The eDNA Experiment Begins

 

A year since Professor Neil Gemmell of New Zealand talked of his interest in conducting eDNA tests at Loch Ness, he has organised his team and equipment and will be arriving at the loch with the improving weather and before the tourist season gets into full swing.

The subject has been covered here before, but the points are worth reiterating again as to what kind of DNA results may come out. Samples of water will be taken, the DNA strands extracted from the water, the DNA sequenced and the code compared against a database of known animals. What that shall reveal is not known to the full extent but there are things we can say in the points below.

Firstly, the experiment should detect all the indigenous species in the loch and I would hope even the rarest of those species. Whether this will be achieved is not certain but if it does not detect everything known, can it assuredly detect everything unknown?

Secondly, there is the matter of whether non-indigenous species will be detected. By that I mean animals which are not always in the loch but are there on a temporary basis dictated by seasonal, reproductive or purely random factors.

In that list we include salmon, trout and seals. The fishing season began last month and so it is possible that DNA traces of salmon may be found, though perhaps it is unlikely they would be found if the tests were conducted in mid-summer and before the second salmon run.

Seals are more interesting as they only appear in the loch every two years or so and therefore it does not seem likely they will be detected. What will also be of interest are the oft discussed catfish and sturgeon. Some believe catfish were placed in the loch decades ago and one may presume some traces will be found. Atlantic sturgeon have always been mooted as occasional visitors and so one would take that as a negative for eDNA tests.

What is the big unknown for me is finding DNA which can be mistaken for something else. I say that because it seems unlikely to me that Loch Ness Monster DNA is going to be radically different to anything else. It is going to be related to something but what? And how different will it be to its nearest relatives that have been sequenced? Let us go through the list.

Plesiosaur – the closest living relatives may be the turtle family.

Long necked seal – how different would this be from harbour or grey seals?

Paranormal Entity – No DNA expected to be found.

Giant eel – DNA difference between the local three footers and a 30 foot specimen?

Giant Invertebrates – How different would this be from the worms and mollusks in the loch?

Itinerant monster – Any DNA at all to be expected?

That is the unknown for me. How much DNA has to change to go from a five foot to a forty-foot creature? How much to extend the neck by six feet? I will leave that to the genetics experts, but I don’t expect any radical DNA to be found – Nessie has some place in an largely well known DNA tree of life.

Two more things I suggested Professor Gemmell tries is to DNA analyse core samples taken from the bottom of the loch and also take water samples from the sides of the loch.

I wish them well in their venture.

 The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Loch Ness Trip Report April 2018

It was off to Highlands again at the beginning of April as I took the old camping equipment but some new hunting equipment to the south side of the loch. The tent was pitched, the Pot Noodles unpacked and the electronics plugged in. After some good old camp stodge (sausage and beans as I recall), it was down to planning the days ahead.

TRAP CAMERAS

Moving onto the trap cameras first and I had left four cameras in position over the autumn and winter to see what objects of interest may pass in front of them. The whole affair proved to be something of a disappointment. On retrieving the cameras and their SD cards, the results were worse than usual. The first camera seemed to have taken a battering from the winter storms. Not surprisingly, this was deduced from the fact that on opening it, water came out! I had placed it too close to the loch and so the lesson was learnt. Did the memory card survive? When I tried to mount it onto my laptop for viewing, the computer failed to recognise a file system on it and so all was in vain.

The second camera was in a safer location and for this particular one, I turned it to look along the receding shoreline to see if anything would come from the loch to the shore and from the hills to the shore. Of course, I would expect to see some deer in such a survey, but who knows what else may venture into camera range? To my chagrin, this SD card mounted by the laptop but it had zero images on it! Why this happened was unclear. Were the batteries faulty or had the unit not turned on properly? Either way, a possibly interesting series of shots were lost for this particular season.

The third camera retrieved did have the expected large number of shots of the loch, but for some reason a large proportion of them were night shots with no real detail. The camera was triggering and doing its triple shots - but every 15 seconds until the 8Gb memory card filled up! As a result, the camera only operated for 12 hours.

I had not seen this behaviour before and assumed they were night shots, but I would have still expected to have seen some detail on the images since the infra-red light flash should illuminate whatever is triggering the heat sensor. This could point to a camera fault and further retesting would be required before this one is allowed back into the field.

Finally, all was well with the fourth camera as it gave me a good selection of images to review. This particular camera had been set up to record three successive still images but also record a 10 second video clip. That worked fine and even my concern that video clips soak up more battery power than still shots was disproven as it was still operational.

QUADCOPTER

And so we move onto new equipment and I start with the drone I recently bought. It is a DJI Phantom 3 Professional drone with onboard 4K micro SD recording plus live HD streaming to the DJI app running on the smartphone attached to the DJI remote control handset. Hover stability is performed via a choice of GPS, optical or altimeter positioning. Battery life is up to 25 minutes depending on usage while there is a "Return to Home" button when battery levels become too low.

I took this drone to Loch Ness wondering how it would perform. The first question on my mind was the prevailing winds which run up the loch and whether those could result in shaky videos. The other question concerned the person controlling the drone. Could I handle it without crashing it into the loch, never to be retrieved? 

As it turned out, after a few crashes, I got the hang of it. The main thing is to find a wide open space away from trees and with a nice flat surface to land the drone. There are two things to also concentrate the senses. The first is to keep an eye on battery time left (though the manual claims the drone will return to home if power is critically low). The second is more important to Loch Ness research.

By that I mean using the live HD stream to the smartphone plus remote control to guide ones search of the loch surface below the drone camera. It was easy to just keep watching the drone rather than the video stream. That was partly a confidence issue and an unjustified concern that the drone would lose control. The fact of the matter is that you could send the drone 400 feet up into the air and a thousand feet across the loch and then go away for a 20 minute walk and the drone would still be there hovering at much the same spot.

I went onto "Dinsdale Island" and put the drone through its paces and it performed wonderfully. I was less inefficient in not keeping my eye on the live stream enough plus I moved the drone about too quickly resulting in a a rapid video which made reconnaissance more difficult. The video below shows one such sequence. I am sure Tim Dinsdale would have loved operating this device.

Now this uploaded video has been downscaled, so I invite you to stream one of the original HD videos of the loch from this link and gives you a better sense of what is seen "in situ". I have not actually checked the 4K resolution recordings made on the micro SD card which offers four times as many pixels at HD resolution (using 1080p as a guide) though there are some mitigating factors. As it happens, the HD live stream is also recorded to the smartphone and used for this article.

By coincidence, on my arrival I noticed another drone in operation at Foyers beach. I got chatting with the owner as it seemed he was also recording the loch surface below though I got the impression he was not monster hunting. That drone was black and about the size of a crow, which probably explains why it was attacked by crows when it hovered near their tree! Another thing to watch out for I suspect. The upshot is that the drone will form part of future trips to Loch Ness.

THERMAL CAMERA

Another new piece of equipment brought into play was the Flir TS24 Pro thermal imager. I already use a Yukon Ranger image intensifier which works on the principle of gathering and intensifying the ambient light. The Flir works on the principle of forming an image from the infra-red spectrum, no matter how little optical light is visible. It can record video or snapshots to a memory card as the still image below demonstrates. Here the image is coded to more heat means a brighter image and shows the mouth of the River Foyers. You can make out the green buoy near the centre.

The advantage the Flir has over the Yukon is the SD memory card storage while I was obliged to use the composite video port on the Yukon. This involved connecting a video to USB cable to a laptop which was running some video recording software. Obviously this led to a lack of portability and so the Flir offers more flexibility in where I could go and how fast I got there. The video clip below shows the same area as I switched through the various heat display modes on the camera.

I did not use the Flir much over the weekend and was rather breaking it in for Loch Ness use. When I next go up I would anticipate using it later at night scanning the loch for activity, possibly in conjunction with my usual dawn run.

 STORIES OLD AND NEW

Making some enquiries revealed nothing new locally about the monster but one account came to my attention which I reproduce here concerning a Foyers man by the name of Alexander Rybak who is now deceased but his story was passed on via another. Ali was a man of Polish extraction whose father had stayed on in Britain having served in the RAF during the war. I was told and agreed that the older generation tended to keep quiet about their encounters with the beast and Ali was no exception.

However, Ali was a bit of a cynical person by nature and had always scoffed at the idea of a monster inhabiting Loch Ness and whenever someone claimed they saw something, his reply would go along the lines of "How much whisky have you been drinking?". That all changed some time during the late 1970s or early 1980s when he was chopping wood with another man between the Foyers Hotel and Inverfarigaig. It was related that he saw a salmon leaping out of the water in the loch below.

There is nothing unusual in that but what followed was. For in pursuit of the salmon was the Loch Ness Monster, breaching the water with its head and neck attempting to bring its quarry to an untimely end. Rybak had his "Monkees Moment" - then I saw its face, now I'm a believer.

Ali's cynical attitude to the monster and its adherents changed, but I was told he kept it quiet and never told his family, save his mother only. As to how factual and accurate our tale is, it would be great to find this other man who was chopping wood with him that day. Perhaps he is still with us and could corroborate the testimony. Otherwise, weave this tale into the great Loch Ness Monster tapestry.

Shortly after my return from Loch Ness, I received an email from a reader who confirmed this reticence of the locals to come out with their accounts. She (name withheld) was working a summer job in Fort Augustus in the 1970s and some locals confided that they did have personal sightings but would not go public on account of the media attention. They much preferred to see their monster boost the local economy! My correspondent also had another report from that time:

I did not have a sighting myself that summer.  However, some of my fellow workers did.  Four of them had gone to sit at the end of the canal onto the loch one evening.

What looked like an upturned boat bottom rose, moved towards them (against any current) then sank out of sight again.  One of these people was a law student.  I and some others had been out for the evening, when we returned, the law student was seated in shock and trying to logically equate what he had seen, whilst the others with him recited the tale.  His training wouldn't allow him to believe what he had witnessed, but he could not deny that he had. 

His reaction convinced me completely.  I would imagine that given his calling it is not something he would advertise today, or even any more admit to.  But his reaction at the time gave me no question of doubt.

One wonders how many sightings go unreported and escape the attention of the media and, unfortunately, serious researchers?

CONCLUSION

So another trip finished and no personal sighting of Nessie. There was that inconclusive splash last September and I have had one or two other odd experiences, but one has to be level headed with oneself and take the position that after thirty years of various trips to the loch, I have not seen the creature. Having said that, I can hardly say that over that period I have been a gung-ho monster hunter.

I have not gone up every year for weeks on end spending dawn to dusk scanning the loch with my binoculars and bleary eyes. One reason, but not the only one, is purely down to the fact that monster hunting is a high cost and low benefit exercise. Some people arrive at the loch for the first time and see the beast. I think of Dinsdale and Holiday in this regard. Others will get their reward after years of diligence whilst most will end their lives having seen nothing.

Mind you, I often wondered what would happen if I did have such a sighting. Would such an event be a game-changer to the extent that the subject would become an overarching obsession? We have seen what happened to others when that sighting "link" becomes established - Nessie become the day job as well as the hobby. Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for.

But without that paradigm shift, the initial enthusiasm wears off as the reality that Nessie is not a surface creature by habit begins to bite. After all, imagine trying to spot an eel of any size in Loch Ness from the shore. Some react to this dilemma by just walking away from the subject. My reaction is to automate the search and take it literally to new heights. Onwards and upwards.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

A Photograph from 2006

Last year a reader informed me of a previously unreported eyewitness account  that had been posted on the Internet. I contacted the witness and discussed the case with him before agreeing to republish the account here. What was not published back then was the photograph that he said was taken by his girlfriend due to loss of contact with her. I am now happy to say he has obtained her consent and the photo is now included in this article. I reprise the account as told by the boyfriend that day over eleven years ago.

I am writing this under a pseudonym. I am an American working in a field involving considerable professional scrutiny. The one time I discussed this, at a family holiday party after a few drinks, I was laughed at and ribbed for the next few years, so I can only imagine how my present employers might react!

In March of 2006, I visited Loch Ness with my then girlfriend. It was the last week of the month (either the 28th or 29th). We were at Inverness for business purposes, hers not mine. We decided to visit the famous castle on the water and as we drove from Inverness we saw something in the water. 

The time was late afternoon, I would say between four and five. We'd been day drinking which made driving on the other side of the car even more interesting than it already was! It also somewhat compromises the specific details such as precise location and time.

 When my girlfriend began exclaiming that "there's something in the water," I laughed and said she was joking. Finally I realised she was being serious and pulled off to a lay by somewhere near the Clansman hotel (I remember because we went in afterwards to the gift shop to tell everyone what we had seen). As soon as I pulled over, my girlfriend was pointing at the water and I saw it. 

I can't really judge size on water, its not my speciality, but it was HUGE. It looked like a whale. I would say it was grey like an elephant with a neck that was swinging side to side over the water. That was really what it looked like, an elephant waving its trunk. There was a huge commotion in the water behind it. The thing was just massive. It was swimming back toward Inverness the way we came. 

My girlfriend was fumbling to get her camera out of luggage in the back seat before the monster was gone. She was tipsy and we were both shaking. She finally got it out of her bag and took a picture through the car window. We were so shaken up that neither of us thought to roll down the window. She tried to take another snap but her memory card was full, and as she fumbled to delete sightseeing pictures to make more room, it was gone. It just sort of went down while it continued swimming toward Inverness. 

In retrospect I wish we had taken photos of the water afterward which was quite disturbed, but it wasn't until I began reading up on the subject that I realised it might have been of value. We took the picture to the gift shop and the lady at the counter told us to go the exhibition centre to show it, but we got cold feet and just went back to the hotel at Inverness and drank some more. When we got back to the States, we put it on the computer and pretty much never looked at it again or even talked about the experience. It was almost like we felt guilty. 

My girlfriend and I long ago broke up and I have since married, and the one time I told my wife (it was the holiday party at her family's house), the response was so embarrassing that whenever she jokes about "that time Justin saw Nessie," I just sort of laugh it off.

 I just found the picture last week on a CD rom containing files I removed from my ex's computer before I moved out following the breakup. It was in a folder with 90s alternative rock mp3s! I hadn't looked at it in years and while the quality isn't great considering it was just a point and shoot she'd owned for a couple years, it still made my heart skip a beat. Seeing it again caused me a sleepless night because I am sure I saw something that isn't supposed to exist, and over the years I sort of talked myself out of it (too much beer that day, etc). Now its all back again, and I feel a little shaky.

It wasn't a pleasant experience, even though there was no threat of physical harm. 

I am not a Loch Ness Monster enthusiast and know as much as the average person. I didn't care about it and certainly wasn't looking for it. Same with my ex. All I have is the photo, taken through the passengers side window (slight camera reflection) showing a dark body and neck low over the water.
 

Based on that photograph, I make some observations. Firstly, I have confirmed the location of the photo as the Clansman Hotel area. Secondly, There is no EXIF data with the image, so I cannot confirm the date it was recorded. I have been to the area twice and took some comparison shots, which I outline below. I would add that the photo, going by the difference in the distant houses in the original and comparison shots was likely at a point south of the Clansman Hotel.

The object is blurred as if to indicate motion. This is indicated by the fact that the background hills and foreground bushes show less blurring. The presumed neck is more blurred than the bulk of the body, which is consistent with his description of the neck moving from side to side. There is a strong wake behind the object which indicates said motion and also that it is rapid. 

The image size is about 320kb, so closer inspection of the object is not possible. Access to the original Mb image would be useful (as well as for the exif data). Detecting image manipulation would required the original image, but I see no indications of image manipulation. The camera taking the picture is reflected in the image indicating the car window was rolled up as testified.

I then indulged in some speculations. The only object of comparison would be a dark boat. Most boats are light in colour or multicoloured. Either way, other unorthodox objects need to be considered and eliminated as required - jet skis, speedboats, windsurfers, yachts. None seem to fit the shape of this object unless they assumed some strange "instant in time" contortions. 

The object is basically blackish which is curious since I also did a calculation as to the sun's position at the stated time and date. The sun would have been behind the observers and slightly to their right. The conditions look overcast in the picture, so there may not have been much reflection. All this would indicate an intrinsically dark object. 

COMPARISON SHOTS

The object is hundreds of yards away so details are confined to gross morphology. Comparison shots which included a Jacobite cruiser and a cruise boat were taken by myself days ago and is shown below. The previous article used an older comparison shot, but the recent ones are better. The witness photograph was then overlaid onto this picture, aligning the background hill contours as carefully as possible.

 

The picture I think again shows the Jacobite Warrior cruise boat. Its beam or width is 8 meters and measuring the relative image sizes of the two, an estimate of object size can be made as follows based on measurements I made with a ruler on the computer screen display. 

Jacobite Warrior beam/width = 8m 

Width on screen =20mm

Width of object "body" = 10mm maps to 4m (13ft) 

Width of whole object = 18mm maps to 7.2m (23.5ft)

This tallies with my previous Jacobite comparison which estimated 21 feet for the black object. In the cruiser boat shot, I measured the boat at 24mm and the object at 28mm though here the distance between object and boat looks farther and so estimating the size is more difficult but these boats can vary between 30 and 40 feet long.

So the "monster" is over 20 feet long including what we presume to be the neck, which was a little more difficult to estimate due to motion blur. Again, this is consistent with the witness' description of the object being "huge". 

There are some caveats. The "monster" is a bit further out for the Jacobite comparison and so is actually bigger in terms of perspective. The boat front is at a slight angle to us and so the apparent foreshortening makes its measured length a little less than 8m. These two observations probably cancel each other out to a certain extent.  

Based on this, I am pretty sure that is not a bird like a swan or cormorant taking off as it disturbs the water with its feet. The object in the picture is uniformly dark and swans are white. Given the sun was behind the photographer, I would not expect a white swan to turn out black. I also note an absence of anything I would call wings in the picture which would surely appear in a picture of a rapidly moving bird.

Cormorants are darker, but the "body" in the picture looks larger in proportion to the "neck" than for cormorants which have quite big necks/heads. Besides, I again think this object is further out than that. There is a line below the object which is most likely a boat wake, so we are out there with the boats. 

DEBLURRING THE OBJECT

In an attempt to bring out further detail on the object, I employed some deblurring software which can compensate for motion blur and general out of focus subjects in an image. Applying some deblur parameters and zooming in produces the following images. The first is the original object while the second applies a deblur factor of width 2 (how many pixels to shrink). The final image is more complex in that it applied a motion deblur factor of 4 in a 140 degree direction. Why this should be 140 instead of 180 is not clear, though this may suggest another direction of blur possibly brought on by camera shake.

You can form your own opinion on these, but it does bring out a little more detail. Note if this was a cut out "monster" on the car window, one should not expect any compensation for motion blur.

THAT SWINGING NECK

One final feature caught my attention and that was "a neck that was swinging side to side over the water." Now you may think this is a counter-intuitive action when moving forward, but it is a feature reported on at least two occasions and they are both land sightings. The first was the William MacGruer case where it was seen "twisting its head from side to side" and the second was the Una MacPherson case with a "relatively slender neck, and it turned from side to side". In both of these cases, the object was also moving forward. That doesn't prove everything is true, but it is an interesting point.

CONCLUSION

As an aside, the witness took a considerable bit of flak on another forum when he refused to publish the picture. Part of that would be the usual sceptic disdain, but some of it I suspect was an attempt to goad the witness into publishing, which he resolutely refused to do. Whatever the mix of intentions, witnesses with a story to tell may be deterred from coming forward when they see exchanges such as this. That is very sad, but in the end the picture can finally be published for discussion, though we can expect attempts to debunk it which will likely focus on the usual photoshopping tricks.

 

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com