Nessie Review of 2024

With the year just about to end, it is time to look back on what happened at Loch Ness in 2024. Beginning in a backwards fashion, there were recent headlines that this was one of the lowest years for sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. One headline said, "Mystery as Loch Ness Monster sightings tumble" with Gary Campbell's sightings website registering just three encounters, but two of these were sonar-related and the other was a traditional in situ surface report.

That one solitary encounter was claimed by a Canadian couple on April 4th according to this newspaper story:

The Loch Ness Monster has reportedly been sighted for the first time in 2024, with a family claiming to have caught "compelling new evidence" of the elusive creature.

The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register has endorsed Parry and Hannah Malm's claim after they snapped a photo showing an unidentified presence near Urquhart Castle, a known hotspot for Nessie enthusiasts. The Malms, along with their children, were visiting the loch for the first time when they encountered the mysterious figure.

Parry recounted the moment, saying: "Shannon spotted the black head of an animal bobbing up and down. I was a total sceptic before but now I think there must be something there."

The couple took this photograph which I admit has a certain familiarity about it. Looking back in time, various pictures have been taken from the waters near the castle of small solitary objects. I think of the Locke family in 2018, Matt Coughlan in 2020, Jeremy Chudley in 2019 and so on. Some of these pictures did not make it into Gary's register, perhaps recognising there is some permanent feature there such as a pipe or something, though that does not automatically invalidate anything seen in that area.

Whatever the image shows, a single snap is not really sufficient to make a judgment on this object. The two sonar images show a recent shift in highlighting such image types. I covered the one taken by Shuan Sloggie on the 27th September which picked up an unusual contact from the Spirit of Loch Ness cruise boat (image at top of article). The article is here, but in summary I said that it wouldn't do to brush off such contacts as interference from other boats without further enquiry.

The problem being that critics do not produce comparison images from Loch Ness vessels of what sonar interference really looks like on a screen, be it a passing boat or reflections from the sides of the loch. I do not recall seeing such interference images when I was on board watching the screens. I think the software on such sonar imaging devices eliminates such patterns, though I cannot be sure of that entirely,

So I regard that image as a genuine mystery. The owners said the data had been sent to the manufacturers for further analysis, but three months on, I am not aware of anything coming out of that but another sonar hit was made by the Deepscan boat owned by the Loch Ness Centre on October 3rd as shown below.

I asked Alan McKenna who heads up research for the Loch Ness Centre some questions about the incident. Those present included Adrian Shine and a team of researchers from Aberdeen University who were watching the scan unfold. Adrian was heard to say it "was an odd contact" but concluded it was either a natural phenomenon or the result of sonar interference.

Alan thought (as I did) that it looked like gas escaping from the loch bed resulting in silt being thrown up. Now, Loch Ness is not known for its prodigious gas production due to the relative lack of decaying organic matter falling to the bottom. Nevertheless, areas such as Urquhart Bay and the waters near Fort Augustus have been noted as having higher gas production. 

But we don't know for sure what it was as there is a lack of a "back-catalogue" of previous sonar contacts known to show such things. Someone may say the contact shows this or that, but how do they prove it without a prior database? Admittedly, some things are not easy to reproduce, such as a gas eruption 220 metres below, but there are other scenarios that can be reproduced.

The other related incident for Deepscan was four days later when a seal was spotted and photographed from the boat. The Loch Ness Centre website states that it may be the same seal seen in recent months which is of course of interest when evaluating claimed sightings of the monster and for other reasons.

One such reason is whether any locals or tourists reported or photographed this seal, whether they mistook it for the monster or not. The answer appears to be that they did not on all scores! However, you may ask about the aforementioned photograph taken six months before in April by the Malms? I do not think a seal would be allowed to stay in the loch for such a long period as it would be seen as a danger to protected salmon stocks.

But if an animal of this size regularly surfacing for air is hard to spot from the shore, what about other larger animals? This seal was drifting around with the castle in the background without anyone over there apparently seeing it. Perhaps spotting a six foot long hump from 200 metres plus is not so easy to the casual observer as one may presume. Unfortunately, no sonar recording was made of the seal for the "back catalogue", if indeed it would have been within range.

But there was an interesting video highlighted by the Loch Ness Centre taken by six-year old Harland from the viewpoint promontory at Fort Augustus. The video can be viewed here on YouTube and shows at first a circular commotion looking north up the loch but then the camera pans to a pole like object sticking out of the water just off what appears to be the jetty by the Boathouse Restaurant as shown below.

The boy is heard to ask his Mum what the object is. The video is a bit shaky and so there is some uncertainty about this. A comparison video clip from YouTube shows a pan around the area from the Fort Augustus promontory viewpoint and a still here shows the jetty where I think this object was in the centre of the image.

Based on the two people to the right in this frame, I would estimate the height of this object as at least two feet out of the water. It is from that jetty that Gregory Brusey had his famous pole-like neck sighting in 1971. It is noted that Gary Campbell's website did not list this boy's video for whatever reason. Were they not convinced by some aspect of the footage?

One category of sightings moved from the main listing are the webcam images. This is mainly down to various submissions to the online media which most Nessie watchers regard as spurious. However, I take the view that each should be assessed on its own merits and I covered some of his images made up to July of this year which are discussed here. The images certainly do not compare to the classic images from the past and so again one can only continue to encourage webcam watchers worldwide to keep watching.

At the end of May, the Loch Ness Centre ran their second "Quest" surface watch weekend and despite the first one being both a weather washout and a media frenzy, this was to me now an annual fixture. This time round, I met more new people and hopefully we will all team up again in 2025. I wrote a report on my viewpoint of the 2024 Quest at this link. It was great to meet up with Ashley from the USA and Dave from not so distant Birmingham and it was a pleasure with Alan McKenna to accompany them around the loch on the big hunt for Nessie.

In particular, those night-time forays were fun about the loch and I remain convinced this is a time when the loch's most famous denizen is more prone to surface and head towards the shore. Alan remained resolute in his determination not to indulge in any night-time swimming ...

Finally, in October, Adrian Shine published his first big book entitled "A Natural History of Sea Serpents". Though not directly dealing with the Loch Ness Monster, the mystery's influence can be seen in the book as what Adrian had applied to Loch Ness was now applied to the oceans. In other words, it was the same general principle that seafarers were misidentifying what they saw. However, the specific theories as to what Adrian thought they actually saw would differ, i.e., they were not likely to be misidentifying a swan or a log in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

But as various media outlets publicized his book, naturally he was asked about that other sea serpent in Loch Ness. One quote has him saying:

“Of course, there are long-necked creatures on Loch Ness — we call them swans,” Adrian Shine, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and founder of the Loch Ness Project, told Pen News.

“Boat wakes are probably the number one cause of monster sightings, and waterbirds are the long-necked ones,” the Scotsman declared. “And in calm conditions, you can lose your ability to judge distance, and if you can’t judge distance, you can’t judge size.”

I don't think Adrian is a "Scotsman", so there we have one case of misidentification. In fact, on the subject of boat wakes, a concerted effort is being made by Alan McKenna of the LNE to capture some convincing footage of the purely water phenomenon of a standing wave. As he explained in one article, the constructive interference that manufactures these more pronounced waves can be observed at the confluence of rivers and the loch, but seeing one out on the open loch is a harder matter.

So, are unusual waves and birds enough to explain the majority of eyewitness reports? Adrian certainly thinks so. Alan may be less so convinced. With only one lightweight report being reported on Gary Campbell's website, one may wonder not so much where Nessie has gone, but where have the waves and birds gone? After all, aren't people still "gullible" enough to be taken in by these things? The waves and birds have not changed, so why only one report for 2024? We should be expecting a healthy number of duped observers every year - if the sceptical theory is right.

The graph below shows the number of in situ surface sightings recorded on the Sightings Register since 1986 and it is a pretty uneven pattern with the number ranging from 1 to 16 over a year. So the low of this year past is nothing unusual as we had similar lows in 1995, 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2013. Does the Sceptical Theory of the Loch Ness Monster predict such a pattern? No, it doesn't because no one made that prediction. Of course, a prediction can be retro-fitted onto it based on past data, but then it wouldn't be a prediction.

At the same time, no one expects it to flatline at some level either. But from the sceptical point of view, are reports fluctuating wildly from 1 to 16 consistent with their theory? In fact, is one report from one person out of the hundreds of thousands who were looking at the loch in 2024 a reasonable number at all?

I will look further into that in an upcoming article for 2025. But the investigation goes on and hopes are high that as the Loch Ness Centre and its collaboration with LNE continues, new data will be forthcoming. As for myself, the watching and research also continues. Good luck to all monster hunters in 2025 and a Happy New Year to all readers.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Nessie in the 19th Century

 

When Rupert T. Gould wrote his book on the Loch Ness Monster in 1934, he came across quite a few people who said they had seen it decades before all the fuss that was then swirling around the loch. Further anecdotes from the first half of the 20th century had people also recalling what their older relations or associates told them about the creature in the loch going back longer. 

I come across these little stories now and again and this one above was the latest I found which is from the Sunday Express for 9th February 1959. This one goes back to about 1820 when King George IV was monarch of Britain and Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo only five years before. They are short on detail not surprisingly but they all coalesce towards a common point and an older phenomenon than what some would have you believe.

The format is familiar concerning a dangerous beast residing in the loch which was capable of coming ashore and taking out one or two unwary kids. Other tales add a supernatural element concerning water horses masquerading as saddled horses ready to capture weary travellers. Such tales are said to have their origins in child safety around bodies of water and certainly there is an element of that in the evolution of such tales. However, since the legend of the saddled shape-shifter was more applicable to adults (how does a five year kid mount a horse?), it had a wider scope symbolizing the fear many had of something which did not stay well out of their way in the deeps, but would worryingly enter the domain of humans on land.

The author of this letter, Angus Maitland, sent a similar letter to the same newspaper sixteen years later as monster fever rose weeks before the Rines underwater photographs. It is shown below, but only adds minor details and is consistent with his previous letter, though it adds more detail to his mother's age.

Actually, 1820 is about as far back as these types of letters go, which is not surprising if we are assuming someone who was already old by the 1930s recalling the oral traditions of their grandparents. After this, there are a couple of tales from the 1700s, one from the 1600s before a huge leap of 1000 years back to St. Columba! I wonder what the monster was up to for an entire millennium?

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Latest Sonar Contact (September 2024)

 

Almost four years to the day, the Loch Ness Cruises company published another sonar image of interest at the beginning of this month. The actual incident was on Sunday 22nd September. This is the account as described by the Daily Telegraph on the 4th October (original link):

I found Loch Ness monster on ship’s sonar, claims captain

Large object spotted by underwater technology reignites speculation about mythical prehistoric creature

A captain has claimed he found the Loch Ness monster using the sonar system on his boat. Shaun Sloggie, 30, was preparing his Spirit of Loch Ness pleasure boat to sail last month when a large object was spotted on the vessel’s underwater sensors. The outline, which was detected nearly 100 metres beneath the surface of the Highland loch, bears an eerie resemblance to a plesiosaur, which many have speculated could be the reptile group the fabled Loch Ness Monster belongs to. The footage has reignited speculation that Nessie, the creature alleged to inhabit the large body of water near Inverness, might really exist.

“I said: ‘What the hell is that?’” recalled Mr Sloggie of the sighting on Sept 22. “It was bigger than anything else I’ve ever seen. We’ve seen all sorts of fish that shouldn’t be here, but this? This was different. You should have felt the chills on the boat.”

Speaking to the Daily Mail, he added: “I’ve worked here for nine years and never seen anything like it. And sonar doesn’t lie, the boat hasn’t been on five whisky distillery tours before going out on the loch, it’s just doing its job.”

Mr Sloggie, who works for Cruise Loch Ness, said the object remained visible for two to three minutes and that he and maritime pilot Liam McKenzie, 29, were able to take a screenshot before it disappeared from the dashboard. He said it appeared in different colours, which are thought to indicate pockets of air and heat signatures which would suggest the object was alive. A previous sonar image captured on Loch Ness in 2020 was said to be the most “compelling” evidence yet of the existence of Nessie.

Mr Sloggie said the previous image was believed to show a creature “eight to 10 metres [26 to 32ft] long and one metre [3ft] wide” but speculated that the new object was “a lot bigger than that”.

The image was captured while the boat was close to the mouth of the loch, which Mr Sloggie said was the ideal location for a large predator to catch salmon and other fish going in and out.

“There are fish in the loch that shouldn’t be here. There are prehistoric creatures living in the loch and unknown codes of DNA, so there is room for mystery. This could change the angle of science on the loch. But how do you find out what it is? I’ve always known there’s something there. What it is, is a mystery. But it definitely springs open people’s imaginations. It’s not just about tourism, there’s real science in studying the loch.”

The shape of the sonar contact certainly stirred the imagination as some saw the shape of the classic plesiosaur in the picture. Indeed, who would not admit to seeing the long neck to the right, progressing to a bulky body with indications of flippers below and finally what looks like a short tail to the far left?

As to size, Mr. Sloggie offered an estimate bigger than “eight to 10 metres", which was the estimated length of the object in the prior sonar contact of 2020. He was later interviewed on TalkTV where he revealed that the sonar data had been sent off to the equipment manufacturers for expert analysis. We await the result of that investigation, but some were not content with waiting for the experts. Over at the Loch Ness Exploration Facebook page, we have this comment:

In fact, Dick has been busy on this topic trying to explain it away. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion and it seems not a few on these forums await Dick's verdict when such events arise. He latches onto some words Sloggie made in the Daily Express version of events (link) where it is said that the strange image "flashed up on the sonar on September 22 this year as they prepared for the arrival of another vessel."

Dick then concluded that reflections from the sonar device on the other vessel led to interference on Mr. Sloggie's sonar device and a compromised display image. So is it a matter of case closed, move on and no need for the manufacturers to get involved? Not quite, because Dick has not completed the enquiry in a scientific manner. He proposed a theory, but he did not test the value of that theory.

Since he does not seem willing to complete the scientific process himself, I will do it for him. Firstly, it has to be asked how close the other vessel was when the sonar image was seen? The answer is we do not know - based on the text quoted. Another image from the Daily Mail article shows what appears to be a GPS location image of the vessel Mr. Sloggie was on.

Given that the sonar depth of the object was given as about 300 feet, that is a depth consistent with bathymetric readings for that area of the loch. Why would his boat be waiting for the arrival of another boat from there? The likely explanation is that the narrowness of the canal into Fort Augustus meant another boat was ahead of them going into the canal. 

The next question is how close do two vessels have to be to one another to produce meaningful interference? Does Dick know the answer to that question? I would guess pretty close given the size of the sonar cone beams. An important side question might be the minimum distance the authorities require between boats to avoid the possibility of a collision.

Moreover, interference requires that the two transducers have to be operating at the same frequency. The transducers are configured to tune into a narrow frequency band and looking at the bottom left of the sonar image, the boat was set to 200KHz. Note also the text "B260/M260" beside it which indicates the possibility of two transducers, one attached under the hull and the other on the inside of the hull. That may mean there are two beams of different widths complementing one another, but I do not have enough information to be sure of that.

So, the matter is far from closed on whether another vessel disrupted the sonar input and I am unclear as to whether the vessel used CHIRP multi-frequency sonar. In fact, interference seems unlikely consulting the words of others on the Internet. One website said this on proximity of other vessels:

When two or more echo sounders are operating in close proximity and at the same or similar frequency, it is possible for each to receive false returns from the others transducer. In such cases the operator will see noise and clutter, false returns, dotted lines, multiple bottoms or other video anomalies on the screen. This is most common in and around marinas or harbors where there may be multiple fish finders operating at the same frequencies.

This is accompanied by a drawing of such a display:

Does the Sloggie image show such patterns of interference? I would say it does not and that would make sense to me. After all, why would the intersection of two large beams result in changes to only a small area of the display and not affect any other part of it? The object of interest occupies less than 1% of the entire water column on view, surely we should be seeing more than that.

But herein lies a problem. For decades, such sonar images have been dismissed along the lines of corrupted sonar signals. We get words such as reflection, refraction and interference bandied about, but that implies such people have conducted calibrated tests to produce these images so as to use them when assessing future images.

In fact, the remit of the Loch Ness Exploration run by my colleague Alan McKenna is to record instances of common objects and effects producing hydrophone signatures which can be used to evaluate future recordings. I would suggest this extends to sonar. But why re-invent the wheel? Go to Adrian Shine and Dick Raynor to get their sonar data library on images known to have been produced by such sonar effects.

Now as for that tantalizing plesiosaur shape of the image, Dick further says:

The horizontal axis is indeed scaled to time, but it is not true to say that it provides no information on form or shape. I was wondering if the cruise boat had Raymarine's 3D visualization tool installed and ever use it? This is from Raymarine's Facebook page:

The lower 2D image may initially look like a jumble, but it is actually not far from what it actually was when reconstructed in 3D. Of course, it helped that the wreck was stationary on the sea bed. We do not know whether the object from Loch Ness was moving or just suspended in the lower depths. So, I await what Raymarine have to say about this and it would be great if some kind of 3-D rendering was possible.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

    

Alan Wilkins and his 1975 Nessie Photograph

 

Another Nessie fan emailed me recently asking if I had any of Alan Wilkins photographs which were taken in July 1975. I recalled that at the time, as a teenager, I had seen one such picture on the front page of the Sunday Express, cut it out to keep, but today I had no clue where it had gone. So the hunt began ending with me finding a scan of it in my files and some other items.

Regarding Alan himself, he was one of the understated monster researchers during those heady days in the 1970s. He was in fact the man who helped coin the term "Nessiteras Rhombopteryx" back in 1975 using his knowledge of Latin as a classics teacher in the south of Scotland. A letter written from Sir Peter Scott to Alan in November 1975 shows the conversation that was ongoing before the famous unveiling of the Rines/AAS underwater photographs a month later (my thanks to Howard Pate for this image).

The main reference to Alan Wilkins' experience on the day he took the above photo is laid out in an article in the Field magazine published on the 27th November 1975 entitled "The Monster: Four Vital Sightings".  This recounts what was an unexpected day for Alan on the 18th July 1975, when he had not one but four sightings in the space of 15 hours. This began at 7:20am, one and a half miles south of Invermoriston, where he saw a long dark line appear on the surface which was followed by a black shape which submerged in a swirl of water. However, this was observed at about a distance of two miles through 10x50 binoculars (Alan's sketch below).

Later at 10:20am, Wilkins reported seeing what looked like an inflatable boat moving in the haze off Fasagh, two and a quarter miles away. He took some photographs and a few seconds of cine film. Sketches based on the photos are shown below. On seeing the photos, Alan classed it as a two humped object changing into a one humped object.

Three minutes later at 10:15am, an object appeared in the same area, which his wife through the binoculars, first described as a man in a boat, but which then submerged, re-appeared and progressed across the loch. A sketch of that is shown below.

By the time Alan had refocused the binoculars, he observed a line of three humps as sketched below. A man from the next caravan in the camping site also confirmed seeing three humps with his own binoculars as did a couple called Roger Selwyn and Sylvia Williams. Wilkins surmised the distance between the single hump and the other two suggested two animals.

These objects progressed for another fifteen minutes until at a range of 3450-3800 yards away. A further burst of cine film was taken and this particular sighting lasted 28 minutes. A second article was published in the next Field magazine on the 4th December detailing the other two sightings. At 9:25pm, Alan saw a black patch in an area of boiling water and two triangular humps surfacing and then submerging. This was also seen by two of the previous witnesses and is sketched below.

The final sighting occurred at 10:25pm when a series of three humps was again seen and proceeding out of Invermoriston Bay about one mile away under the light of the moon. Wilkins watched this via his binoculars mounted on a tripod. The humps progressed before turning at a right angle to travel away from them. He estimated them as being about four feet high and as one animal as they moved in unison. His sketch is shown below and I think this was when he took the photograph at the top of this article.

At this point he observed some interesting transitions as the humps changed from three to two, back to three, to two, to one and so on. Another previous witness, Sylvia Williams, also observed these, calling out the same changes as Alan in unison. Thus concluded the sightings which were then investigated by members of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, including a certain Dick Raynor who tape recorded eyewitness testimonies. Tim Dinsdale and others accepted the genuineness of the reports.

Not surprisingly, considering the previously stated large distances and evening hours, most of the photos and cine film were rendered inconclusive, except for one or two images. A set of some images, plus some taken by co-witness, Roger Selwyn, were sent to the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, USA for image enhancement - in the similar alleged manner as the 1972 "Flipper" picture. These would then be passed onto JARIC for further analysis.

What the outcome of those processes were is not known, but the LNIB accepted the genuineness of the sightings. And with that, Alan Wilkins seems to disappear from the Loch Ness scene. I see no reference to any further activities by him in Rip Hepple's newsletter. The Rines underwater pictures would soon swamp any attention his own pictures may have received and it seems he eventually moved onto other things. What did he eventually make of his sightings as time progressed? After all, at up to two miles away, one would normally hold such accounts lightly, if he had not employed binoculars and taken some images.  

And what did he think the creature was back then and what does he think now? I imagine, if he is still with us, he would be aged around ninety years old. With all this in mind, I have attempted on several occasions by letter and phone to contact Alan without success. I believe he still lives in the Dumfries and Galloway area and has spent recent years in the subject of Greek and Roman history, publishing works such as on Roman military equipment. I even found a more recent photo of the man himself.

So, Alan, if you read this, get in touch with me. I would love to speak to you.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Frank Searle's Last Photograph

 

The year 1976 was a mixed year for Frank Searle. First he had seen the publication of his book "Nessie: Seven Years in search of the Monster". This was a small but certainly not a modest work packed with photographs claiming to be the best ever taken of the creature. While he was basking in the publicity of that book, a bomb dropped on it, transforming into a work that no one now takes seriously.

It was no coincidence that the expose by the Scottish Sunday Mail happened just weeks after his book was published, designed to cause maximum mayhem in the unique world of Frank Searle. There was no comeback and even Searle's attempts to dismiss its claims were doomed when the two images below  performed the slam-dunk. The image on the right was a postcard of the time showing a brontosaurus or similar dinosaur. The left hand image was taken by Frank just five months before his book's publication. No doubt this was a piece of great timing to boost those book sales.

Despite all this, Frank tried to get an updated version of his book published three years later in 1979. However, the threat of litigation by those he panned in the book was enough to kill off that particular project and after this Frank Searle began to fade into obscurity with him finally leaving the loch to go treasure hunting across Britain in about 1984. But before that, we had the last hurrah of Frank's final "Nessie" photograph.

You can see it at the top of this article. It was said to be taken in August 1976, which was too late for his first book and too late to be taken seriously by any potential buyers. Frank relates the event of August 22nd in his unpublished work:

Among my visitors the previous evening had been school teacher Maureen Butler from Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire and her friend Sara Hanson from Harpenden. They had a small car and were spending a couple of weeks camping around Scotland. After looking at my display and putting the usual questions, they asked where they might camp for the night. I directed them to a spot with easy access to the beach near Foyers Point.

Next morning I was out on the point with my cameras at first light. About 6.45 a.m., the two ladies came walking alone the beach, saw me there and stopped for a chat. And got a sighting. Just like that! The beast broke the surface about 400 yards away. What looked like a double "hump", but was probably the back and part of the neck. The light wasn't too good, but the picture I obtained distinctly shows the two "humps" and the far bank in the background. And it was in colour. Maureen and Sara both had small cameras, but they thought about using them as much as they thought about swimming out after the beast. They were far too excited.

And once more, that element of luck. This was my first sighting since February 26th, and I'd put in about a thousand hours of watching since them. The two ladies had been in the area since the previous evening and had actually been with me on the beach for about five minutes. In fact, if I had not directed them to that camping place, they wouldn't have been there at all.

I don't think any real assessment of this account is required as it did not happen the way it was told. Frank names two women as co-eyewitnesses and even gives their towns of residence and names one as a school teacher. I suspect this was a tactic used in order to give any photographs greater credibility. Either that or they were really there. In that regard, I wrote an earlier article on Frank's 1972 pictures that got him the widest publicity (link here). There he also had a female school teacher as a co-eyewitness, but this one was from Australia.

A look around the Internet revealed nothing about any of these three women, now or back then. That does not conclusively prove he made up some bit players for his stories, it may be more subtle than that. However, I don't accept that they didn't follow his example and employ their own cameras. Moreover, I would expect it to be more likely than not that a local newspaper in Hemel Hempstead or Harpenden would eventually carry the extraordinary story of these two ladies.

A zoom in of the object makes one wonder how the deed was done. Perhaps a dark overlay like the infamous brontosaurus postcard or perhaps some simple item planted in the water? We may never know and as I have said before, if Frank really did put in that thousand hours of watching and more every year, he should have seen something. But as we know, anything genuine has now been long lost in the deafening noise of the fakes.

Was this indeed Frank's last photo? Maybe it wasn't, but it is the last one mentioned in his unpublished work. Between October 1972 and February 1976, Frank claimed to have photographed the creature on at least six occasions. That is on average one event every seven months. Then the period of over three years between February 1976 and the end of 1979 produced this one single photograph. The reason for this seems clear enough. Once the newspaper exposed his works as fraudulent in the Summer of 1976, no one was going to buy his pictures, so why should he go to the bother of making any more?

I would speculate that this double hump picture was a previous "stock photo" which Frank pulled out of his portfolio and he dated it to just after the newspaper expose as an act of defiance as if to say "I am still getting those Nessie pictures!". A brief mention should be made of another alleged photo Frank took around this time when it was claimed in a documentary that Searle had offered a newspaper a photograph of Nessie but with a flying saucer in the same picture! I haven't seen this item and needless to say, the newspaper editor declined the offer.

In closing, I wondered if those fake witnesses were just random names or was there a rationale to their selection? Why pick Maureen Butler, Sara Hanson or Carole Kennard? I even thought they might be anagrams for something like "Monster hoax by Frank S." in true "Nessiteras Rhombopteryx" fashion! I will leave that one for the puzzle lovers amongst us.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Quest 2024 and Webcam Images

Back at the end of May, it was off once again to Loch Ness for a bit of Nessie Hunting and a bit of Nessie Fellowship. To borrow from a TV program about another mystery, it was the Fellowship of the Hunt. Loading the equipment into my car, I headed off from Edinburgh and up the familiar route of the M90 and A9 roads.

THURSDAY 30TH MAY

Towards the evening, I turned into Drumnadrochit where I would stay at the Loch Ness Hostel. I usually go camping on the other quieter side of the loch at Foyers, but since most of the action was going to be around Drumnadrochit plus Foyers was about a 25 mile drive away, it was no contest.

The "Quest" is organised by the Loch Ness Centre and they had invited anyone involved to a meet up at the Loch Ness Inn just a walk away from where I was staying. There I met up with Alan McKenna, Chie Kelly and some of the Loch Ness Exhibition staff. Alan heads up the LNE and Quest surface watches while readers will remember Chie as the lady who took that very interesting sequence of photographs in 2018 which were released last year.

So we spent the first part of the evening examining Chie's pictures and offering various opinions and observations concerning them and the very good stabilized sequence of those dozens of images further released this year. I admit I have to still to publish a follow up article based on that sequence and another meeting with Chie was organised for the days ahead.

It was at this point that exuberance entered the room. By that I mean the lively Ashley from Washington State who had travelled all that way to join the Fellowship of the Hunt. She is a die hard Nessie Fan and was keen to play her part in the loch watches that were coming up. We welcomed her into the fold and made sure she was part of the team and justified her effort to make it over here to Bonnie Scotland.

In fact, after dinner and a rest, Ashley, Alan and myself headed down to Temple Pier just before midnight to try out some equipment. In Alan's case, it was his trusty hydrophone and in my case, it was the Flir thermal camera. There were a number of boats berthed in the pier, some with occupants. Looking out across the pier to Urquhart Bay did not reveal much to the naked eye, but the FLIR infra-red revealed all as the buoys stretched out into the distance (below). However, nothing anomalous was apparent beyond these man made objects.

Alan dropped the hydrophone into the shallow waters and we listened in to the various noises it was detecting. We knew at that shallow depth and proximity to the pier that it was unlikely to be near any large aquatic creatures. So, Alan's ambition is simple yet complex - get the hydrophone out into the greater depths of mid-loch at night-time and free of all day time noises. All you need is a boat and a skipper who is qualified to navigate a boat at night-time. The complex bit is bringing all that together.

Meantime, on the active hydrophone, one persistent, gurgling noise was an outlet pipe discharging into the bay on the other side. One other noise came and went. We speculated it was someone on a berthed boat flushing their toilet. Well, the sceptics say you got to consider all possibilities. Only too happy to oblige, though Ashley thought it must have been one aggressive piece of flushing. This is a family blog, so I ain't going to enquire further into that! The fun ended at one in the morning and it was off to bed.

FRIDAY 31ST MAY

The next day started off with a solo walk around the area of Drumnadrochit. I actually had not taken a good look around the town for years and in that time it has undergone a major expansion in house building and that has not stopped as I passed by ground being cleared for further new developments. Having said that, as one walked around, it was clear that houses of various kinds had been built across the decades. It just seemed that things had accelerated.

I then headed from the new to the old, walking towards ancient Urquhart Bay for a bit of surface watching. Going through the woods before reaching the bay can be a bit of a maze before the loch comes into view. Once you get through the woods, you come to one of the rivers feeding into the bay. There is no bridge, so unless the river level is low or you have found a well placed tree trunk or stepping stones, you will likely get wet feet. Once over the river, it was a short walk and Urquhart Bay opened up before me (see image at top of article). 

There were quite a few sandbanks along the way and since there had been several accounts of large beasts coming ashore here and even leaving three toed tracks, I thought I would keep my eyes open for unusual depressions in the sand. One wondered how long such spoors would persist. In any case, only deer and humans prints to report.

I stayed there for about three hours watching the loch and any activity around it. A swan glided past into the bay (below). A guy with his family stripped to his pants and dived in the cold loch, Various dogs darted about, including one that misjudged the depth of the shallows and plopped out of sight before quickly reappearing. No sign of any larger creatures appearing out of the water though.

After this ended, it was back to the Loch Ness Inn at 7pm to meet Alan McKenna and Chie for a closer look at her photos. Later on, Dave from Birmingham turned up in his car for the Quest. I already knew Dave from his postings on various cryptids groups, so it was good to meet him in the flesh. Once we met up with Ashley, it was decided to go back out that night with the equipment, but a different location.

What Alan wanted to do was get to the jetty where various boats dock to let the tourists off at the castle. From the end of that pier, the water is deeper than what we were limited to at Temple Pier. Little did I know what an expedition this turned out to be. Alan, Dave, Ashley and myself parked up on the road by the castle and headed towards the pier only to be confronted by fields of prickly gorse bush and thick fern. However, we did beat a path to a wire fence which barred our way to the pier.

It was eminently scalable, but not everyone was onboard with vaulting over it, lol. We headed the other way towards the shore, but the drop was too steep and slippery plus it was getting dark. Prior to that Dave had dropped his mobile phone somewhere along the way, but the Fellowship of the Hunt proved their hunting skills in tracking it down. If only Nessie was that easy to find! So with sodden socks and a few marks from being assaulted by the gorse bushes, we defaulted back to Temple Pier where we showed Dave the gadgets we used twenty four hours before.

SATURDAY 1ST JUNE

The "Quest" began the next day at 0930. The media scrum of last year was not so evident and it looked like volunteers just picked up any guidance from online. In fact, those late nights at Temple Pier must have had their effect as I turned up late. Alan and Ashley were heading off to help on the Deepscan boat, so I offered to head off with Dave around the loch stopping at the various designated observation points as well as a few other spots.

I was also a kind of tour guide and would point out to Dave various events of significance as we went along in his car and its complement of Godzilla figures adding to the monster atmosphere. First up was Altsigh where John MacLean had his famous sighting back in 1938 where he spotted this beast.

By now the weather was beautiful as the sun shone down upon us in complete contrast to the downpour of last year. We went down past the backpackers hostel to the spit of beach at the mouth of the Altsigh stream where McLean had his encounter. Dave is a expert in photography and filming who lectures on the subject as well as making his own documentaries. So, he brought some heavy duty equipment with him ready to capture in high quality anything that stirred on the loch.

One thing we discussed was Adrian Shine's theory that McLean only saw an otter which fooled him as he was looking across the loch almost eye level with the water and hence lacking a frame of reference. I demonstrated to Dave how this was wrong as McLean is documented as pointing across the mouth of the Altsigh to the same shoreline he was on and where the creature was. In other words, the near shoreline provided a frame of reference not far behind the creature which itself was twenty yards away. Add the fact that McLean was a regular and experienced angler at the loch and one wonders what could possibly go wrong? 

The only fallback as ever is to declare he was a liar but sceptics are averse to doing this as it comes across as simplistic and lacking in any critical analysis skills.

So we were off to a good start and next up was the Horseshoe Scree on the opposite shore where Torquil MacLeod had his encounter with a large creature half out of the water. This was an official observation point and so we scrambled down the bank to get a better view. A man and his son joined us later and a conversation ensued about the "Quest" and the famous monster. Famous accounts attract sceptics and as with the McLean case, so it was with this account. Another sceptic has attempted to debunk this one as well. 

After that it was a short drive to the layby near where Roy Johnston took a sequence of detailed photos back in 2002. We again made our way to the shore and scanned the area comparing it to one of the Johnston pictures for scale, distance and other similarities. The most frustrating bit was when a small boat appeared to our right approaching the spot where Johnston's creature surfaced. We waited in hope for it to cross over that spot for a good comparison shot.

But alas he turned and headed off in the wrong direction. I understand Alan might soon be taking to the loch waves with his own boat. I wonder how open he is to navigate anywhere we send him 😏? And, yes, you guessed it, Roy Johnston has also been targeted for debunking. Pressing on, we had a pit stop in Fort Augustus and made a brief visit to the official observation point at the pier there. It was here that an opportunity to speak on the accounts of Gregory Brusey and Alex Campbell presented itself.

But time was against us as I had to be back at the Loch Ness Centre by 5pm. So we drove onto Foyers to visit the Tim Dinsdale site. When we got there and I pointed out the loch, Dave was surprised how far away we were from the loch. Dinsdale stated he first spotted the object 1300 yards away, which is about three quarters of a mile. Below is a still from one of Dave's videos. We again took footage, sized up the problems involved and then took note that time was running out.

So it was a final stop at Dores and we checked out the photographic metrics of the Chie Kelly photos. More on that at another time and we got back to the Loch Ness Centre by 5pm where I would prepare for a Loch Ness Debate with Alan McKenna, Richard White and Jenny Johnstone as MC. Nessie fans may recall that Richard White took an interesting series of photographs back in 1997 (below).

The debate began with our short biopics and Richard White's account. Now I must admit I have not really covered Richard's photos on my blog, His account is certainly credible and I learnt more that evening than anything before. So I hope I may cover his picture sequence in more detail in a future blog. We certainly didn't discuss his pictures during the debate, mainly because no one asked about them!

That aside, we fielded questions on our opinions on the best photograph, the effect of hoaxes on research, what to do with a captured Nessie, funding for technology and so on. If you're wondering what we would do with a captured Nessie, we would record every square inch, get the DNA biopsy, attach radio tags and release back into the loch.

WEBCAM IMAGES

At the debate I noticed our webcamming friend, Eoin, was in the audience with his wife. After the debate we had a discussion on his recent activities. The webcam he usually watches was offline and we both did not know why at the time. I have encouraged him to try out the webcam at the Clansman as I think it is a better camera for resolution and position.

A week after that, Eoin emailed me with a four minute clip from the Clansman taken on the 9th July just before 8am. What appears to be one object with a small forward protuberance to the left and a longer disturbance behind moves slowly but uniformly from the far right to left (up the loch) before it moves out of range of the webcam (which pans across the Clansman parking area).

You can view the complete video clip here. What could it be? A floating branch with the tip at the front and some of it horizontal behind? The fact that it retains a regular distance between small and larger disturbance does indicate it being one object, which Eoin estimated at about 16 feet long and 100 yards out. Opinions are invited.

I also received some webcam images from Andrew Williams who took them from the Airanloch B&B webcam at Lochend about 7am on the 27th May, just three days before I arrived at the loch. It seems seven in the morning is a good time for webcamming. Andrew told me:

The object captured in the images was moving at quite some speed creating a well-defined wake. Looking at the distance from Webcam to the object I don't believe it to be a bird as it's two big plus the speed it was going would be much too fast for a bird. It reminded me of a torpedo with something dark just breaking the surface. I also captured what appears to be two objects swimming together? 

There is no doubt the wake is being produced by an animal and Andrew discounts smaller creatures like birds. My first thought was whether it was an otter as they would be active around dawn, but there is nothing solid I can see that breaks the surface. The double object picture shown next does not appear to be connected to the wake and could be two small animals.

Andrew sent me two timestamped images which facilitated an estimate of wake speed. The first is above and the second below. Using the objects on the far shoreline as reference points, then one can produce an estimate of distance covered. How far out the wake is can be more of a guesstimate, but I will put it out halfway across the loch. So, the time lapse between the two images is 137 seconds and using the Google Map scale in the bottom right gives a distance covered of about 110m which gives a speed of 0.8 metres/second or 1.8 miles per hour. This is not very fast and could be achieved by a variety of aquatic objects.

The closer the wake is to the shore then the slower it will be and vice versa. The issue with all webcams is the same issue for all cameras and video equipment. We need to see something large and solid break the surface to take this further. That is what we all want and I thank Eoin and Andrew for their contributions. Keep up the hunt, people. You may be the person that captures that large object rising high and mighty from the depths!

Going back to the Quest, Alan then headed off on holiday to Loch Morar with his wife. I await his report from that trip! Meantime, Ashley, Dave and myself tried to find somewhere to eat about 9:30pm  in Drumnadrochit. Not much chance of that, so we ended up with burgers and kebab in a local chip shop. Ashley was tired and called it a day after that and I gave her a final farewell and thanked her again for her heroic trip from all that way from Washington state.

With some energy left, Dave and I returned to the A82 road by Urquhart Castle for more infra-red watching till midnight. Dave rediscovered the IR option on his video equipment and that looked pretty good on the viewfinder display as you can see below. Apart from a bright heat spot on the far shore which we figured was perhaps a camp fire, it was finally off to bed.

SUNDAY 2ND JUNE

The next morning I packed up and had breakfast with Dave, discussing ways ahead. He had taken a good bit of video footage of which you have seen some stills here. We made some resolutions to investigate some items further (once we can afford it 😁) and with that I said my goodbyes to him. Hopefully, the Fellowship of the Hunt will meet again on the next Quest, if not sooner!

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Adrian Shine's New Book

 

A while back Adrian told me he was intending to publish a new work and I immediately assumed it would be a larger work on Loch Ness, its legendary Monster and perhaps something biographical as regards Adrian's work around the loch and Loch Morar too. I was soon set right when he told me it was a book on Sea Serpents. The description of the book is as follows:

A Natural History of Sea Serpents, re-examines the cold-case enigma of sea serpents and monsters described by impeccable witnesses over three centuries. These reports have sometimes intrigued and puzzled the most eminent scientists of their times, yet often became the butt of popular derision. Naturalist Adrian Shine, best known for his fifty years examining Loch Ness as a ‘sympathetic sceptic’, reveals how the loch actually held the key to the greater mystery. He exonerates the integrity of most witnesses, often remarks upon the accuracy of their observations yet offers bold and radical interpretations of what they have seen.

The book digs deep into the roots of the legend and shows how expectations ‘evolved’ from those ‘serpents’ to prehistoric ‘monsters’ during the nineteenth century. The book cites over a hundred reports and contains as many illustrations as evidence for its conclusions. His findings, stemming from knowledge of ships, the sea and the true monsters living there, cover the entire spectrum of reports, giving new insight, for example, into the famous HMS Daedalus episode of 1848, the description of a very unusual creature seen by two zoologists in 1904 and the serpent seen by hundreds off the coast of New England in 1817. Nothing daunted, he investigates reports of huge serpents seen battling whales and creatures which defy our understanding of vertebrate anatomy by bending both sideways and up and down, whilst under fire by the French Navy.

This book will certainly generate debate within the cryptozoology movement, yet also challenges the theories of the preeminent sceptical writer on the subject, Dr. Robert France, who has proposed whales and other creatures entangled in pre-plastic era fishing gear as the cause of most sea serpent encounters. Nevertheless, the author shares this ethnobiological perspective and ends with a strong conservation message.

I won't preempt Adrian's conclusions, though one would expect his statement about Loch Ness being the key to the wider mystery as a big clue. Will he be closer to a Henry Lee or an Anthonie Oudemans in his assessment of this great aquatic enigma? One suspects more the former than the latter. Adrian's book will published on the 31st July and can be viewed on Amazon here.

Comments can be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com