25 degrees (about 8.35 degrees if we add the sea level horizon back in). We can also estimate the azimuth of this "sun" because it is positioned above a known geographical location - Urquhart Bay.

One further obstacle to be removed is the location of the true horizon as this determines the true elevation of the sun. Where the loch meets the land may be a good estimate of the horizon but the true horizon is actually about 15 kilometres away based on a camera height of 1.5m and a loch elevation above sea level of 17m. The most distant mountain in the picture gives us some guidance. Using Google's 3D rendition of the Lachlan Stuart photograph (below), we can zoom into the distant peak and I think it is Creag Mhor lying between the towns of Milton and Balnain and its summit is about 10km from the Lachlan Stuart site.

As you can see, its base barely differs from our working horizon and so we will assume 15km will not make much of a difference either.

The question now before us is simple. If the photograph was a fake taken on an evening just before the 14th of July 1951 - not in the morning but when the sun was falling above Urquhart Bay, where was the sun actually positioned?

A rerun of the solar calculator (below) creates a problem for the "evening sun" theory. If we set the date  to the previous evening and find out where the sun was at the estimated azimuth down Urquhart Bay, we find two things. Firstly, the time of day was 7:30pm but the elevation of the sun in the sky for that azimuth was 17.43 degrees! In other words, more than twice that of the alleged "sun" here and the real sun would be too high in the sky to appear in the photograph.

Another issue is regarding shadows. If the sun is indeed shining from the west at an elevation of 8.25 degrees, a further piece of trigonometry (diagram below) says that the objects in the picture should be casting a shadow whose length is about 7 times the height of the object (as we know, shadows lengthen in the evenings).

In this picture, I see precious little evidence of any shadow. Now due to the foreshortening effect of perspective, the actual length of the shadow visible depends on the relative position of the observer and the object-shadow. If the observer is directly above the object, they will see the whole length of shadow. If they are at eye level with the object, the shadow is not visible. How much shadow should be visible to the observer in this situation? Note that Lachlan Stuart was not at eye level with the loch else we would see little water. In fact, using the apparent angle our hill subtends, the entire loch visible up to Urquhart Castle is at least 10 degrees. As a rough calculation, that would mean 1/9 of the shadow is visible or 7/9 (78%) of the height of the object should at least be cast as a shadow in this picture.

If anyone is wondering about the shadows cast by the waves in the Stuart photo, just ask yourself how they also manage to cast similar shadows on my noon day picture.

However, if Lachlan Stuart was where he claimed to be at about 6:30am on the 14th of July, then the sun would be behind him and any shadow cast by the objects would be on the side of them not visible to Stuart or his camera (see solar position diagram below).

So, in conclusion, there are three issues associated with this evening sun theory.

1. A similar photograph can be produced where the sun is not in the picture but a sun-like effect is visible.
2. The alleged "sun" is at the wrong altitude for the alleged date and time taken.
3. There is no shadow cast by the objects if the sun is westward.

Now, debunkers may come back with their counter-arguments but at issue here is a problem which may not be limited to the Loch Ness Monster in the realm of cryptozoology. That problem is a so-called critical thinking which undergoes inadequate peer review. By that I mean, someone puts out a theory which suggests a photograph (or sighting report) is a hoax or misinterpretation. Once out in the public domain, it gets picked up and propagated without any serious attempt to test whether the theory has any logical or evidential basis in fact.

In other words, there is a element of "preaching to the choir" in the whole process.

I will address the third of the three arguments against the photograph in hopefully the final post on the subject.

Part Four of this series can be viewed here.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

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.