Seal Seen 50 Miles Inland

In a previous article on the monster spotted several times on the Beauly Firth (which the River Ness connects with Loch Ness), we wondered about how easy a creature could get up the River Ness to our famous loch.

Now only a couple of weeks later we hear of a seal in England which has forged 50 miles inland to a local lake. The YouTube clip is below.

Note how it tackles a river bank against the water flow. If a seal can do it, what about a Nessie? Mind you, the seal seems to have needed the river to be in spate. The BBC report is below (original link here).

Seal seen at Drayton Lakes Reserve - 50 miles from sea

 

A seal is thought to have swum more than 50 miles (80km) along a flooded river to an RSPB nature reserve, where it was filmed "hopping" into a lake.

The marine mammal was filmed in a YouTube clip, published on Sunday, in a lake at Fen Drayton Lakes Reserve, in Swavesey, Cambridgeshire.

Graham Elliott of the RSPB said it was a "surprising" but not unique sighting.

"You occasionally get seals in the River Ouse near St Ives but I've never known of one here before," he said.

"The surprising thing was to see it leaving the river and hopping over the bank, entering the gravel pits area."

Thought by experts to be a common seal, the footage shows the seal battling to cross a barrier to get into a lake on the RSPB site.

The 29-year-old man who captured the footage said he initially thought he had seen a dog when he approached the area while on a walk with a friend at about 13:45 GMT on Sunday.

The designer, who wanted to be known as Robjn, said: "At first sight, I thought it was a dog in trouble but as it came up for air I could see it was a seal. 

"It was swimming up a ditch that links to the Great Ouse. In the video, it is swimming from the ditch up into the flooded field.

"It had a few tries at different points of climbing the bank but in the film was the successful attempt. After that point we didn't see it again."

Water levels have remained high following recent heavy rain in the area, leading to the river flooding nearby fields.

Mr Elliott said the creature could prove to be a "great visitor attraction", although it has not been seen since the footage was taken.

"If anybody does see it, we'd love to hear the news," he said.

"It was probably just exploring new views."

Mr Elliott said the RSPB would monitor the situation and there was no apparent cause for concern.

"It's perfectly happy in the lake with plenty of food to sustain it. It's not a threat to any other wildlife and hopefully it will find its way out the same way it came in," he said.

"If it can't, we'll then consult with the RSPCA to make a decision on what will happen next."

Another Car Accident at Loch Ness

I sometimes wonder if drivers are indulging in more Nessie watching that road watching as the road to the Castle is not exactly difficult to navigate. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. From the Inverness Courier 31st December:

FIVE people had a miraculous escape when the car they were travelling in went off the road and plunged 100 feet into Loch Ness.

The single vehicle accident happened shortly after 9.30 this morning when the cer was travelling on the A82 between Drumnadrochit and Invermoriston.

The stretch of road where the accident occurred has some of the highest points above the loch with almost vertical drops in places.

Emergency services including police and ambulance attended but amazingly all five occupants of the car escaped relatively unscathed despite the 100 foot drop from the road to Loch Ness.

They were all taken to Raigmore Hospital where they were treated for minor injuries. Their names have not been released.

The A82 was closed for a short while around 1.00pm while the car was recovered from the water and winched back on to trhe road and taken away on a breakdown truck.

Nessie Review of 2012

I hope you all had a good Christmas. I feel slightly heavier for it and it's not over yet. Cryptozoologically, I had one experience of an out-of-place animal. The turkey I ordered was one size too big - it shouldn't have been there. That's an official bona fide sighting.

Anyway, it is nearly the end of the year and a good time to look back at what has made Loch Ness Monster news nationally and internationally as well as a personal view of the perennial mystery of Loch Ness.

The first thing to say is how quiet things have been at Loch Ness in 2012 compared to the previous year. In 2011, we had the Rowe and Jobes photos, the Atkinson sonar contact and various sightings such as the Hargreaves/MacGruer head-neck sighting. In fact, perhaps because it was quiet, the Atkinson sonar story was rerun again in 2012!

But this year only one story hit the media headlines both nationally and internationally and that was the George Edwards photograph. The fact that this picture turned out to be a fake leaves us with a fairly echoing void as far as the media is concerned. As a result, any alleged Loch Ness reports have to come in under the radar of "normal" reporting.

The first report came via Gary Campbell and was covered on this blog here. The witness reported a strange whirlpool in the area just south of Urquhart Castle on April 4th. Despite the witness saying there was no boat traffic in the area, one Loch Ness researcher suggested it was just one of the cruise boats doing a circular turn. A while later when I was at Loch Ness I watched one of these craft doing a turn. The water disturbance created died down pretty quickly and the boat did not get out of sight quickly enough to fool me or anyone.

Strangely enough, another potential witness of the webcam variety emailed me with his sequence of webcam shots taken the next day. That event was reported in this blog article. Now, normally such images are inconclusive at best but this one had the advantage of being animatable plus the object in the sequence appears to change shape (see below). I speculated whether this was due to the changing front portion submerging and resurfacing or some trick of the light. It was suggested by the same Loch Ness researcher that this was due to this being a two-tone boat. However, the snapshots do not really suggest this and the sun at the time was to the right and mostly behind the observer and object. Once again, make your own judgement.

The third alleged sighting once again came via non-conventional routes. This time it was the comments section of the online Inverness Courier in August and I discuss it for the first time on this blog. The comment ran thusly:

I know of two ladies who have recently seen the same sort of thing as Mr Edwards in the Loch, quite near Dores Inn but no way would they ever go to the press with the news for fear of attracting the ridicule that we see on this page today. 

I emailed the author of the comment for further details. His reply was:

No, I am very sorry but I cannot breach their confidence in any way. Neither had ever believed in the “Monster” but like many others, myself included, let folk get on with the matter.

What he could tell me was this:

They are retired ladies but have been close friends since childhood and meet up from time to time to take a walk. They had parked at Dores Pub and gone down the path in the direction of  Aldourie Castle. It was on their way back that they saw this object maybe 200 yds from shore but then it just submerged ... there is no way that this pair want any publicity.

I also have a new sighting report from 2010 but again getting details, let alone anyone to name themselves, is not easy at all. This blog will respect people's anonymity 100 percent but I can't force people in these situations.  The thread running through these these reports is anonymity. The current trend of demythologising Loch Ness Monster reports into logs, dogs, boats and goats creates a negative feedback loop where witnesses feel foolish going public with something they think is out of the ordinary but fear getting a far from sympathetic hearing. The negative feedback circle completes when the absence of such reports is taken to be proof that people are now more properly educated and not as easily fooled by such everyday objects. Far from it, I would suggest.

That brings me to the one big story of 2012 and that was George Edwards. That event was covered in my two posts here and here. However, you won't see it listed in my recent sightings page as it is most certainly a hoax. Long time monster hunter, Steve Feltham was alerted to this when a local told him that the hump in the photo looked like the one used in a Nessie documentary a few years back.

This fibreglass prop was traced and the expose was complete as Steve went public with the prop. George to this day denies it is a hoax but the fact that he is also accused of another hoax photograph years before plus it was his boat that hosted the fibreglass hump documentary does not help his case at all.

 
On top of these lochside stories, we had some interesting "offsite" ones like some people claiming that Nessie disproves evolution. Well, I thought about that at the time, but it would help to identify Nessie first before jumping to conclusions! The Olympic Torch also crossed it way up Loch Ness prior to a very successful Games in London and the TV camera typically went offline, just in case Nessie appeared. Also, the most famous painting of Nessie came to light and sold for £4,750.

From a personal point of view, I made several trips to the loch in 2012 conducting various hunts and following up on monster cases both old and new. One such trip report can be found here. Visits to such famous locations as the Lachlan Stuart and Hugh Gray photographs were made as well as using trap cameras and night vision equipment in the more modern hunt for the Loch Ness Monster.

This blog has also gone from strength to strength thanks to your visits. To gauge how much the message of the real mystery of the Loch Ness Monster is getting out there, I normally do a search for the phrase "Loch Ness Monster" on Google's search engine. Currently, this blog tends to sit around midway on the first page of hits which is great and this means that the sceptical sites are not getting it all their own way when people look for Nessie information on the Internet.

In regards to the Edwards photo, the blog even got at least as high as third spot in August as people looked for more information on this outwardly intriguing picture. Whether this was a good thing or not is arguable. They say all publicity is good publicity but in this case I am not so sure.

Looking ahead to 2013, we enter the 80th year of the phenomenon known as the Loch Ness Monster (though it was seen and known centuries before under other names). We cannot say what will turn up in terms of sightings, photographs or films. I can only hope for the umpteenth time that next year will bring forth that final, conclusive evidence but you may not be surprised that my optimism is very much tempered by past experience. However, with such CGI clips as this recent fake eagle trying to kidnap a toddler, one wonders how often the mantra "That's CGI, that's CGI, that's CGI, ..." will be chanted from now on when a half decent Nessie footage appears next?




 
I am hoping that Paul Harrison will publish his new book on Frank Searle in 2013, based on interviews with Frank in Fleetwood about ten years ago. There is also one other event coming up, but more on that later.

As far as this blog is concerned for next year, I have a growing list of subject titles for articles and that number is sixty just now. Since this does not include articles on as yet unforeseen events or whatever else may spring into my mind over the next twelve months, I would like to think the blog is well stocked for material in 2013 and beyond. Expect analysis and opinion on a wide range of subjects both old and new.

So I thank readers - be they sceptical, believing or undecided - for their custom and wish you all a prosperous and happy 2013.

Another forthcoming Nessie Lecture

On the back of my own lecture in January sea serpent researcher, Charles Paxton, will be giving a talk about the Loch Ness Monster on April the 9th, 2013 at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in the harbour town of Anstruther, near St.Andrews in Fife, Scotland.

The promotion webpage says:

The talk will explore what science says about the biology of the loch, about what people see and the probability of an unknown species in the loch.

You can find more details here.

Nessletter No.159 now published

Rip Hepple, veteran Loch Ness Monster expert, has published the latest issue of his long running Loch Ness newsletter, "Nessletter" (dated November 2012). As usual, it is a good read, but if you want to find out for yourself, his address at:

Subscription rates are: £3 (UK) or $10 (USA) for 12 issues (published intermittently, not monthly)

R.R.Hepple
7 Huntshieldford
St John's Chapel
Weardale
Co Durham
DL13 1RQ
United Kingdom

 

I would point out that an archive of Rip's older newsletters can be found here. This is half complete, but I have now scanned the remaining newsletters and uploaded them to Google Drive. All that remains is to add these as links to the aforementioned archive link.

Rip's newsletter will enter its 39th year next month and has been a valuable source of information and analysis throughout those years. Here's to another year!

The Beast of the Beauly Firth

Whilst looking through some archives, I came across some items of interest on a creature reported in the Beauly Firth. This stretch of coastal water outside Inverness is about six miles long by two miles wide and has some significance to our interest in Loch Ness as the mouth of the River Ness meets the Beauly Firth at its exit into the Moray Firth (see map below).

The first report was found in a couple of far flung newspapers and the clipping below is taken from the Schenectady Gazette of the 1st March, 1955 (a newspaper from Schenectady county in New York state).

The next account is sixteen years later and is taken from the Inverness Courier for the 30th July 1971.

"Was there a monster in the Beauly Firth on Monday afternoon? Twenty boys of the Newcastle Cathedral Choir, who returned home yesterday after spending a nine day holiday in Inverness are convinced that they saw such an object some miles west of Inverness in the Beauly Firth. The boys were returning to Inverness by train on Monday afternoon after a day outing to Skye, when one of the party, Peter Harrison, noticed a trail of foam in the middle of the Firth. He shouted to his pals, and the three leaders of the party - Mr. G. East, Mr. R.? and Mr. G. Bolton - to look out of the window of the train.

After two minutes there was a splash and a large, black slimy object appeared. It moved eastwards for 40 seconds, at a speed of 25 miles per hour before producing another splash, again creating a trail of foam. The boys, who said the object had one hump and was too large and too fast to be a porpoise, managed to obtain a clear sighting of the object, and each was able to draw a sketch of what they saw.

Only last week, a family from Cupar, Fife, walking along the shore at the Longman, claimed they saw a 'monster' in the Beauly Firth."

I don't have any more on this second sighting despite checking back in the Courier archive. The reporter takes a somewhat sceptical stance and suggests his own explanation for the sighting:

"Porpoises are frequently seen in the Beauly and Moray Firths, swimming in schools, while seals are occasional visitors, and there have even been bottle-nosed whales. There may therefore be a simple natural explanation of these sightings, especially as the foam disturbance may have been caused by porpoises in battle with salmon or other fish which can be an awe inspring sight."

The famous Nessie witness Alex Campbell was a correspondent for the Courier at this time, but it is not known if he was the author of this report.

What are we to make of these reports? Apart from simplistic explanations about porpoises which are regularly seen in those parts and are easily recognised by their dorsal fin, could this alleged beast possibly be our own Loch Ness Monster out of its regular "chez mois"?

Now reports of strange creatures have been reported from adjoining Loch Dochfour, the River Ness and now the Beauly Firth. No doubt more could be dug up with further investigation. But should we seriously say that these were not the Loch Ness Monster but the Loch Dochfour Monster, the River Ness Monster and the Beauly Firth Monster?

Probably not. That the monster could get to these parts is not impossible and has been discussed since the days of Rupert T. Gould in 1934. His motivation for this topic was obvious enough having authored the book "The Case for the Sea Serpent" not long before in 1930. Gould believed the Loch Ness Monster could be a stray sea serpent and hence an access route from the sea which did not prove too difficult was uppermost in his mind as he traced the route from Loch Ness to the Moray Firth in his book "The Loch Ness Monster and Others".

A passage up and through the River Ness looked the most obvious while the other journey through the Caledonian Canal looked rather more daunting to a sea serpent considering the number of locks that have to be negotiated.

The other option not taken up by Gould is the famous or infamous subterranean passage running beneath the Highlands and out to some unknown outlet in the sea. Going by the sightings mentioned here, perhaps subterranean advocates should concentrate their efforts to find this fabled tunnel in the Beauly Firth area. Whether such a tunnel actually exists is another matter...

Forthcoming Nessie Lecture

I will be giving a talk on the Loch Ness Monster to the Edinburgh Fortean Society on Tuesday January 8th 2013. The title will be "Recent Events From Loch Ness" and reviews the various Nessie related events that have been going on at the loch in 2012 and also a look at 2011. 

It will look at events covered by the media such as the Edwards photo, the Atkinson sonar contact, the Jobes and Rowe photos as well as other sightings. Not all these items will be genuine sightings but then again, neither are they all hoaxes or misinterpretations!

There will also be a personal view from the grassroots as one who has been to the loch multiple times over that period armed with various monster hunting devices and visiting monster sites and monster witnesses.

The event will be rounded off with a Q&A session.

The talk will be held at The Counting House at 7:30pm and you can also check out the Society's webpage. If you can make it, that would be great.