Long Necked Seals?

An interesting piece from the New Scientist (original article here):

"Despite centuries of alleged sightings, no Loch Ness monsters or sea serpents have ever been found. But in the 1600s, the specimen of a curious long-necked creature emerged that could explain where such aquatic tall tales may have originated - if only it hadn't been mislaid.

In the late 17th century, the botanist Nehemiah Grew published a catalogue of oddities held by the Royal Society in London. The book, called Musaeum regalis societatis, contains the first scientific description of a skin belonging to an unusual seal. He writes: "Wherein he principally differs, is the length of his neck; for, from his nose-end to his fore-feet, and from thence to his tail, are the same measure." By contrast, most seal necks are only about a half the length of their lower body. In 1751, Grew's description was cited by James Parsons in the Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions (vol 47, p 109). Parsons included it in his list of known species.

Nobody has seen the skin since, and no further specimens have emerged. Could long-necked seals really exist? The idea persists but is now relegated to cryptozoology, the search for semi-mythical species. Cryptozoologists argue that many legendary creatures have actually existed and point to the colossal squid or king cheetah as examples."

While I do not personally ascribe to Nessie being a long necked pinniped, it is a theory with a venerable tradition and still held by an unknown number of advocates today (I believe Peter Costello at one point held to it).

The problem is the infrequency of appearances for a mammal which should surface often to take on air. There is also the small matter of the seal's penchant for coming ashore to do some basking. Now I don't doubt there are ways around this. For example, evolutionary theory dictates that scarce resources employed in wasteful ways are candidates to be naturally selected away. Thus, when an animal approaches the surface, it is only needful to employ energy to expose the required air intake orifices. In other words, only the nostrils need be exposed and not the entire neck.

It is also entirely possible this is a form of pinniped that does not take to shore much. But for me the behaviour of Nessie points away from a primary air breather (though since it has been seen on land, some form of air respiration is employable).

The Skrimsl

When I saw this recent video (or link here) of a strange object near the Lagarflot, Iceland, the word "skrimsl" came back to my mind after many years.

The Skrimsl is the reputed inhabitant of that lake and others in Iceland with a reputation going back to Norse times. The werewolf expert, Sabine Baring Gould, even got involved in them when he visited Iceland in 1860. He obtained a description of an odd 46 foot beast which one of the witnesses drew (below).



I enjoyed reading about it back in the 1970s as a kid when Peter Costello recounted the tale in his book "In Search of Lake Monsters". What this video shows is intriguing but I am sure multi-interpretations will be suggested across the Internet in the weeks ahead. It was taken by a Hjort Kjerúlf but some suggest already it is debris which has frozen solid on the river.

Google Translate is less than perfect in its rendition:

Skeptical believe, however, netadræsa was blown into the water and frozen solid. So when the river began to forge their hlykkjaðist "worm" on the river.

Any Icelanders reading this who can translate?

UPDATE - I think netadræsa refers to a fishing net. Also, the owner of the film is not claiming it is anything - but certainly no hoax on his part. It is also amazing how the world media has picked up on this but has also called it something like "The Loch Ness Monster in Iceland". It is always curious but understandable how anything mysterious in a lake is labelled "The Loch Ness Monster in ..." but then again those four words are a global and instantly recognisable brand name (under no one's trademark!).

An Interesting Photograph

I am currently working on a larger article, but this came in and had "must blog" written all over it. It is a picture taken of something on Loch Ness, perhaps north of Invermoriston.

Is it a hoax? Is it a log or some ducks swimming past?

Perhaps it is some otters playing in a line while the leader performs a dive in a neck like manner?

Is it in fact a photo of Nessie? One clue, it is not a hoax.

UPDATE

So after various suggestions have been offered, it turns out, it is not the Loch Ness Monster but neither is it a hoax. It is the model monster made for the film "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" released in 1970. I thank Paul Cropper who runs a website on the Yowie for spotting this clipping from that well known cryptozoological journal, The Australian Women's Weekly of the 25th August 1971. A Jean Constable included this shot in her write-up about a trip to Scotland with her husband. They had just left Invermoriston when she spotted "Nessie" and urged her incredulous husband to double back. Astonished, he began snapping pictures but then they eventually saw the boat pulling the beast and the game was up. Nevertheless, it's a great picture for the Loch Ness Story archives. Below are two close up pictures of this wonderful prop but it is also very interesting to see it in "Nessie Sighting" mode.



The photograph at the bottom of this blog shows Holmes and Watson encountering the "monster" as the film reaches its climax. However, the "beast" in our photograph is not the "beast" in the film for it sank without trace in Loch Ness and lies somewhere at the bottom of the loch to this day (well I suspect after forty years it is now a very ragged wireframe). Two accounts here sum up the loss of the prop.

From TCM:

The production was a troubled one, full of technical snafus like having to reshoot the entire Loch Ness sequence (the real location was too difficult to properly light among other problems). Leading lady Genevieve Page recalled in Charlotte Chandler's biography, Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, "When we lost our Loch Ness monster, he wasn't too concerned, even though he was also the producer. He was more concerned about how the man who made it felt when all his work sank to the bottom of the Loch Ness. He went over and comforted him." She was referring to special effects man Wally Veevers's elaborate "monster," which worked beautifully until they gave it a test run in the Loch Ness. After its failure, Wilder decided to shoot it in miniature in the studio."

From IMBD:

Originally, the scenes featuring the Loch Ness Monster were intended to be filmed in the actual Loch. A life-size prop was built which had several Nessie-like humps used to disguise floatation devices. The humps were removed, however, at Billy Wilder's request. Unfortunately, during a test run in Loch Ness, the Monster-prop sank and was never recovered. A second prop (just the head and neck) was built, but was only filmed inside a studio tank.

So the prop in the film was a head and neck only. What this photograph shows is the full monty head, neck and two humps being towed in a test run. In fact, it could be surmised that Wilder's instruction to remove the humps which aided buoyancy precipitated the loss. No doubt there are one or two tales yet to be told about this resident of Loch Ness.

What I would have found very interesting is the question of what would have happened if this picture had been given more publicity. Would the sceptics of the time have merely offered the usual deer, bird, otter, logs explanations with no real critical thinking? Clearly, they would have been as wrong as the believers who may have seen this as prime evidence!

An interesting catch near Loch Ness

I found a couple of old clippings from 1934 which show that anything above a certain size found in that region of Scotland was up as a likely candidate for the Loch Ness Monster. So it was that this interesting photograph was published by The West Australian on the 29th June 1934 (click to enlarge).

The text reads:

"A strange sea creature caught by a fisherman in Moray Firth (Scotland). An opinion is held that it may have found its way into the firth from Loch Ness. The creature is 13ft long and about 1ft in diameter at its widest part."

A big beastie indeed for those parts of Scotland and the Singapore Free Press took up the story as well on the 13th June 1934 with this story (click image to read enlarged text). You may have also noticed by these foreign newspapers how much interest Nessie was generating worldwide!

The rather stiff looking nature of the beast is explained by the article's reference to the body being kept in an ice shed. A Mr. Cooper offered the slightly strained suggestion that the Surgeon's Photograph could be explained by this creature being caught in the act of diving with only its tail visible. This reminds us of a similar diving otter theory for the same photograph. However, as to its identity, an expert in the article suggests the oarfish (picture below).

I don't think that quite fits the bill as the head looks different in shape. However, a likely candidate is perhaps the conger eel though whether the eel can reach such a big size is a matter for debate. I mentioned on a previous post how eels up to 7 feet have been caught around the area but this one is nearly twice as long! One therefore presumes it was caught out in deeper water.

What do readers think?

RECENT BLOG POSTS:

The man who saw Nessie underwater
New witness corroborates 2011 sighting

SOLD!

The classic "Courtship in Loch Ness" painting by Sir Peter Scott sold today for a price of £4,750 ($7,353). The estimate was £1,500-£2,500 so it sold for well above expectations.

I wonder where it will end up? On public display in some Nessie related museum or in a private home hanging over a fireplace?

Auctioneers Link

Classic Sightings - Robert Badger

Date: August 8th 1971
Time: afternoon
Location: Temple Pier, Urquhart Bay
Witnesses: Robert Badger
Type of sighting: Underwater

Continuing our classic sightings series, we come to a most unusual encounter. Surface sightings of Nessie are rare, land sightings are even rarer but the rarest encounter of all are those experienced by those under the waters of Loch Ness. Looking back over the history of the loch, perhaps there are three claimed encounters in the last 130 years or so.

The first was in 1880 and (quoting from the book "The Water Horses of Loch Ness"):

An experience by another MacDonald in 1880 was of an altogether different nature and terrifying in the extreme. As a diver, Duncan MacDonald was sent down to investigate a ship that had sunk in the Caledonian Canal entrance at Fort Augustus. Not long after, he sent urgent signals on his line to be immediately brought back to the surface. Shaking and ashen faced, he refused to say what he had seen for several days. When he had sufficiently composed himself, he told the tale of how he had seen a “very odd looking beastie ... like a huge frog” lying on the rock ledge where the wreck was lodged as he examined its hull.

He refused to ever dive in the loch again though it would appear this encounter was where Loch Ness ends and the canal begins.

The other encounter is one I would like to know more on as my information is sketchy and concerns a diver who saw a large serpent like creature slinking away amongst the underwater rocks.

And going further afield there is the famous story from The Scotsman of 25th October 1933 and the divers in Loch Treig who

"came up with terrible stories of the weird creatures they had seen in the underwater caves"

But our main story concerns Robert "Brock" Badger who had an encounter with the Loch Ness Monster whilst swimming in Urquhart Bay on Sunday 8th August 1971. My attention to this exceedingly rare encounter was brought by an old story from the Glasgow Herald (dated 8th March 1999). It was recounting recent events at Loch Ness but Robert's story received the most attention. Intrigued to find out more, I managed to track down Robert and engage in an email conversation which he has kindly given permission to reproduce here today.

THE ENCOUNTER

I first mentioned the Herald article which claimed he had seen and touched the skin of the Loch Ness Monster. His first reply was that he had indeed encountered the beast underwater but

"... the Herald article is nonsense, I certainly did not touch anything. ... The only totally correct story was by dear old Alex Campbell, the water bailiff, in the Inverness Courier on Friday 13th August 1971."

It always pays to talk to the original source where possible and clear up any media hype. We are also gratified to see that only the late Alex Campbell faithfully and honestly recorded the event for the Courier. I say this against the background of those who claim he exaggerated his reports to the Courier at other times.

In fact, I went to the National Library of Scotland to get that article and reproduce it here for your edification.



However, I asked Robert to retell the story (albeit after the passage of forty years) and this is what he said:

Narwhal was to be moored in Urquhart bay. A lump of concrete with a mooring ring was acquired together with a galvanised mooring buoy and chain to attach them together. A group of us took the gear in one of the vans down to Temple Pier from Achnahannet, and as there were no changing facilities at the pier, I travelled kitted out in a wetsuit.

We did the job of placing the mooring, and as the others loaded the tools and dinghy back into the van, I did a bit of snorkelling so the wetsuit did not get ripped on the gear. I swam out from the small floating jetty which was there in those days. A hundred yards or so from the jetty, the floor of the bay suddenly nose-dives into deep water. I had just passed this point and was about 10 or 15 feet below the surface, but was now in deep water and was thinking that I should turn and go back when I saw an object in front of me.

The water is of course full of peat and is like thick tea. As I got closer I could see a top and bottom to the object, but it extended left and right out of my vision. The surface of the object was rough textured and rounded in cross-section. I saw no protuberances in the part I could see. I'm not sure how far from the object I was, maybe 15-20 feet. It was moving from my right to my left, that is towards the main loch. This sounds like a long drawn-out sighting, but in reality it occupied only a couple of seconds. I realised what I was looking at, and decided that I should not be there. I have size 13 feet and my swim flippers are large and strong. I surfaced quickly and made for the pier as fast as I could.

Simon Dinsdale's eye was caught by me surfacing, and he said I was moving so fast that I was aquaplaning on my chest. As I made my way in, I was terrified that I was being chased, but I noticed Mr Menzies' nephews playing in a boat tied to the pier, and his black labrador coming into the water to meet me, so I risked a look back and realised that I was alone.

Simon and the others asked what had happened, and I told them that I had seen something. Later at Achnahannet, I sat down with Tim Dinsdale and completed a sighting report form and he interviewed me on tape. He and David James decided to make the story public, and the press came to Achnahannet and did the interview. This resulted in as many different versions of the story as there were newspapers represented.

A lot of people said that I was too shallow to have seen anything, but when we discussed it, we realised that this is exactly where Nessie would look for fish, as close to the shallows as possible, but still in deep water.

THE ANALYSIS

The Courier account adds that the estimated diameter of the object was about six feet. The Simon Dinsdale mentioned is the son of the famous monster hunter Tim Dinsdale who subsequently interviewed Robert. What Tim Dinsdale said about this encounter also adds some weight to the truth of this testimony as he recounts the tale in a later edition of his book "Loch Ness Monster". His conclusions about the now subdued and troubled Robert were that:

He had made no attempt to publicize his experience, even among the expedition people. At the time he had merely said ‘I thought I saw something underwater’, adding that he ‘wouldn't go back in the water’. As he was in no more than 15-20 feet of water at the time, some felt it was too shallow for the Monster, but I did not consider this to be the case. I was absolutely convinced of Brock’s sincerity, and his ability to describe his experience objectively.

It was later found by sonar that the loch side shelves precipitously at that point and so the beast could patrol close to the shore and yet be in deep water. It is to be noted that the salmon and trout entering and leaving Loch Ness tend to move close to the sides of the loch.

So what can we say about Robert's encounter? Sceptics suggest that he merely saw a tree trunk floating past him. I put this possible explanation to him to which Robert replied:

"As for the idea that I saw a log, well I'm not familiar with six foot diameter logs in GlenUrquhart."

Which we consider a good answer. I would like to read the LNI sighting report and listen to the audio tape interview. In that respect, I ask the current owner(s) of the LNI material how I may achieve this.

Robert could not see the entire length of the creature as its huge size filled his goggles' field of view but based on the six feet diameter and a standard 6 to 7 ratio of total length to diameter gives us a suggested head to tail length of 36 to 42 feet. In other words, a considerable beast and no surprise that Robert beat a hasty retreat back to shore.

However, whether Nessie would have made quick work of Robert is unlikely. The old Water Horses in Loch Ness were certainly labelled as man-eaters and livestock-stealers but the modern Loch Ness Monster has no record of attacking anyone we know of and even if she did, there is no way of proving that a person's disapperance is connected in that way. Mind you, that is easy to say when you are in front of a PC rather than in front of a 40-foot lake monster.

AN IDEA

Quite topically, the recent sonar contact made by Marcus Atkinson (see story) was also made near the spot where Robert had his encounter but at a deeper depth of about 70 feet.

Now since this blog believes the Loch Ness Monster is mainly a benthic/littoral resident (i.e. it frequents the sides and bottom of Loch Ness and not open water) then such encounters come as no surprise. In fact, this is why the road blasting operations of the 1930s and the dumping of debris down the sides of the loch forced the creatures off the sides and bottom into the relative safety of open waters and led to the highest per annum sightings of all time.

It is also ironic that if the creature does stick close to the sides of the loch then it is more difficult to detect with sonar. Perhaps this form of Nessie hunting is not as effective as made out.

Indeed, if it also stays close to the surface (another difficult area for some forms of sonar), we have the somewhat unsettling situation that the creatures could be coasting a mere 10 to 20 feet below the surface and along the sides in opaque peaty water with no one just above being any the wiser to their presence.

As I understand, most divers stick close to the shore of Loch Ness and do not tend to swim out to the hundred yards extent that Robert did. So a suggestion as to a new avenue of monster hunting:

Employ a team of scuba divers to swim and patrol out to 100-200 metres from shore at a depth of 3-7 metres over deep water. Supply them with radio devices back to surface boats so as to maintain a narrative. Arm them with cameras and biopsy darts to collect any samples and then patrol the area looking out for any strange forty foot objects looming at them out of the darkness. Note that biopsy darts/harpoons are not a new idea at Loch Ness. Roy Mackal designed one for attachment to a submarine, but I understand they were never called into action.

So when the creature comes into view, shoot with the biopsy harpoon and head back to the shore ... as fast as you can.

A bit toungue in cheek and I must admit I would not volunteer for all the tea in China, but in theory the idea has some merit. Some might have done the odd foray into the loch but clearly in a loch this size, one would need a lot more than that as the beast could pass 40 feet past you and you would have no idea it was there.

Such is the darkness and mystery that is Loch Ness as Robert Badger found out on that day forty years ago.


POSTSCRIPT

A little extra information on other divers' experiences at Loch Ness. I had completely forgotten about the famous "Beppo the Clown" case in 1959. Beppo aka Jon Newbold was monster hunting as part of a publicity stunt by circus ower Bernard Mills when he was brought up after 10 minutes semi-concious. What he said after hospitalisation has entered the apocryphal (or from his circus' media machine) as tales of bright eyes staring at him from the depths or even a tentacle grabbing him have been mentioned. Betrand Russell in his book "Fact and Fiction" gives us this summary:

John Newhold, aged 31, of Stafford, known as Beppo, the clown; was detained in hospital yesterday alter diving into Loch Ness in a frogman's outfit to try to get evidence about the ‘monster’.

He made a dive lasting ten minutes and surfaced in a semi-concious state. He was taken aboard a yacht belonging to Mr Bernard Mills, the circus proprietor, and recovered partly ater artificial respiration had been applied. Mr Newbold, who was unable to say what had happened while he was underwater, is an experienced high diver and swimmer - he had made several practise dives to a depth of more than 20 feet before yesterday‘s attempt. The water is several hundred feet deep at this part of the loch.

While the Milwaukee Sentinel of 15th August 1959 (these stories get around you know) printed this:

On the matter of the other diver seeing a huge eel-like creature, it seems the diver's name was Michael MacRae and this also may have happened in the 1970s. For now, I know nothing more. Any help here would be appreciated.

RECENT BLOG POSTS:

More information on last year's sonar contact
New witness corroborates 2011 sighting

One day it might end like this ...

From some less than accurate editions of the Weekly World News (1992 and 1995). One wonders how this mystery will finally end. Sceptical minded people will say it is already solved, but we prefer to keep an open mind. More than likely, it will be Nessie roadkill when she performs one of her rare land crossings in front of a speeding Ferrari. Then again, I wouldn't wish that fate upon her ....