Quest 2026 Trip Report

Once again, it was off to Loch Ness for the fourth annual surface watch organised by the Loch Ness Centre. Travelling up the main Highland road towards Inverness on the last Friday of May, the first task on arriving at the loch was to collect a couple of trail cameras. This is not a Quest activity in and of itself and was rather my own ongoing private project.

In fact, the extended weekend could be described as the wider Quest project supplemented by other activities by the Loch Ness Exploration (LNE) group and those carried out by individuals such as myself. So, a left turn towards the south side of the loch took me towards the cameras. I had left them there since my last visit around Easter and so it was only about seven weeks since they were placed as opposed to the longer seven months over autumn and winter.

Having checked into my accommodation, I headed over to the Drumnadrochit Hotel to meet up with fellow LNE members. The first thing to catch my attention was not anything Nessie related, but a group of classic cars parked for the night. To be more precise, it was a fleet of Austin Healey cars on a tour of Scotland. Beautiful cars.

Having greeted the team, I was taken by Paul and Chris to see the latest and greatest LNE acquisition - The Explorer. As you can see from the image below, it is a boat bought a few months back and given an LNE makeover with a new coat of paint and some emblems added to it so that people know who this craft belongs to! Thanks to all involved in getting it into Loch Ness shape and I am glad to say it completed its maiden voyage the evening before I arrived.

May God bless her and all who sail in her as they say on these occasions! The hurling of a champagne bottle was not involved in this initiation. We would rather drink it. I didn't get a chance to go in it myself and indeed not at all for the duration, but perhaps next time. For now, the team have the kind permission of the pier owners to berth there whilst it is in use.

Moving on and after a dinner it was on to a staple part of these weekends and that was the midnight watch from Urquhart Bay. This is not quite a Quest event but anyone who has travelled up for that event is welcome to join the LNE team to watch the loch for what we believe is a creature which is mainly nocturnal.

The game plan is usually to lower a camera rig into the water at about 30 foot depth along with the hydrophone to potentially match up image with sound. The most interesting incident related to this search was that of last Halloween which was covered here. Others will contribute to the search with torches scanning the immediate vicinity for signs of activity while others will have night vision equipment trained on the surface.

In attendance was Chris Mitchell who does his own research of strange entities and UFOs in the North of England. We had chatted previously in 2022 when I did a podcast interview for the "TruthProof" website run by Paul Sinclair. The conversation resumed as we compared cryptid notes and Chris had some interesting photographs and videos from his own watches in the rural parts of Yorkshire.

Here at Loch Ness, I took a different approach this year with my theory of continuous scan mode. That simply means one records what is before them without necessarily observing at the same time. The more data that is collected, the higher probability of something being detected. The use I make of multiple trail cameras is one outworking of that idea and this night it was time to employ the FLIR thermal camera to the same end. 

In this case, I pointed the FLIR to a point across the loch with the castle in view and let it run for the duration we were there. No need for me to keep looking into it apart from the occasional panning of the loch if something was pointed out by others. I reckoned based on the SD card file system inserted into the camera, it could record a 4Gb video file over two hours. Since this was my first long record use of the FLIR, lithium batteries as opposed to alkaline were required as I knew that they would not last that long. A snapshot of the video is shown below with the castle in the top right.

Two sessions were recorded over the weekend and will be examined along with the trail camera pictures in due course. Overall, nothing was observed on the surface, though I do not yet know about the results from the underwater camera rig. After finishing at about one in the morning, we headed back as the next day was going to be the busiest day. As an aside, some of the trail cam pictures were taken at night, though I am not sure of their value as they do no see very far past a few feet as shown below.

As you can see, it was stormy on that particular night but it makes for an energetic image. However, if the moon is across the loch (as below) then there is enough light to capture something, which would indeed be quite eerie if the beast (or anything unfamiliar) was swimming under the light of a full moon. Well, if the SD card doesn't fill up and the batteries don't drain, I may carry on with the night snaps. After all, we think Nessie is a nocturnal creature!

It was on to Saturday and the official Quest surface watch. We met in the Drumnadrochit Hotel restaurant as usual where we met Keely, a PhD student from Australia. She is over here in Scotland for over a month to not so much study Nessie, but those who study Nessie. She is doing a thesis on the sociological aspects of community amongst cryptozoologists. We were only too happy to help and took her with us on our varied jaunts around the loch as well as answering her questions on the world of Nessie hunters.

Various observation points were set up around the loch for people to conduct their watches. Dave and I got in my car and headed south from Drumnadrochit to the Altsigh observation point where we met up with Alastair who had his high powered binoculars set up on a tripod on the beach below the backpackers hostel. That was about a hundred yards from the river mouth where angler John McLean had his famous 1938 sighting. At the river we saw a modern day angler in his boat slowly approaching the estuary, so we shouted out a conversation as he stopped to fish.

Had he ever seen the beast of the loch? A question one naturally asks of someone who spends a lot of time on the water. He hadn't and said he fished not just this loch but other bodies of water across Scotland. He said the amount of catch at the loch had gone down significantly in his decades of visiting here. That we would certainly agree with and I have often wondered what the implication would be for an apex predator in the loch.

The conversation continued and then he told us there were currently three seals in the loch. Two were down at Fort Augustus and one at the mouth of the River Moriston. That I regarded as very useful information but not welcome information as seals in Loch Ness just confuse matters. People may mistake them for the real monster and sceptics just fall back on them as an explanation when all else fails. I had not heard of that many in the loch considering only one or two at most. I thought seals got shot to protect the salmon but apparently they don't do that now and so one protected species is gobbling up another!

We walked up to meet Alistair and another angler cruised by and so another conversation ensued with similar questions and answers. However, he said there was a seal seen at Urquhart Bay. I assumed that this seal was one of the three already mentioned. So, we headed down to Fort Augustus in order to see how easy it was to spot one of these seals compared to the trials of seeing a Nessie. We walked towards the Abbey side of the canal and had a coffee at the Boathouse Restaurant and watched the waters out towards Inchnacardoch Bay. 

Seals are very active and typically are diving below for only minutes, although they can stay under for up to 30 minutes. A glimpse of a head or a back arching into the waters would have sufficed but nothing appeared and if one had put in an appearance, how long would it stay up for some photos to be taken? Either they were not there or spotting seals is no easy task either. At that point we changed direction and took a walk behind the old Abbey to see if anything was active at the mouth of the River Tarff.

It was quite a picturesque scene at the river as we made our way up it. The picture above is the view back up towards the loch. There were no seals here either but this spot brought to my mind a land sighting of the monster that is not so well known. It was back in 1975 and I quote from Rip Hepple's invaluable Nessletter from that period:

Early in October Mr.Rudolph Lipinski reported a very unusual sighting. He has been a lay worker at Fort Augustus Abbey for almost 30 years, during which time there have been a number of reported sightings by the monks. He was in the Abbey gardens which adjoin the River Tarff at about 6.30 p.m. when he heard loud splashing coming from the lower pool close to where the river enters Loch Ness. On running to the river bank he found himself only a few yards from a most extraordinary object; a large 'back' well clear of the water twisted around trying to free itself from the gravel bank it had apparently grounded on.

He watched it for two or three minutes before it freed itself and got into deeper water and then made off into the loch leaving a distinct wash. Mr Lipinski was interviewed by the local press, and several experienced monster-hunters. Tim Dinsdale noted with interest that the witness admitted to being reluctant to approach the bank too closely. When asked why, he said he was afraid it might 'attack'. The thing was very large and very much alive! so this was understandable.

Quite an experience and perhaps worthy of its own blog piece. I wonder how we would have reacted if we had encountered this large intimidating back twisting to be free? As you can see from the picture, it was raining and so we gave up on the seals and headed back to base as the Quest evening debate was approaching with myself on the panel as the believer, Dan Light (the sceptical one), Alan McKenna (trying to be as neutral as possible). 

With a good sized audience asking the panel various questions, we thought it was possibly the best debate of the lot since the Quest series began. Dan was new to the panel and did a good job, adding a bit of grist to the mill to liven things up. If you want a good debate, you need a bit of friendly conflict and informed opinions bouncing off each other. Towards the end of the debate, some of the LNE team got up and walked out, but it was for a good purpose as they headed off towards Inverness.

Earlier in the day, we had a discussion with Alistair at Altsigh about the Surgeon's Photograph as he remains unconvinced about the Wetherell Hoax story. I admitted there were some questions that it would be good to find answers to and left it at that. After the debate, the LNE guys turned up with some stuff that Dick Raynor had kindly given them. The two main items are shown below being an original toy submarine as used by Christian Spurling to manufacture his fake Nessie and another done up in that fashion.

The team hope to do some experiments to see how easy it is to use this item according to the Wetherell Hoax story. Of course, these experiments were done in various forms back in the 1990s when the story first broke, but I am sure the guys will come up with some new angle on this. Just don't reproduce the moment when Wetherell submerged the toy with his foot into the loch bed when someone approached! After this, it was back out to the loch for another night watch.

The FLIR was set to continuous record again but the weather was a bit more foreboding this time. Before the rain descended about half past midnight, some of our intrepid team decided to go into the loch for a dip, not something I would readily do but we watched as they went into the loch at about a depth of 70 feet. People say the loch has a constant temperature close to 6°C, but that refers more to the deeper waters. At the surface it can go higher to 15°C but I imagine it was closer to 6°C that night!

I recorded the three swimmers on the FLIR camera as they showed up as a hot "red" signature on the viewer. Only their heads and arms were red as anything under the surface was wiped out by the water layer. Fortunately they did not turn blue as one thought about the dangers of hypothermia! One speculated as to what the Monster would look like through the same device, but with no visual or sonar hits that night, we headed back to our beds for a well earned sleep.

And so I came to my last day at the loch on Sunday. Once I had checked out of my accommodation and headed to the centre, there was a series of exhibition stands at the Loch Ness Centre and one was run by the LNE team. There was a raffle but I did not win either of the two bottles of whisky, just a can of Irn-Bru! However, there was a bonus to come as some of us headed back to Fort Augustus to speak to Shaun Sloggie, who photographed an interesting sonar hit from one of the boats owned by Cruise Loch Ness back in 2024 (see link).

Once we found him, he kindly invited onto the next cruise outing for free. While on board we listened to his discourse on the Loch Ness Monster to the assembled passengers and then he privately invited questions from us about his 2024 encounter. We put to him various questions and I asked in general about the debate concerning what would constitute a good "monster" sonar hit. By that, I meant a sonar image which could not readily be fobbed off with the usual reflection and refraction explanations.

I think the quality of today's sonar should exceed such ambiguities and Shaun's library of images over the years could be a valuable database in finding out what is explicable in order to finally leave that which is inexplicable. For example, I asked about seals and Shaun showed me a saved image of one such animal hit. We were also shown other images which I think require more than just the usual explanations.

While there I asked him about the subject of underwater channels which I had addressed in a recent article. Before that, Shaun suggested there may be a kind of cave entrance further up the loch which bore further investigation. At that point I thought of Craig Wallace who was up at the loch trying out one of those sonar torpedoes that look terribly useful. I have nothing to report on how he got on but I summarized to Shaun what Herman Cockrell had theorized about such channels and I hope to discuss it further with him.

The pictures above are from the wider sonar view that the cruise ship displays. Cockrell speculated that the entrance to his proposed subterranean river was around the centre of the second photograph. However, Shaun thought that the lower resolution on this display was probably not enough to define such a feature on the loch walls. All in all, it was an interesting trip and LNE hope to contact Shaun for further discussions.

With that over, I headed back to base and said my farewells to everyone. Thinking about the PhD that Keely was researching, where were we between the small communities we see in old village fairs or a simple aggregate of individuals? Perhaps we were like that Austin Healey classic car club that stopped by Loch Ness? They have their car and we have our monster. Maybe classic car club members just talk about spark plugs and carburetors? We don't talk about classic Nessie sightings all the time (well, I might).

Whatever the answer, Nessie hunting, like many other activities is a fulfilling venture at multiple layers. But so far this year, we have not had the pleasure of Nessie's company, such as when the trail camera captured that single hump back in June. So life carries on back home ... as I now turn my attention to the next World Cup game!

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

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

    

Underground Channels in Loch Ness

There is a story perhaps as old as the Loch Ness Monster itself and that is the legend of an underground channel leading out of Loch Ness to a distant coastline exit to the sea, either to the west or the north east and which it is said the creature travels along to enter or exit the loch. This story goes right back to the first important book on the monster by Rupert Gould in 1934 where he states:

Credulous persons in the neighbourhood, and elsewhere, occasionally avow a belief, or at least a suspicion, that a subterranean tunnel exists, connecting Loch Ness with the sea - its distal end being usually located in Loch Hourn.

The subject was further taken up by Constance Whyte twenty three years later in her own magnus opus but neither did she give it much credence. The argument against it was stated by Gould himself from his same work, "The Loch Ness Monster and Others":

Unfortunately, the facts of the case forbid such a supposition. If a tunnel existed, the surface of the Loch would be at sea-level, and not a permanent 50 feet, or so, higher - furthermore, the waters of the Loch would rise and fall with the tides, and would be at least brackish, if not definitely salt.

That argument has been pretty much repeated by others throughout the decades and Gould's experience as a maritime man was taken to lend credence to the argument. However, one man was not convinced that this was the end of the matter and his name was Herman Cockrell. In an article for his local "Dumfries and Galloway Standard" newspaper in April 1958, he stated that:

So far the arguments adduced by experts against the possibility of an underground connection between Loch Ness and the sea, have been summed up by the late Commander R. T. Gould, R.N., in his book of careful recordings, "The Loch Ness Monster," 1934, and amplified in "More Than A Legend," by Constance Whyte, M.B., B.S., 1957.

I consider both these books to be of the highest merit; they are painstaking and impartial and it is only on this point about an underground connection that so far I have found them blindly following the majority. Apparently they were unable to find any convincing argument in favour, in spite of a special search, though this appears incredible.

I'm afraid the Commander must be mostly to blame as he was an expert on the movements of water and a noted navigator and his word therefore carried a lot of weight. 

If Cockrell's name sounds familiar then it is because of his photograph (below) of the Loch Ness Monster taken later in 1958 when he mounted a one man kayak expedition and which I covered in a previous article here. 

Herman took the view that there was an underground river flowing from some point deep below the surface of Loch Ness on its north shore which came out at Loch Hourn which is a bit further north than Loch Morar on the western coastline of Scotland. The shortest straight line distance between these two lochs is just a little longer than the length of Loch Ness at 27 miles and shown on the map below.

Cockrell had written a series of articles for The Scotsman newspaper on his planned expedition to the loch and one had covered this topic. I made contact with Herman's son some years back who kindly sent me material related to his father's research on the monster and the proposed underground river. This included an article produced on a typewriter in which Herman puts forwards some of his arguments for such a waterway which I reproduce here:

Since this date I have steadily collected evidence, and it is this that I wish to tell you all about. Firstly, Loch Ness drains over 700 square miles. The River Ness is the only exit to the sea, apart from a little flooding at high spring tides, Inverness never seems to be in danger from heavy spates and as there seems very little data on the subject, I can only assume there never has.

I have had great difficulty in tracing any data on the inflow and outflow apart from The Garry and The Moriston, which are controlled now by the Hydro scheme. The average flow from these two rivers is about 1000 million gallons per day, to this we must add four other rivers and about 40 burns, for which so far I have no data.

The average flow out at Ness Castle Farm, for the periods I929-62 I have only just received, it is 2611 cusecs, 1350 million gallons per day, which leaves only 350 million gallons per day for all the rest of the drainage. I am still getting data in, but I think these figures make it pretty obvious that as I have always said far more water is going in than is coming out, even allowing for a lot of evaporation. The excess water must be going somewhere and I think it is over the sill of my underground river.

Secondly, there is the mystery of the Garry salmon, are they east or west coast fish? I think West, and I hope to do some work on salmon and sea-trout scales to prove this. But to keep out of trouble as a professional fish farmer, I will state the case by quoting indisputable authorities on Scottish Salmon rivers. Grimble in "The Salmon Rivers Of Scotland" 1902 in a graceful and dignified disagreement with The Badminton Library over The Garry waters, Page 254, he writes:

"The usually accurate Badminton Library falls in to a curious error with respect to this river, for in the volume of 'Salmon & Trout fishing' the reader is told the bulk of the fish come into Loch Oich via Loch Lochy and so in to The Garry, at Page 184 The Badminton volume reads as follows:

'Who can account for the fact, that when you cannot find or certainly see or raise a fish on the Lochy in early spring, you can take scores on The Garry, of beautifully large salmon in prime condition? The shortest journey to The Garry is through the River Lochy and Loch Lochy, and yet fishermen will tell you that the fish in the Garry come from the East and not from the West coast (which is close by) and come all the way up the River Ness and Loch Ness, double the distance the Garry and yet whilst they are caught there in numbers not a fish can be seen or got on The Ness. In July and Autumn when sport is fast and furious on The Lochy and Ness, not a fish is to be seen in the Garry'

A more erroneous statement is difficult to imagine for before the making of The Caledonian Canal, two miles of solid land divided Loch Lochy from Loch Oich, and at no previous time was there ever any connecting link. When however this waterway was constructed a narrow canal was cut between the two lochs and it is only by passing through this artificial stretch of nearly stagnant water, in which there are at least two ordinary canal lochs with gates and sluices, that a fish could get from Loch Lochy to Loch Oich. Of course fish could be transported from one loch to the other and I do not say that it is absolutely impossible for a fish to take such a journey on its own account, but it is in the highest degree improbable that any fish has ever done this, and it is absolutely certain that no great quantity do so. ------- "

I was only born in I902, so was not old enough to point out to these gentlemen my theory of a fine sparkling underground river with deep pools and waterfalls to the west, which I think starts under the hill a quarter of a mile a little to the east of north beyond Cherry Island on the West side of Loch Ness and runs north west and then south west to Loch Hourn. The tidal part of this river, I think, comes up under Loch Hourn, after the second or third bar. Apart from the excess of fresh water there I mention, many salmon are seen milling around this area, an area like the rest of Loch Hourn, in which there is no reason for salmon to be at all in any quantity, because there are no spawning rivers of any consequence in these parts.

Pausing here and using a bathymetric map of Loch Ness, Cockrell's location and suggested depth places his proposed around the area of the white circle.

With regards fish, there is another interesting fact I have been told about but have not read yet. Salmon marked with capsules released in Loch Ness, unlike fish marked in this manner in other parts, are found to have their capsules collapsed, it has been found that capsules only collapse at about 400ft depth. I think it is most unlikely that salmon would go so deep in Loch Ness without a reason, could it not be that the tunnels connecting my underground loch or cleft to Loch Ness are very deep, forcing the fish to take this dive.

Another method I used for finding my river while up at Loch Ness and Loch Hourn last week, was dowsing. It struck me that while all waters round Loch Ness would be running in, my river could be the only water running out, this rather simplified matters.

I do elementary worn on dowsing myself, so know that it works but I cannot define direction of flow, however I was lucky in getting a dowsing friend, who can do this, Colonel Millar of Annan, to come with me. I drove him to the spot that I thought my river started, and to three places on the line and then to Loch Hourn itself. He got indications in all these places, unfortunately Loch Hourn must have been in a jocular mood and it put on one of its really wet days, the corries and mountains smoked with water, giving my dowser a bad cold.

We also had difficulties with [the] largest Highland bull I've ever seen, bent on protecting cows with calves, which were well able to look after themselves anyway. The Colonel had a bright red Mini about the length of one of the bull's horn, so just in case we drove backwards over the shoulder of the mountains and with a sign of relief turned and made for safer country.

Herman's main argument lies in the matter of how much water flows into Loch Ness and how much flows out. His example of two rivers with a total inflow of 1 billion gallons per day while the River Ness outflows 1.35 billion leaves only 350 million gallons for all the other major inflow rivers such as the Oich, Foyers, Enrick and Coiltie plus dozens of other smaller streams. The argument being that the total inflows of all these rivers must exceed the outflow of 1.35 billion gallons, so where does the extra outflow go?

The second argument concerns the migration patterns of salmon which he argues points to the fish coming from the west rather than the east, but there is no obvious path of origin for such a fish.

The third argument is more indirect concerning Loch Ness as it focusses on the theory that Loch Hourn contains too much freshwater and salmon for its location irrespective of whether that water may have come from Loch Ness or some other source.

The final argument concerns the practise of dowsing which is more controversial and so I will put that aside for now. Going back to the previously quoted newspaper article, Cockrell counters the generally accepted explanation of Gould:

This statement has apparently been taken for granted, in spite of the fact that the River Ness and the canals are doing this so-called impossibility all the time. We only have to say underground river instead of surface river and the argument collapses. Clearly the experts have been thinking only in terms of a connection between the bottom of the loch direct to the sea.

He then expands on the dynamics of his proposed underground channel and if you are not familiar with how such aquatic systems may or may not work, this may require reading over several times. It is certainly the most complex treatise of this subject I have come across.

The actual "nuts and bolts" of the river system could be worked in many ways. I give one simple example: An underground parallel cleft to the north-west of the loch, big or small, with a deep underwater connection or connections to Loch Ness. The water level of this underground cleft would be the same as Loch Ness, but its overflow would run underground through a series of pools or clefts, in an easy gradient to the sea, 50 feet below, the last cleft being tidal, like the lower reaches of any river.

I think, together with those who conceived the so-called old tales, that the outlet is in Loch Hourn (where our beast has been seen), because this loch is very much the same formation that I have suggested for the remainder of the water course. There are at least three basins divided by bars, from the head to the sea, though I would favour a last deep underground cleft, which would connect with Loch Hourn in fairly deep water.

Accompanying this article and shown below was a sketch of the proposed underground waterway. The vertical is exaggerated to bring out the channel detail with the surface level of Loch Ness and the proposed underground loch on the same dotted line and below this another dotted line aligning with the exit at Loch Hourn.

As the waters of Loch Ness outflow north towards the Moray Firth via the River Ness, so the waters of this hypothetical loch flow out west towards Loch Hourn. Even underground rivers need gravity to flow and so the height difference of about 17 metres allows for this. Herman expands on the inflow argument made earlier:

A further argument for the underground passage that strikes me as very important is the enormous amount of water that must be going into Loch Ness from such a large catchment area. It is difficult to believe that this can all run safely through the River Ness. and, since 1824, the canal system. The rise in a spate is very large, two feet in an hour or so on occasions, and a total rise of 8ft to 10ft. Surely there must be some safety overflow which makes the River Ness a pleasant place to live by.

Herman's argument then turns as to why Loch Hourn is his prime candidate for the outlet of water at the other end:

Another of the chief reasons for my thinking that the outflow is in Loch Hourn is this: I find that the pilot book for the West of Scotland, Vol. I on page 270, says in effect there is far more fresh water in Loch Hourn than any other sea loch in the west, but attributes it to heavy rainfall caused by the height of the mountains. I quote: "... Loch Hourn has about the heaviest rainfall of all lochs in the Highlands, from the great height and close proximity of its surrounding mountains. It is a gloomy place when the clouds hang low on their sides." On page 272, referring to tidal streams, it says: "The flood stream is retarded after rain."

In other words, the fairly strong tide is held up by the amount of fresh water coming out of Loch Hourn. All these things I intend to check during my investigation. I mentioned air-locks and here give one example of the many ways this could work.

Herman then examines how the general flow of water can sometimes be reversed in a dramatic fashion:

If the underground water was confined by low roofs, a high spring tide, raising the seaward end, and a heavy spate from the loch would set up a tremendous air pressure in one or two of the higher clefts, and water would be forced back into Loch Ness with great power. The air would then probably escape into the possibly higher roof of the first underground cleft next to Loch Ness, releasing the pressure, and water would rush back through the connecting channels.

With possibly fatal consequences:

This is where the diving party might get into trouble, though any ordinary current, flowing out through an underground system, would be sufficient to cause an accident to an amateur diver, and could account for the known disappearance of some people in the loch. These air-locks and their action could be mistaken for the monster himself; in fact, underwater disturbances have been suggested as a solution to things seen in the loch.

I have only spoken of rents and clefts as opposed to other forms such as the terraces reaching down to the coast in the west, which lend themselves so well to surface drainage in easy falls, as I am not prepared so far to argue with geologists. I feel I am on fairly safe ground, however, when dealing with a fault in the earth's crust, like the Great Glen, a split 65 miles in width, which could be 6000ft. deep, surely a disturbance like this could create anything.

OBSERVATIONS

Herman Cockrell makes an interesting argument for the existence of an underground channel between Loch Ness and the sea to the west and I shall now make my own comments which begin with the tradition that there was a subterranean link between Loch Ness and Loch Hourn. Certainly, the idea is a repetition of what Gould wrote concerning his conversations with the locals in late 1933. So far, I have found no texts which corroborate this belief, though that does not disprove the existence of an oral tradition.

When I was researching my book "The Water Horses of Loch Ness" which focused on the folkloric aspects of the mystery, I read through a lot of folklore books on Scotland but found no references to this tradition, though there was one tale from Loch Ness which told how a spoon or similar item dropped into a fathomless pool at the summit of one of the local mountains would eventually be found floating in Loch Ness!

But proving that such a river exists is another matter and by its very nature, such a channel is well hidden and may only be inferred by its effect on that which is observable. The most compelling argument is whether there is indeed a shortfall between water flowing into Loch Ness and that which flows out.

Using the National River Flow Archive going back to 1972, outflow data from the recording station at the River Ness comes out at a daily average flow rate of 90 cubic metres per second. However, the spates and droughts that affect the loch at irregular times means that the flow can rocket to almost 1000 m3/s or drop to as low as 5 m3/s. 

In terms of rivers flowing into the loch, the data is quite sparse and does not seem to have improved since Herman Cockrell's days. The same NRFA dataset gives a mean flow rate for the River Moriston measured at Invermoriston of 20.7 m3/s. The only other rivers with daily flow data are the Tarff and Enrick with slower rates of and 3.2 and 3.5 m3/s. 

But that leaves out the other main rivers such as the Oich, Foyers, Farigaig, Coiltie and dozens of other smaller streams. Herman's compatriot, Colonel Millar, calculated the total to be about 158 m3/s. Another estimate I found for total inflows published in 1969 was much lower at 71 m3/s, though this publication also provided no information on how this number was calculated. However, a 2023 hydrology study of Loch Ness makes the following statement: 

Loch Ness is the largest freshwater lake or reservoir in Great Britain, both by area and volume. It drains a catchment area of about 1800km2. The large surface area (about 56km2) provides a substantial smoothing effect on flows - whilst a severe flood could see peak inflows in excess of 3000m3/s the peak outflow to the River Ness would not exceed 1000m3/s. In normal conditions the loch level varies within a range of about 1m, but in a severe flood event would go significantly higher.

Thus the answer as to whether inflows can exceed outflows is "yes" but it depends on the prevailing conditions. The volume of water entering and leaving the loch is in a constant flux as rain falls to soak the land or a heat wave arrives to dry it out. So, Herman Cockrell was right ... at least some of the time. How much of the time he was correct is not known, but the quote above brings in another factor.

When it is said that "the large surface area ... provides a substantial smoothing effect on flows" it means the water level of the loch rises to accommodate the increased inflows of water by up to a metre or more. For a rise of one metre over a surface area of 56km2 that equates to an inflow of 56 million cubic metres of water or an additional inflow rate of 650m3/s over 24 hours.

That suggests a situation such as where 3000m3/s flowing in over one day flows out at 1000m3/s over three days, a bit like a sink with two taps running but the open sinkhole won't drain as fast and so the sink fills up. Now Herman asked where the extra water went if the River Ness never runs above 1000m3/s while also acknowledging rising loch levels of "two feet in an hour or so on occasions, and a total rise of 8ft to 10ft".

So Herman wasn't buying that sink analogy and asked why the River Ness and its banks weren't simply inundated with this massive influx of water? In his analogy, we would add the sink's overflow hole siphoning off the excess water and that was his underground channel.

Now the existence of underground rivers is not disputed though they tend to be found within limestone cave systems or by drilling boreholes and other geological surveys. Cave systems are more likely to be discovered first and hence any rivers. The geological faults that surround the Great Glen may provide fissures for water to seep down into and form pools and areas of flow, but limestone formations are not as likely to provide the basis for such a channel as there are no known complex cave systems around Loch Ness.

A SUBTERRANEAN MONSTER

But as the old saying goes, you can lead a Nessie to water, but you can't make it drink. What would induce a monster to first find this subterranean hole and then go through it? On the face of it, a twenty seven mile journey through tight channels and perhaps lumbering along occasional stony shallows seems a waste of time and effort. Finding the entrance is likely the easiest part and traveling through darkness is no problem for a creature generally submerged in peaty darkness, but where is the motivation?

Cockrell likens it to the salmon he also thinks traverse this channel - it's all about reproductive instinct. They know where they came from and they come back there to breed. The seemingly wasteful effort of salmon leaping against the torrents before them to get to their breeding ground leads to their death but new life for their offspring. How this applies to a creature as vast as the Loch Ness Monster requires further thought and perhaps some imagination.

But the presence of a twenty seven mile underground river does not require the presence of a twenty seven foot monster. It's either there or it isn't and whether any creatures of any size forage in and out of it is a secondary consideration. But how does one go about proving such a geological feature exists?

SOLUTIONS

The only way to resolve the question is, like Nessie, to go and look for it. Cockrell proposed that its entrance could lie deep below the surface of Loch Ness near Cherry Island. That may have been a choice based on the most efficient route to Loch Hourn but in deference to his research it should be checked. In fact, I have a sonar scan of that loch basin in that area provided by the Olex sonar mapping facility on the Loch Ness Cruises boat which I photographed back in 2014 and is shown below with the suspected area circled.

The vertical axis is exaggerated but the sweep of the transducer does not provide a high enough resolution to indisputably show the kind of feature we are looking for. But nevertheless, could modern sonar technology provide an answer? Certainly this technology has matured since Herman Cockrell's days to the point where anomalous water currents deep down could be located. I say that based on the observation that differences between the underwater thermocline and its surroundings make it visible to sonar. Water turbulence near the mouth of an underground channel ought to show up if this causes a change in water density based on temperature or pressure differences while the presence of disturbed silt at the entrance may also help.

That leads to questions such as would these deep sonar anomalies not already have been seen? Would they be distinguishable from other underwater currents? Would they be visible if a sonar operator was not explicitly looking for them or the equipment was not configured for such a targeted search? Those are questions for equipment owners prepared to focus on such a task. But where else would one look along the twenty six mile stretch of north Loch Ness?

But such an entrance could be somewhere else along the north side of the loch. I can think of one suggestion and it hearkens back to an incident from August 1969.  Dan Taylor had come over to Loch Ness from America with his mini submarine ready to seek out the Monster (pictured below). For his first dive, the vessel was towed out into Urquhart Bay where the depth was about 300 feet. This maiden voyage proved to be a potential disaster as the Viperfish dived into the loch only to hit the bottom and lodge its nose in the silt. Reversing the propellor did not help and Dan was forced to blow the ballast and the submarine burst to the surface on a rapid ascent.

However, lessons were learnt and the Viperfish conducted dozens of other searches without incident apart from one where Taylor reported that near the bottom, some force made the vessel move and yaw in the midst of a cloud of silt. Naturally, people speculated that he had encountered the monster but it was not a collision but rather a movement initiated by water displacement. If we speculate that he moved near the entrance to an underwater channel then the force of the inflow could pull the submarine towards it and initiate a spin.

Apparently, the submarine operated by Vickers at the same time also encountered some force which put them in a spin and it would be good to know at what location and depth these incidents occurred for further investigation. With all this in mind, Urquhart Bay may be an area for an underground channel entrance, though the use of an ROV rather than a submarine is much more likely!

CONCLUSION

I don't know if the discovery of such a feature would constitute an important discovery for Scottish geology. Curiously, it may constitute an important discovery for some Loch Ness Monster researchers as the two have been linked for decades. Of course, the presence of such a feature is not proof of what wildlife may or may not lurk in the loch but I could see it giving rise to a new legend. Namely, the equivalent of the fabled Elephant's Graveyard where a hoard of Nessie bones await the first intrepid explorer - just as Herman Cockrell predicted!

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Gould's 1934 Book now in PDF

Rupert T. Gould wrote his seminal book "The Loch Ness Monster and Others" back in 1934 at the height of the speculation and reporting concerning this new creature that had been regularly reported in Loch Ness over the twelve previous months. Gould had made the trip to the loch in November 1933 to spend two weeks investigating the matter for himself as well as interviewing key witnesses up to that point in time.

After following up later on other accounts, the book was published in June 1934 and remains a classic title to this day. It was republished in paperback form in 1969 but copies to this day can be hard to find at an affordable price. Since Gould died in 1949, this meant that the book went out of copyright in 2019 and was ripe for republication.

As it turned out, this has come to pass when a group called "Horological History" produced a downloadable PDF version of the book in 2024 which can be found here. Their web page links to Amazon where a paperback version is advertised for purchase but is currently stated as unavailable. The horological subject relates to Gould's expertise with maritime clocks.

Enjoy your browsing of this important book on the phenomenon of the Loch Ness Monster!

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Bigfoot and Nessie Hoaxing

There are rumblings in the Bigfoot community as an upcoming documentary claims to present evidence that the most famous piece of evidence for this creature may be a hoax. I am of course referring to the  Patterson–Gimlin of 1967 shot in Northern California. The documentary entitled "Capturing Bigfoot" purports to show a newly discovered "dress rehearsal" film prior to the final filming.

Only a few have seen this documentary but already claim and counter-claim has been made regarding its own authenticity and whether the expose is a hoax itself. Like most I will wait until the documentary is syndicated on Amazon Prime or some similar media outlet before forming an opinion - whenever that may be.  But Nessie fans may remember a similar scenario when the "Surgeon's Photograph" was exposed as a fake in 1994, sixty years after the photograph appeared in the Daily Mail.

The story is familiar enough when big game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell was hired in 1933 by the British Daily Mail, to hunt down this new phenomenon called "The Loch Ness Monster" and bring back evidence of it. He failed and the paper was embarrassed by tracks Wetherell found being identified as that of a hippopotamus. The paper dropped him as people supposed the tracks were laid by a local wag. It turned out decades later that Wetherell was the wag and out of some undefined malice he completed the deception with the Surgeon's Photograph being plotted by his own family and some associates, including the surgeon himself, Kenneth Wilson.

If this upcoming documentary has a convincing story to tell, this may be their "Surgeon's Photograph" moment. But then again, maybe not. Either way, the potential loss of something iconic to ones cryptid genre has ramifications. Most may accept it and move on, a sizeable minority will not and find inconsistencies and unanswered questions, as is the case with the "Surgeon's Photograph", even thirty odd years since its expose. There will be such questions and it all depends on the individual as to whether more questions have been answered than not answered.

Before the Surgeon's Photo expose, Loch Ness researchers saw things in the Surgeon's Photograph that they thought further vindicated its genuineness. Tim Dinsdale was sure nearby ripples indicated another creature was just below the surface, another researcher looked at the size of the waves and calculated the neck to be above three foot high, another though he saw a seagull in the photo thus scaling the neck to seven feet and yet another said computer enhancements had revealed "whiskers" on the creature. Yet none of them had any substance in the end because it is a fake.

Overriding all this amid the current controversy brewing in Bigfoot land is the confession of guilt. It is one thing to cite so-called scientific and logical reasons why a film or photograph must be genuine, but what happens when the very authors say it was a fake? Two people stated their involvement with the creation of the Surgeon's Photograph. The first was Ian Wetherell, son of Marmaduke who was quoted in a 1975 article from the Sunday Telegraph saying it was a fake.

We know this because follow up research by Alastair Boyd found another confessor in the form of his sibling, Christian Spurling. Wetherell's confession had been lost in the noise of the upcoming Rines underwater photographs and it seems Wetherell thought final proof was coming and so now was a good time to own up. That didn't quite work out but this "other" Patterson film may provoke a similar response.

When a lead participant confesses (and the Bigfoot community awaits a response from Bob Gimlin), it gets a bit difficult to continue pointing to those scientific experiments and observations as overriding proof. In fact, the only recourse is to find a reason why the person who once said "true" is now saying "false" despite you being convinced it is still "true". That normally distills down to a reason to do with financial gain which itself places the burden of proof upon the accusers.

Having said all that, the number of people confessing that a photograph or film of the Loch Ness Monster was hoaxed by them is next to zero. Only the Surgeon's Photograph seems to have found people willing to own up. Beyond that, everyone knows Frank Searle was a serial hoaxer, but he never owned up and none of the other so called hoaxers such as Lachlan Stuart, Peter MacNab or Peter O'Connor ever confessed. I have spoken to relatives of people connected with various photographs and no one is indicating any such issue.

So, no first hand or second hand confessions from family and friends - except the product of Marmaduke Wetherell and his gang. I am not sure what that tells me. Sceptics continually tell me these things were all a jolly jape with a nudge and wink to those who can transform a knowing smirk into irrefutable proof. If it was all considered that lightweight, then why not more confessions? Coincidentally, it is about sixty years since the Patterson-Gimlin film, as it was for the Surgeon's Photograph expose. That revelation in 1994 did not particularly phase me because there was another reason I suspected why it was always a hoax, but it was time to move onto other Nessie matters and that may be what Bigfoot researchers will have to do, but again I say this having not seen the documentary.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Earthquakes, Monsters and Hugh Gray

Some years back I acquired a copy of Captain Alastair Mackintosh's autobiography entitled "No Alibi". It was F. W. Holiday's 1968 book, "The Great Orm of Loch Ness", which was published seven years later, that alerted me to this book.  That all revolved around a Loch Ness Monster story in the book, but a couple of other stories caught my eye. Alastair Mackintosh (above) was born in Inverness in 1889 and spent his early years around the region of Loch Ness before embarking on a military career. The first excerpt is that eyewitness account of the creature seen on land.

Loch Ness was so much a part of my boyhood and youth. Its beauty and splendour apart, there has always been - for me - a belief in the existence of its monster. Loch Ness remains one of the great geological mysteries. Since the waters receded from the earth it has put on minor atomic displays without any assistance from scientists.

The monster is usually observed in the summer. It was many years later that I missed seeing this monster - always supposing it to exist - by a matter of minutes. Oddly the occasion was linked with the British Aluminium Company since it was Alec Muir, the estate carpenter at the works, who had allowed his 'T' Ford to block the narrow road just beyond Dores. Bubbles were to be observed on the loch water. As I greeted Alec warmly, I thought he looked distinctly peculiar. The way a person is said to appear after seeing a ghost.

"What's the matter, Alec? What are you stopping for, eh?" 

He regarded me with his round, blue eyes and said portentously:

"I've just seen the Loch Ness monster, Mr Alastair. It crossed the road in front of me not a wee while back. It came as high as the top of the bonnet of the car and was so long it took ten minutes to pass."

I went round to the front of the Ford. Sure enough, there was the track of the monster where it had entered the loch. Alec alighted and we followed the marks on the other side of the road and into a wood of birch trees. It was spring. Our feet sank softly into a carpet of moss and primroses. We had gone hardly a hundred yards when we came upon a clearing in the trees. Showing in the moss was an immense depression, where the monster obviously had lain down to rest. 

This account was the reason for the reference in Holiday's book and I also covered it in my own book on land sightings where I wrote the following opinion:

Thus ends the account leaving perhaps more questions than answers. For a start, practically nothing is said about the appearance of the monster itself. It is said to have reached as high as the bonnet of a model T Ford which I estimate to be about four feet seven inches. It left a trail leading to the loch by which means broken and depressed flora. The immense depression suggests that the beast had some girth - I would assume it was at least as wide as it was tall - nearly five feet - but this "immense" depression suggests more. The bubbles on the loch surface are also interesting. Does this imply the monster is an air breather or that is discharges air for some reason after a land excursion (e.g. decreasing buoyancy)?

The most extraordinary feature is that the creature took ten minutes to cross the road! From this we infer that Alec Muir had one of the clearest views of the monster in the annals of Nessie sightings - yet we have practically no details. If we assume the road was seven feet wide (it was a narrow road) and the creature was just appearing onto the road as Muir saw it until its 30ft bulk was clean across, then it was travelling at an average speed of 0.04 mph. From this ridiculously slow speed we suspect that the creature had stopped in the middle of the road for some period of time.

Why would the Loch Ness Monster simply stop on the road? If it did this today, we would have a carcass on our hands and the mystery would be solved. One can only guess that something had captured the beast's attention just over the loch side of the road. It also seems it nonchalantly continued on and stopped again near the shore leaving this "immense" depression before finally entering the loch. All in all, the monster seemed rather blasé about what was going on around it and saw no threat from Mr. Muir and his model T Ford. A curious case for which one wishes there was more detail!

Do I have anything to add since I wrote the above words in 2018? I had another look for this account in various online resources, but Mackintosh's book remains the sole source of the story and indeed I could not confirm the personal details about Alec Muir. That does not mean Muir did not exist or held down that job at the Aluminium Works, such mundane details do not always end up in newspaper print. You basically have to take it or leave it as a factual story. The next story from the book involves no monster but is nonetheless spectacular.

Around this period, when I was in fact twelve years of age and at home, I remember being awakened one night by the violent shaking of my bed. All the bells—the handpull type, electric ones were still unknown - rang madly. I was and still am faintly uneasy in the dark. What with the shaking bed and clanging bells, I was really frightened until Mother came in to reassure me.

"It's only an earthquake, dear," she said.

Next morning Father ordered our wagonette and drove me over to Urquhart Castle with him. This is situated upon the north bank of Loch Ness, where the loch reaches its greatest depth - over six hundred feet. To my amazement the loch seemed to be boiling. For over a quarter of a mile there were enormous bubbles, each the height of a man. It was like a vast cauldron of sizzling water or, to provide a more modern image, balloons of detergent waste.

"What is it?" I asked my father excitedly. "It looks like a giant's washing-day."

"Must have been an earthquake in Italy last night," was his laconic reply.

He told me that whenever Mount Etna erupted, it affected Loch Ness and Inverness. Though never proved, it was thought that there must be some subterranean connection with Sicily. 

The author's age of twelve places this around 1901 and indeed the newspapers of the time relate this event as occurring about 1:30 in the morning of Wednesday 18th September. A series of foreshocks and aftershocks accompanied this event, although it was not a major earthquake being more the type that shakes plates off cupboards and chimney pots off roofs. Some seismologists believe the epicentre was near Dochgarroch, just north of the top end of Loch Ness. It is a well known fact that Loch Ness lies along a major fault line comprising the Great Glen running South West to North East but there are other subsidiary fault lines which could have been the stress points for this event.

I did not find any newspaper report which corroborated the massive bubbling event at Loch Ness, but I have no reason to doubt it as it has been confirmed and studied elsewhere in the world (see link) and a lot of this phenomenon is attributed to the release of methane gas from deposits deep below. But what exactly Mackintosh witnessed is not so clear. We can be sure it had nothing to do with Mount Etna in Italy which was quiet at that time.

The event happened somewhere out in the loch near Urquhart Castle but was confined to an area of about 400 metres, perhaps an extended area as he describes it as being like a "cauldron of sizzling water". So did the quake cause a fissure to open up down below releasing a pocket of methane? This seems more likely than layers of silt further up having any pockets of gas being shaken out of them. The energetic nature of the bubbling and its limited location dictates against this theory.

The bubbles "each the height of a man" likely were not that size when they escaped from the bottom due to the higher pressures below and expanded as they rose to the surface. Interestingly, looking at a geological map of the loch, we see that this area is the confluence of three different bedrock formations colour coded in the map below as shades of purple, green and brown. These each denote in order old metamorphic, old sedimentary sandstone and newer sandstone structures, all meeting at a point halfway across the loch where the main fault line runs. Quite possibly, these boundaries provided zones for ruptures to open up.

The only other effect reported from the loch was from the Dundee Evening Post of the 21st September which recounted how the quake caused the Caledonian Canal and River Ness to combine into a tidal surge heading northwards towards Inverness. But an effect of a more curious nature were strange lights seen by some locals as recounted in the Northern Chronicle of the 25th September.

Lights around the loch area has been discussed on this blog before. This is a phenomenon poorly understood but believed to be associated with tectonic activity. It is not a fleet of UFOs but perhaps a form of ball lightning. It is speculated that a combination of certain geological features around a fault line such as the Great Glen Fault could produce these atmospheric effects.

But to end our look at the life of Captain Mackintosh, I read with interest his time as an apprentice at the Aluminium Works beside the village of Foyers on the banks of Loch Ness. The picture of him at the top of this article portrays him at the time he was working there. Amongst his recollections of excessive drinking and Gaelic speakers from the Western Isles whom he did not understand, he talks fondly of "Foreman Gray" or to be more precise a man by the name of Hugh Gray. 

When I read this, I initially assumed this was Hugh Gray, the man who took the first photograph of the Loch Ness Monster in November 1933 thus giving us an insight into the man himself. Actually, it turned out to be his father, also named Hugh. Mackintosh entered his apprenticeship in Edwardian times, too early for our Hugh Gray who was still a child then. The story is shown below and I would not recommend doing this today!

Ours was a happy factory where men worked industriously, untroubled by class-wars and restrictive practices. That was until we had our first socialist agitator. I can see him now standing by the gates as we were all going out to lunch, telling us in a very loud Glaswegian voice that we were fools not to strike for more pay and less work.

"Join the happy band of brothers under the leadership of Keir Hardie . . . wealth and prosperity to all of us . . . Except the capitalists. Hang 'em from the nearest lamp-post."

They had said the last bit during the French Revolution .. . Foreman Gray nudged my arm, jerked his head and took me aside.

"Alastair," he said, "we're going to teach this chap a lesson. We're going to tie the b------ to one of the trolleys. I want you to go down where the railway line turns off to the pier. When you hear him and the trolley - and he's bound to be hollering blue murder - nip out, jump on and stand on the brake. Stop him just short of the edge of the pier."

Normally the trolleys were loaded with the aluminium bars, run down this way to the steamers to be taken off for rolling. Each truck weighed two tons. Considerable momentum would be gathered down the incline to the pier. Whilst I set off for the quay willing helpers were assisting Gray to hoist the protesting Glaswegian on to the makeshift tumbril. He was made fast and set moving.

Had I tripped running out of the birch-wood near the pier, or failed to jump on to the trolley as it passed, I shudder to think what might have happened. It might have plunged off the rails straight into Loch Ness, which was at least four hundred feet deep at that spot. As it was, I stopped him ten yards short of a very unpleasant end. Gray, accompanied by Mackenzie, the mechanics' foreman, untied the agitator, giving him a veritable king of kicks as they bade him walk those twenty-three miles back to Inverness and never return. 

Hugh Gray Senior died some years later in 1921, seemingly a well liked and upstanding member of the community there in Foyers, though it sounds like he did not suffer fools gladly! Meanwhile, Alastair Mackintosh, like many in those days, went to seek his fortune abroad in the British Empire, but eventually ended up living in London, having worked as a Royal Equerry as well as employment at Rolls Royce and United Artists. By the time he wrote his autobiography in 1961, a new wave of Nessie interest was rising on the back of Dinsdale's film and one suspects his inclusion of such stories was no coincidence!

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