Book Review: A Monstrous Commotion

This year brings us a new and informative history of the Loch Ness Monster and her detractors and adherents. The last one was Nicholas Witchell's revised 1989 edition of "The Loch Ness Story", and November 2015 brings us Gareth William's "A Monstrous Commotion". 

However, it would be fairer to reverse terms and say this is a history of the adherents and detractors of the Loch Ness Monster as it seeks to present the human side of an endearing and enduring mystery.

Now, my own interest in the Loch Ness Monster dates back to when Witchell's first edition came out in 1974. Forty years on, I may have thought I had a pretty good grasp of the Monster and its pursuers, but it seems to be a truism (certainly for me), that we forget more than we remember about even favoured subjects.

So, it was certainly a refresher lesson for me to again read of the exploits, successes and failures of the monster hunters that stretched back to 1933 (and before). One can argue that the failures outweigh the successes and that is certainly writ large as the trials and tribulations of various small and large expeditions are charted from the semi-serious joints of meat hurled by hook into murky waters to the hi-tech, multi-disciplinary technologies of later hunts.

None of them delivered the conclusive proof that hard nosed scientists demanded and with that all of them fell into the annals of cryptid history. Gareth Williams revisits those heady days of Edward Mountain, the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, the Academy of Applied Sciences and Operation Deepscan. Each brought something new to the table in the great chase, but what about the people and personalities?

SIR PETER SCOTT

Gareth Williams' book breaks new ground by tapping into the archive of a central figure in that most intense period of Nessie fervour, the 1960s and 70s. That figure was Sir Peter Scott; naturalist, Olympic medallist and Nessie believer. In fact, one gets the impression this was the catalyst and motivation for writing the entire book in the first place.

Peter Scott was a major influence in how the monster hunting scene of the 1960s developed as he tried to bring together the scientific community and the monster hunter community. Throughout this period and into the 1980s, he regularly communicated with various names familiar to us such as Tim Dinsdale, Constance Whyte, Robert Rines and so on. Those letters have been preserved and in them we see not only the opinions of people as regards the existence or non-existence of exotic creatures, but also their opinions regarding other people and the various Loch Ness projects.

This is where "A Monstrous Commotion" begins where the more anodyne "The Loch Ness Story" ends in exploring the dynamics of human relationships in the great monster quest. Of course, such opinions were deemed confidential at the time, but since the vast majority of all these players are now dead, the negative and positive comments inked onto paper can now be revealed.

One would have suspected that what we know of human nature would reflect in the all too human world of monster hunting. That has been confirmed by Gareth as people like Tim Dinsdale and Robert Rines do not come out of this smelling of roses. One however wonders if there is yet more to tell concerning people who are still alive and have been spared embarrassment?

Certainly, it has been told me that Rines, in a burst of American forthrightness, told a current Loch Ness researcher to "Piss off, Sonny!". One suspects Rines was not the most angelic of figures (though what elicited that outburst is not known to me).

The other aspect of taking up the hunting of this Scottish Snark was the detrimental effect it seemed to have on other aspects of one's career and relationships. The obsession with the monster has closed many a door which otherwise was wide open to those with the undoubted talents to do so. It seems an undue focus on Nessiteras Rhombopteryx aided and abetted by an actual sighting of the creature led to blindness in other areas. Let that be a lesson to us all.

INFLUENCE

Gareth extends this thought into how monster hunters selectively picked or ignored various sightings to bolster their beloved plesiosaur theory. That may be true, but he omits to mention that those on the other side of the debate are also guilty of bias driven analysis. To wit, he mentions how Gould rejected the un-sea serpent-like sighting of a crocodile like creature in the River Ness in 1932.

However, sceptic Adrian Shine, in an attempt to bolster his roaming sturgeon theory, holds up the exact same account as a possible sturgeon sighting, rather than consign it to one of the more humdrum creatures that frequented the river and loch. My own feeling was that sceptics got off too lightly in parts of this book, as if they were uninfected by the human frailties of their opposite camp.

Perhaps the approach here is like a controlled debate or a court case. The defence for the monster made their case between 1933 and 1980. The prosecution then stood up and made their case from 1980 to the present day. However, the process is more complex than that as counter arguments bounce around to the present day.

One case in point is the Peter MacNab photograph. Gareth gives us the flow of debate around this picture as even the Professor of Zoology at Oxford, Sir Alister Hardy, became an advocate of the photograph. When he comes to Roy Mackal's treatment of the photograph, the problem of why foliage in the foreground is present in one version of the picture but not another is again presented as a reason to reject this photo.

However, this argument is forty years out of date as recent research has adequately demonstrated that the reason for the difference is that one picture is more enlarged than the other and thus cuts out the foreground foliage as a result.

This is a problem noted before in recent publications on the monster. There is the printed matter published between 1934 and 1976. However, the debate has now moved onto the Internet and that is where authors need to go to get the latest thinking (be it of an anti-monster or pro-monster cast).

Having said that, new books do address old arguments and I am tempted to send Gareth a free copy of my "The Water Horses of Loch Ness" book as he also travelled down the well-trodden sceptical path of saying there is precious little monster tradition prior to the Nessie era of 1933. Since Gareth acknowledges Dick Raynor and Adrian Shine were heavily involved in the editing of the document and "correcting my many errors of fact, chronology and interpretation", it is not difficult to see their sceptical influence on how the Loch Ness mystery should be "interpreted". Facts and chronology can be objective, interpretation is more subjective.

But perhaps subjective interpretation even trumps objective chronology? In Gareth's book, it is stated that Peter MacNab took his picture on the 21st October 1958 (page 67). However, MacNab always said he took it in the Summer of 1955. If the aforementioned advisors did indeed correct him on chronology, it suggests that they "decided", on their assumption it was a fake photo, that it was actually "taken" only days before its publication. That is not objective chronology, that is subjective interpretation.

Typographically, the book has few errors and that is a credit to the proof readers. The only thing I would seriously query is plate 46 which shows the 1972 flipper photograph. The bottom picture does not look like the JPL enhanced picture, but another one called the "two body" picture. I think the actual image is this one below.

TELLING THE STORY

But how do you tell the tale of an unproven monster swimming along the borders of human fantasy and objective reality? Gareth does the right thing in telling it from the perspective of the actors in this play. So, we get history new but also history old as respect is given to the eyewitnesses. Thus, the look and feel of the saga is preserved as tales of long necks, humps, flippers and outsized flanks creating a terrific commotion in the midst of the waters reflects and catalyses the commotion playing out on terra firma.

Ultimately, the shadow of the sceptic intrudes as Gareth goes through the various theories which try to explain these incredible sights without the need for a plesiosaur, sea serpent, giant salamander, tullimonstrum gregarium or giant eels.

As I read through his veritable blizzard of so called ordinary things seen in extraordinary circumstances, it struck me how virtually anything that has existed near the loch has been employed as an explanation. From cars to boats, from dogs to ducks, from deformed cows to dead trees, this blunderbuss approach spins the mind and one soon realises it is easier to state what has not been employed in this revisionism rather than what has.

If almost anything can be employed as an explanation, one wonders how that devalues the whole approach?

CONCLUSIONS

I would have liked to have seen the history extended further. Witchell's "Loch Ness Story" took us up to 1989, but Gareth's book only really goes a few years further to include the 1993 "Project Urquhart" and the 1994 expose of the Surgeon's Photograph. Apart from a brief biopic on Steve Feltham, the period between 1995 to 2015 is still largely a black hole to readers.

However, Gareth's book is a good addition to the Loch Ness literature in how it lifts the lid on the human side of the Loch Ness Monster hunt. From Crowley's "Koloo Mavlick" to Torquil MacLeod's swan-off shotgun and Dinsdale's preoccupation with the Queen, there is plenty to inform and entertain. Whether that takes us closer to deciding whether there is an exotic creature in Loch Ness is another matter. Gareth wisely leaves that conclusion to the reader. I personally think it does not, but it does reveal to what extent this phenomenon drives both believer and sceptic.

Gareth's postscript ends on an ironic and perhaps unintended note. He begins with a Colonel Lane's sighting of a torpedo like object ploughing a watery furrow through the loch in the 1940s.  He ends it with current monster hunter Steve Feltham also witnessing a torpedo like object cutting speedily across the loch. Loch Ness history continues to beat the same rhythm and that perhaps sums up the ongoing hunt for the beast of the loch.

I thank Gareth for bringing these things to the attention of Nessie people everywhere and recommend it as a worthy addition to their crypto-bookshelf.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

No Peace for Nessie

The heaving throngs of tourists have left the loch, but can Nessie now safely surface without those annoying humans getting in her face?

It seems not for her Majesty's Armed Forces have been using Loch Ness as a training ground prior to bigger manoeuvres in Norway next year. Hopefully the Loch Ness Monster will literally dodge a bullet here. Video of their visit is here or here.

Check Google's St Andrews Day

Worth checking out!

For those who missed it ....

How many people can Loch Ness hold?

It's one of those "amazing" facts that is trotted out about Loch Ness. The fact that the volume of water in Loch Ness is equivalent to containing the entire population of the world. But by how much seems a matter of opinion.

This website suggests ten times the world's population. The Daily Mirror seems to say the same, but says "surface area" instead of volume. Bzzzzz! Meanwhile, looking further back, issue 235 of the Europe magazine from 1983 states it is three times the world population.

It is one of those factoids like the one that the Post Office Tower or Eiffel Tower could be submerged in the loch without trace. But when this population fact was first mentioned was a bit of a mystery to me, though I certainly recall it going back before the Internet. I checked most of the classic books, but couldn't find any mention of it. Where had it come from and indeed does it stack up?

Now the volume of water in Loch Ness is stated as 7.5 cubic kilometres in its Wikipedia entry. This translates to 7.4 billion cubic metres. What is the average volume of a human? Not so easy to figure out, but good old Google suggested that water displacement measurements of 521 people of varying ages gave 66.4 litres or 0.0664 cubic metres. That seemed to be about half what I thought for an adult, but we are including babies and kids in our experimental mega-plunge.

Divide the volume of the loch by this average human volume and you get about 111,445,783,130 people fitting into Loch Ness. Since the world's population is currently estimated at about 7.3 billion, then you'll get them all into Loch Ness not just 10 times over but more than 15 times over. It seems our factmeisters were right but also underestimating things.

But what about surface area as the Daily Mirror misquoted? The best known fact on this wise is that the Isle of Wight can hold the entire standing population of the world. Okay, what about Loch Ness with a surface area of 56 million square metres? If we assume five people squeezing up per square metre, then that's 280 million people, which is well off the mark.

But, again, who first concocted this fact? Was it the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau or some more obscure book or booklet? If anyone knows, leave a comment or send an email.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Grumpy Skepticism

The world is full of Nessie sceptics, they may be young or old, fat or thin, near or far from the loch, they may be intelligent or dumb. What they do have in common is a shared belief that Loch Ness harbours no large, exotic species of animal. It is, of course, their right to hold such an opinion. However, another thing they may not have in common is the way they express that opinion and that involves personality.

Take these words from retired Loch Ness researcher, Tony Harmsworth, as he gave a short, grumpy pre-review of Gareth Williams' book, "A Monstrous Commotion".

Anyone studying the subject seriously might find it useful, but his repeatedly going into depth about exaggerated sightings and reports which, for anyone who knows the subject, have no credibility whatsoever, was the most annoying aspect of it and I found that extremely tiresome. This was the very reason why I didn’t include all of these irrelevant sightings in my own book. However, now they are all referenced, perhaps we can let them die a natural death. 

It seems Gareth's mistake was making these eyewitness reports sound too "real". I began to suspect that if Tony didn't like the book, then, ipso facto, I would like it. Since I have started reading the book, that feeling has partially been confirmed. I will put up a proper review when I have finished (as I am sure Tony will).

Now Tony does not really involve himself in the search for any form of Nessie these days, his presence on such forums is minimal to say the least. Having written his book, "Loch Ness Understood", he perhaps feels that is all he has to say on the subject. I note that when Tony mentioned a book by another sceptic, Ronald Binns, called "The Loch Ness Mystery: Solved", he describes this as "rather prematurely titled". Presumably, Tony has now "put the world to rights" with his similarly (but still prematurely) titled book!

Tony suggests Adrian Shine would do a better book on the history of the Loch Ness Monster and its pursuers. I wouldn't care to give an opinion on that but I would certainly look forward to such a book (as I did with Tony's).  I think Adrian is now aged 67 years old and must be nearing retirement from his post at the Loch Ness Centre in Drumnadrochit. Maybe after this we will see such a book.

As best as I can ascertain, Tony now tends to be preoccupied with aiming verbal arrows at people who believe in one or more gods (presumably he regards them as another set of witnesses who have misidentified something ordinary for something extraordinary). However, back to his quote.

In typical bombastic fashion, he put us to rights by describing all claims to seeing a large animal in the loch as being "exaggerated", having "no credibility", "tiresome", "irrelevant" and we ought to "let them die a natural death". And this, he says, should be obvious to "anyone who knows the subject".

Let us look at how Tony handles one of these claimed sightings. I refer to the John McLean case and how Tony has decided that this was in fact just a bird; a cormorant to be more precise. His post in facebook can be found here.

The long neck fits in with cormorants. It is well known that people overestimate sizes over water. The body drawings are typical of boat wakes or groups of birds apart from the last drawing which is a bit of a mystery. Bearing in mind that only around a third of an aquatic animal's body appears above the surface when swimming, the size estimates would put this animal at around 50 to 60 feet or almost the size of the largest animal on the planet - a blue whale. We also know that long-necked animals have high metabolic rates so there would be insufficient food in the loch for a long-necked creature of any size. Oh how I wish I could have been looking over his shoulder so that I could have pointed out that he was actually seeing a ...... or a ...... or a ......, but my Tardis is currently not operational.

Now to dig a bit deeper into these words.

The long neck fits in with cormorants. 

Well, it doesn't actually, the sketch by McLean looks nothing like a cormorant. The lack of a long beak is a give away. The proportions are also wrong.

It is well known that people overestimate sizes over water.

But not by a factor of nearly seven. McLean suggested a length of up to 20ft (610cm) while a cormorant is about 90cm long. Moreover, overestimates are not so credible at a range of under twenty yards. This is a bit like someone claiming they saw an articulated lorry pass by, only for some "expert" to tell them they actually saw a mini car. I think the words "exaggerated" and "no credibility" just as equally apply to Tony's strained interpretation of what Mr. McLean saw.

The body drawings are typical of boat wakes or groups of birds apart from the last drawing which is a bit of a mystery.

Group of birds, but only one neck? Curiouser and curiouser. It goes without saying that Tony completely ignores any experience John McLean may have had as regards boats and birds. After all, he had claimed to have seen the monster, so he is immediately an unreliable witness. That is circular reasoning by any other name. As for the inflated hump, Tony hopes we will just ignore this minor "mystery".

Bearing in mind that only around a third of an aquatic animal's body appears above the surface when swimming, the size estimates would put this animal at around 50 to 60 feet or almost the size of the largest animal on the planet - a blue whale.

Loch Ness Monster fans have always held that the creature has notable powers of positive buoyancy. This is rejected by sceptics, hence the unwarranted use of this one third formula. Tony fails to note that McLean said he saw the creature from tail to head, so that blows his one third calculation clean out of the water.

As a side note, here is a YouTube clip of an animal with positive buoyancy that matches and perhaps even exceeds that of our favourite cryptid. Nature again provides a precedent to the confounding of the sceptics.



We also know that long-necked animals have high metabolic rates so there would be insufficient food in the loch for a long-necked creature of any size. 

Well, using proof by contradiction, it appears the long necked nothosauridae did not - Quad Erat Non Demonstrandum.

Oh how I wish I could have been looking over his shoulder so that I could have pointed out that he was actually seeing a ...... or a ...... or a ......, but my Tardis is currently not operational.

Ah, such arrogance! Besides, Tony, I am sure you would rather send off your Tardis to more interesting times .... such as White Hart Lane in the early 1960s.

If this is what "anyone who knows the subject" knows, I will continue to live in ignorance, thanks very much.

The Infrasonic Nessie

The rise of scepticism has brought with it a desire to find more natural explanations for eyewitness claims to large creatures in lochs and lakes around the world. We are familiar with the older theories regarding boat wakes, seiches, vegetable mats, birds and other forms of misinterpreted phenomena, but not much new has hoved over the sceptical horizon recently.

So, it was with some interest that I noted a comment left by Loch Ness researcher, Dick Raynor, on this blog a couple of years back:

I am just beginning a new avenue of amateur investigation involving infrasound and I am sure that Ted and Tim would have been years ahead of me had they still been with us, as both of them (and I also) had experiences consistent with its effects.

This work, if successful, will in no way claim or prove that there are no unknown large animals in Loch Ness, it will only add to the argument that their existence is not necessary to account for the wide variations in observations and data obtained so far. If I see and film a plesiosaur from one of my boat tours tomorrow I will happily admit "Yup, there are plesiosaurs there too."

You can find Dick's thoughts on this matter at his website. In summary, the theory draws on previous work by Vic Tandy which suggested that inaudible sound at around a frequency of 19Hz triggers various physiological effects such as fear, blurred vision, shivering and dizziness. The blurred vision is alleged to be due to the human eyeball resonating at this frequency. Tandy's own personal experience made him think a grey spirit was entering at his peripheral vision but vanished when he turned to look at it.

Dick Raynor thinks this is applicable to some aspects of the Loch Ness Monster phenomenon. The infrasound waves are theorised to be generated by the culvert pipes below the road which then affect human observers near them. These pipes are used to run hillside water off into the loch and the photo below is of one such culvert at Loch Ness which I took recently.

However, how exactly this is to be applied to the Loch Ness Monster is not made clear on his website. A look around for Dick's other comments does not elaborate much more on the neurophysiological mechanisms involved or the proposed alterations in perception. One comment here has him actually applying the infrasound mechanism to Bigfoot as well!

Adding to what Rangoon says, the same naturally occuring infrasound could produce the perception of bigfoot in addition to the "bad" feelings. Witness is unaware of cause but senses both effects and the brain then turns one of them into a cause.

However, one assumes culverts do not run past Bigfoot sites. On another forum, he says:

Could it be that Science has added a new category of 'answer' that relies on modern physics, including infrasound-generated psychological / perception disturbances ...

Could produce, could it be? Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Let's look at issues with this theory.

SEMI-SCIENCE

Now Dick said (albeit two years ago) that this was a work in progress and it is just as well he said that because what we have just now is not science but at best incomplete science. He has proposed a theory, albeit thin on the human perception side, but having more to say on the matter of the physics of resonating culverts.

The main problem is immediately obvious to those with experience of the scientific method. There is no evidence that this theory has been tested. It is over two years now since Dick outlined his theory on his website, but nothing more has been added. What do we need to see to progress this?

First, is there any evidence of infrasound emissions near the culverts? Has Dick gone to some culverts with measuring equipment in an attempt to measure the presence of sound waves in the proposed frequency range? If nothing has been detected, clearly the theory is already dead in the water.

Secondly, the intensity of any proposed waves also need to be measured. Herein lies a deficiency with the theory as it is not stated at what decibel level the proposed perception-altering changes kick in. Culverts may emit at 18Hz, but may be too weak to have any effect on humans.

Thirdly, a control test needs to be done at a site well away from culverts on the loch side. This is to establish whether any theoretical infrasound presence can be statistically linked to the culverts rather than another potential cause. If infrasound were to be detected nowhere near culverts, it is unlikely to have anything to do with them.

Have any of these tests been done? If not, it is incomplete science, it is semi-science. Many a theory has been proposed over the centuries of scientific enquiry, they may have been totally plausible and mathematical, but in many instances they turned out to be wrong due to an unwarranted assumption, loose handling of the data or a missing piece in the equations.

On the other hand, it is of course entirely possible all this has been done, it just has not been published yet. In that light, we await the possibility of unrevealed research for further critique.

PEER CRITICISM

The other aspect to all of this is whether the initial and original theory is as worthy of acceptance as it is made out? In that light, I took a step back from what is being proposed regarding the Loch Ness Monster and sought out the opinions of others on Vic Tandy's theory of infrasound and paranormal phenomena. It did not take long to find a dissenting opinion.

This objection can be found in a paper authored by Jason Braithwaite and Maurice Townsend in October 2006 entitled "Good Vibrations: The case for a specific effect of infrasound in instances of anomalous experience has yet to be empirically demonstrated" which is a long winded way of saying "we don't think anything has been proven here".

I see that Dr. Jason Braithwaite lectures in Cognitive Science and Brain Science at Birmingham University and his academic profile is here.  You can obtain their article here. His view in the paper is that the infrasound phenomenon has not been properly quantified, there is no baseline data and the neurological side is inadequately stated.

That does not mean that infrasound effects on human perception have been proven false, it just means they are not proven to an adequate level of scientific enquiry. 

CONCLUSION

There is no proof that infrasound can perceptually affect observers at Loch Ness or anywhere else. No measurements at this time confirming their presence at culverts are forthcoming and there is no mechanism adequately explaining how resonating pipes lead to people seeing plesiosaurs. Apart from these objections, it's a great theory. :)

We await further scientific revelations from Dick Raynor.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Jennifer Bruce's Monster and Sucking

Every time I see a picture of a gull, I think of the 1982 picture of the Loch Ness Monster by Jennifer Bruce. I wrote about this in 2013 and when I look at such a gull picture, I am less convinced by the sceptical interpretation that it is nothing more than a passing seagull. Let's just say that if that was a gull, it would be so deformed as to be incapable of flying in the first place!

I saw yet another gull in a recent photo and include it below with a zoom of Bruce's Nessie. Compare and contrast.

Now whether the bird in the photo is a bona fide member of a gull species seems irrelevant to me. After all, damn! Those are the strangest looking wings I have ever seen on a supposed bird in Bruce's picture. Perhaps it is a weird, cryptid bird like the legendary Thunderbird looking up its watery cousin in Loch Ness?

Quite simply, the sceptics have been suckered into a case of pareidolia here; they see something that looks vaguely like something else. That brings me to a flaw in sceptical logic that is a repeat offence. I call it the "my theory sucks the least" argument and there is normally some fancy Latin  phrase to describe these things, but I am not particularly bothered to find it.

The argument runs like this, the probability of there being one or more large monsters in Loch Ness is approaching zero. So it is not a valid explanation for things we see in photos and films from Loch Ness.

However, since one wishes to look authoritative and intelligent, some kind of explanation needs to be offered as to what is in the picture. Now since any explanation that looks half plausible is going to be more probable than a monster one, it is therefore a probable explanation - use it.

Since the majority are not going to criticise this approach, people will generally get away with it - until they get shot down (like a gull) on this blog and others. So, you declare Bruce's photo is a bird. What do you mean it doesn't look like a bird on closer inspection!? It's more probable than a monster, so that's good enough for me!

Matey, if you think the odds of a monster are a million to one against, but the odds of that thing in the picture being a gull are a thousand to one against, you better just drop both and keep quiet.

This "my theory sucks the least" approach is found all over the place. Another example was Maurice Burton's explanation of the Surgeon's photo. He said it was an otter in the act of diving. It's a daft explanation, but it sucks less than a monster one, so we're cool with that.

I see it all time to varying degrees of dubiety. That does not mean that people do get it right on various pictures (e.g. Steve Feltham outing George Edwards or Alistair Boyd on the Surgeon's Photo), but some others attempts are just ... embarrassing.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com