Friday 31 May 2019

Loch Ness eDNA results to be published in September


The iNews website has published an article today claiming that Professor Neil Gemmell's eDNA study of the loch has almost completed and the results will be revealed in July but possibly pushed out to September. One or two surprises are in the offing though one should not begin to superimpose one's own guesses and just wait and see what will come of this. However, the failure to sell this as a documentary may or may not eliminate "sensational" results. After all, what kind of DNA would elicit such a scenario?

It is a bit surprising no TV company picked up on this though, considering the lack of novel research they so often come up with - banal retellings of the Surgeon's Photograph, CGI shots of plesiosaurs and the same old faces going on about waves and birds. Perhaps the price of novelty was too high. I would also note that the comparison eDNA studies from other lochs may well be worth a watch. Was Loch Ness or even Loch Morar different to others?

UPDATE: It's always worth checking out the original source, especially when the Press get a bit over-excited. Neil Gemmell's own twitter account states it will be September rather than July for any announcements and this will take the form of a conference at Loch Ness. Likewise, he plays down (a bit) any idea he has discovered Nessie. Likewise, the delay in announcing turns out to be mainly due to classifying nearly 3000 micro organisms and bacteria (and this works still has not finished).

To quote two of his tweets:

Gosh this is quite the headline, but not quite what I said. Just to clarify, at this point, we can't rule out one of the common theories used to explain the monster myth. A full announcement of our findings will be made at Loch Ness, likely in early September. 

Some sensational headlines about our eDNA hunt at Loch Ness have come across my social media today. For the record, we are still investigating the data. Most popular hypotheses seem unsupported; one cannot yet be excluded. An alternative and more accurate headline.



Loch Ness monster study set to reveal ‘surprising’ findings

Researchers took samples of water from the loch with the hope of capturing Nessie's DNA

A scientific trawl of the waters of Loch Ness by researchers hoping to uncover the truth behind the myth of the famous monster has made a “surprising” finding. Professor Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago in New Zealand, who led the study, told i that his team had managed to test most of the main theories about the Loch Ness monster.

While he declined to reveal exactly what they had found until the results had been fully analysed, he hinted that the Nessie myth was likely to endure. Professor Gemmell is preparing to announce the full results of his research almost a year after taking a series of water samples from the loch with the hope of catching the monster’s DNA. His team was using a new technique that can pick up traces left behind by passing animals in miniscule amounts of fur, skin, scales, faeces or urine.

Having been extracted in the lab, the DNA has been sequenced and compared against known species, creating near-definitive list of everything in the loch for the first time. The results of the study were supposed to be published in January, but cataloguing the extensive range of micro-organisms and bacteria has taken longer than expected. The team has found around 15 different species of fish and up to 3,000 species of bacteria, some of which will have been deposited in Loch Ness by animals using connecting rivers.

Professor Gemmell said he hoped to announce the full findings of the study at a press conference in Scotland in July, but the date may yet be pushed back until September. “Is there anything deeply mysterious? Hmm. It depends what you believe,” he said. “Is there anything startling? There are a few things that are a bit surprising. “What we’ll have achieved is what we set out to do, which is document the biodiversity of Loch Ness in June 2018 is some level of detail.

“We’ve tested each one of the main monster hypotheses, and three of them we can probably say aren’t right and one of them might be. “We’ll never disprove that there’s a monster, as we said at the beginning. If we find no evidence of the monster, that doesn’t prove anything. All we can do is describe what we’ve found.” Professor Gemmell also admitted that part of the reason for the delay in the publication of the results was due to a series of failed attempts to film a television documentary. He and his team had hoped to use any money generated from the project to fund further research, but negotiations with a series of production companies ended without a deal.

“There’s been an ongoing tension between wanting to tell people what we’ve found and wanting to maximise the vehicle through which we tell them,” he added. “To be fair, I think a TV documentary would’ve been a wonderful way to document the search and what we found, and put it into the context of other studies of Loch Ness. “It’s been something I’ve worked on pretty hard. I haven’t pushed things as hard as I could have with my collaborators because I was working on the production deals.”


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com



 


27 comments:

  1. No doubt they will say catfish or some other rubbish but hopefully they will hurry up and tell everyone even if its a YouTube live broadcast thanks for update much luv

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  2. They are not giving much away yet by the looks of it but it does not look good about finding anything mysterious.

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  3. Yeah it's bin very quiet on this one... Its bit hard to grasp personally lol wud 300 samples and nothing found proove nowt there? Cud a handful of unusual large creatures evade this operation? Dissapointed the big skeptics are not giving their opinions on this... Or maybe its above their heads! All in all its a good operation and summit new so worth doing.. Yeah I agree after reading this it's not looking hopeful.. Time will tell! ..cheers

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  4. I note 15 species of fish have been identified - I list these: eel, pike, stickleback, lamprey, minnow, char and the visitors - salmon, brown trout, sea trout.

    That is nine, so what could the other six be?


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    1. I see perch and roach were introduced. So that is 11 out of 15.

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    2. Ferox can be genetically different from Brown Trout so perhaps some evidence of this was unearthed.

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  5. I cant think of any others either Roland.I remember reading they found 15 different fish in lake windermere too when they did the test there.

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  6. If eDNA tests show nothing unusual in the Lock but sightings are still reported, will this revive the paranormal Nessie theory?

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    1. I think it depends on the sensitivity of their methods. They say they have shown some hypotheses to be probably wrong. Does that mean they are sure they would have detected an animal that visits occasionally, or that they would have detected a permanent breeding population? I wonder if a eunuch eel would stand out from the normal eels in their data - maybe that's the hypothesis they haven't shown to be wrong.

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  7. I'm a layman but here are a few questions:

    1) would they know plesiosaur DNA if they found it? I think it's impossible it is a plesiosaur but it may have been and died off in the 60s or something. DNA can be found in some fossils in certain circumstances but I feel like if it was an antideluvian creature they couldn't test for that as they won't have it on record.
    2) what if it's an animal that hasn't been discovered or who's DNA is unrecognizable? How do they test/deal with that?
    3) is it conceivable that every creature who's ever existed has DNA in the loch via rain water transference? How long does DNA even last?

    The whole thing seems mental. But I'm very intrigued.

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    1. Good questions. For #3 the answer seems to be hours to days
      https://theconversation.com/fishing-for-dna-free-floating-edna-identifies-presence-and-abundance-of-ocean-life-75957
      which suggests that this technique will not pick up any past transient visitors.


      For #1 I imagine they will have looked for similarities with reptiles that haven't changed much since the days of the dinosaurs. Crocodiles, for instance. Of course that wouldn't be conclusive.

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    2. Its confusing Kyle, but lets say a plesiosaur left DNA and it was found, would that come up as unknown DNA? If unknown DNA is found then that surely would be exciting? But if no unknown DNA is not present then can we conclude there is none in there. Im not sure.

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    3. Cheers guys. I wish them luck I really do and am very curious.

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  8. So what are the 4 main hypotheses?

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  9. The results will be inconclusive. Loch Ness has too many variables. No surviving prehistoric creatures, no monsters. Just a slight window of inconclusive data that will be open for speculation.
    Interesting surprises perhaps regarding uncommon biology on a small scale, maybe more fauna than expected or maybe more diverse. Possibly traces of seal DNA too.

    The results will cast doubts on large unknown creatures inhabiting the loch and then more eyewitnesses will report seeing Nessie, maybe a photograph, maybe a video or sonar trace.

    I hope to be proven wrong.

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  10. If they have ruled 3 out but 1 is likely then surely it must be the idea that something comes in every now and again and is not a permanent resident of the loch. They said 1 is possible but depends what you believe in so surely this must be what they are getting at, or am i wrong?

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  11. I added an update based on Prof. Gemmell's own tweets.

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  12. Its not looking very optimistic then Roland?

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    1. For what, Gezza?

      New data eliminates and promotes theories, not monsters.

      The no-nessie, paranormal and itinerant monster theories will be happy with such an outcome. A single trapped indivdual could evade detection, it depends how sensitive the samplings are.

      Anyway, I await the results later in the year.

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  13. It does not look like they have found any unusual DNA,i could be wrong but thats the drift im getting.

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  14. I know there's Bream in Lomond, perhaps in Ness also?

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  15. Talk about half a story lol... Keeping us in suspense!! I agree with GB that one lone creature even if its sizeable cud evade the dna test... But surely nessie cudnt be one lone creature living all these years.. Whatever it is! Surely then no new dna found wud end the theory of a pod of large creatures livin and breeding in the Ness??

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  16. I'm not sure how long a creature's dna wud last in the water though.. I suspect its different on different creatures!! It's a gud test though and I'm lookin forward to the results..lets just hope they explain the answers and how they did it.. Ie.. Did they do many samples in the bottom mud or side walls were I think a lot of creatures spend most of their time.. Hope they share it all with us unlike the dreadful BBC one where u can't get any info on it at all and they didn't even tell us it took a few days not done in one go like they made out!!! Let's hope Mr gemmill and co are more professional than the BBC cowboys lol.. Cheers

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  17. Funnily enough Roy i have just found out that the EDNA of a salamander can vanish rather quickly in the water.In fact some experiments on streams and ponds with salamanders in them have drawn up a blank, whilst other experiments have found the EDNA but then within a few more feet they find nothing.Im not sure on other types of aquatic animals though, but i find that interesting.

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  18. Dr. Gemmell says that out of four theories of Bessie's identity only one might be valid.
    1. Some form of a seal
    2. Large fish of some kind
    3. Giant amphibian
    4. Plesiosaur or something similar
    I really do think that it will be either number 3 or 4 and that's why there will be a press conference rather than just putting the results online. Thoughts?



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  19. Maybe Loch Ness monster is a Giant EEL

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  20. Been waiting for this for a while, I'm very excited!

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