With the year just about to end, it is time to look back on what happened at Loch Ness in 2024. Beginning in a backwards fashion, there were recent headlines that this was one of the lowest years for sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. One headline said, "Mystery as Loch Ness Monster sightings tumble" with Gary Campbell's sightings website registering just three encounters, but two of these were sonar-related and the other was a traditional in situ surface report.
That one solitary encounter was claimed by a Canadian couple on April 4th according to this newspaper story:
The Loch Ness Monster has reportedly been sighted for the first time in 2024, with a family claiming to have caught "compelling new evidence" of the elusive creature.
The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register has endorsed Parry and Hannah Malm's claim after they snapped a photo showing an unidentified presence near Urquhart Castle, a known hotspot for Nessie enthusiasts. The Malms, along with their children, were visiting the loch for the first time when they encountered the mysterious figure.
Parry recounted the moment, saying: "Shannon spotted the black head of an animal bobbing up and down. I was a total sceptic before but now I think there must be something there."
The couple took this photograph which I admit has a certain familiarity about it. Looking back in time, various pictures have been taken from the waters near the castle of small solitary objects. I think of the Locke family in 2018, Matt Coughlan in 2020, Jeremy Chudley in 2019 and so on. Some of these pictures did not make it into Gary's register, perhaps recognising there is some permanent feature there such as a pipe or something, though that does not automatically invalidate anything seen in that area.
Whatever the image shows, a single snap is not really sufficient to make a judgment on this object. The two sonar images show a recent shift in highlighting such image types. I covered the one taken by Shuan Sloggie on the 27th September which picked up an unusual contact from the Spirit of Loch Ness cruise boat (image at top of article). The article is here, but in summary I said that it wouldn't do to brush off such contacts as interference from other boats without further enquiry.
The problem being that critics do not produce comparison images from Loch Ness vessels of what sonar interference really looks like on a screen, be it a passing boat or reflections from the sides of the loch. I do not recall seeing such interference images when I was on board watching the screens. I think the software on such sonar imaging devices eliminates such patterns, though I cannot be sure of that entirely,
So I regard that image as a genuine mystery. The owners said the data had been sent to the manufacturers for further analysis, but three months on, I am not aware of anything coming out of that but another sonar hit was made by the Deepscan boat owned by the Loch Ness Centre on October 3rd as shown below.
I asked Alan McKenna who heads up research for the Loch Ness Centre some questions about the incident. Those present included Adrian Shine and a team of researchers from Aberdeen University who were watching the scan unfold. Adrian was heard to say it "was an odd contact" but concluded it was either a natural phenomenon or the result of sonar interference.
Alan thought (as I did) that it looked like gas escaping from the loch bed resulting in silt being thrown up. Now, Loch Ness is not known for its prodigious gas production due to the relative lack of decaying organic matter falling to the bottom. Nevertheless, areas such as Urquhart Bay and the waters near Fort Augustus have been noted as having higher gas production.
But we don't know for sure what it was as there is a lack of a "back-catalogue" of previous sonar contacts known to show such things. Someone may say the contact shows this or that, but how do they prove it without a prior database? Admittedly, some things are not easy to reproduce, such as a gas eruption 220 metres below, but there are other scenarios that can be reproduced.
The other related incident for Deepscan was four days later when a seal was spotted and photographed from the boat. The Loch Ness Centre website states that it may be the same seal seen in recent months which is of course of interest when evaluating claimed sightings of the monster and for other reasons.
One such reason is whether any locals or tourists reported or photographed this seal, whether they mistook it for the monster or not. The answer appears to be that they did not on all scores! However, you may ask about the aforementioned photograph taken six months before in April by the Malms? I do not think a seal would be allowed to stay in the loch for such a long period as it would be seen as a danger to protected salmon stocks.
But if an animal of this size regularly surfacing for air is hard to spot from the shore, what about other larger animals? This seal was drifting around with the castle in the background without anyone over there apparently seeing it. Perhaps spotting a six foot long hump from 200 metres plus is not so easy to the casual observer as one may presume. Unfortunately, no sonar recording was made of the seal for the "back catalogue", if indeed it would have been within range.
But there was an interesting video highlighted by the Loch Ness Centre taken by six-year old Harland from the viewpoint promontory at Fort Augustus. The video can be viewed here on YouTube and shows at first a circular commotion looking north up the loch but then the camera pans to a pole like object sticking out of the water just off what appears to be the jetty by the Boathouse Restaurant as shown below.
The boy is heard to ask his Mum what the object is. The video is a bit shaky and so there is some uncertainty about this. A comparison video clip from YouTube shows a pan around the area from the Fort Augustus promontory viewpoint and a still here shows the jetty where I think this object was in the centre of the image.
Based on the two people to the right in this frame, I would estimate the height of this object as at least two feet out of the water. It is from that jetty that Gregory Brusey had his famous pole-like neck sighting in 1971. It is noted that Gary Campbell's website did not list this boy's video for whatever reason. Were they not convinced by some aspect of the footage?
The other items excluded from that website are webcam images. This is mainly down to Eoin's various submissions to the online media which most Nessie watchers regard as spurious. However, I take the view that each should be assessed on its own merits and I covered some of his images made up to July of this year which are discussed here. The images certainly do not compare to the classic images from the past and so again one can only continue to encourage webcam watchers worldwide to keep watching.
At the end of May, the Loch Ness Centre ran their second "Quest" surface watch weekend and despite the first one being both a weather washout and a media frenzy, this was to me now an annual fixture. This time round, I met more new people and hopefully we will all team up again in 2025. I wrote a report on my viewpoint of the 2024 Quest at this link. It was great to meet up with Ashley from the USA and Dave from not so distant Birmingham and it was a pleasure with Alan McKenna to accompany them around the loch on the big hunt for Nessie.
In particular, those night-time forays were fun about the loch and I remain convinced this is a time when the loch's most famous denizen is more prone to surface and head towards the shore. Alan remained resolute in his determination not to indulge in any night-time swimming ...
Finally, in October, Adrian Shine published his first big book entitled "A Natural History of Sea Serpents". Though not directly dealing with the Loch Ness Monster, the mystery's influence can be seen in the book as what Adrian had applied to Loch Ness was now applied to the oceans. In other words, it was the same general principle that seafarers were misidentifying what they saw. However, the specific theories as to what Adrian thought they actually saw would differ, i.e., they were not likely to be misidentifying a swan or a log in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
But as various media outlets publicized his book, naturally he was asked about that other sea serpent in Loch Ness. One quote has him saying:
“Of course, there are long-necked creatures on Loch Ness — we call them swans,” Adrian Shine, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and founder of the Loch Ness Project, told Pen News.
“Boat wakes are probably the number one cause of monster sightings, and waterbirds are the long-necked ones,” the Scotsman declared. “And in calm conditions, you can lose your ability to judge distance, and if you can’t judge distance, you can’t judge size.”
I don't think Adrian is a "Scotsman", so there we have one case of misidentification. In fact, on the subject of boat wakes, a concerted effort is being made by Alan McKenna of the LNE to capture some convincing footage of the purely water phenomenon of a standing wave. As he explained in one article, the constructive interference that manufactures these more pronounced waves can be observed at the confluence of rivers and the loch, but seeing one out on the open loch is a harder matter.
So, are unusual waves and birds enough to explain the majority of eyewitness reports? Adrian certainly thinks so. Alan may be less so convinced. With only one lightweight report being reported on Gary Campbell's website, one may wonder not so much where Nessie has gone, but where have the waves and birds gone? After all, aren't people still "gullible" enough to be taken in by these things? The waves and birds have not changed, so why only one report for 2024? We should be expecting a healthy number of duped observers every year - if the sceptical theory is right.
The graph below shows the number of in situ surface sightings recorded on the Sightings Register since 1986 and it is a pretty uneven pattern with the number ranging from 1 to 16 over a year. So the low of this year past is nothing unusual as we had similar lows in 1995, 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2013. Does the Sceptical Theory of the Loch Ness Monster predict such a pattern? No, it doesn't because no one made that prediction. Of course, a prediction can be retro-fitted onto it based on past data, but then it wouldn't be a prediction.
At the same time, no one expects it to flatline at some level either. But from the sceptical point of view, are reports fluctuating wildly from 1 to 16 consistent with their theory? In fact, is one report from one person out of the hundreds of thousands who were looking at the loch in 2024 a reasonable number at all?
I will look further into that in an upcoming article for 2025. But the investigation goes on and hopes are high that as the Loch Ness Centre and its collaboration with LNE continues, new data will be forthcoming. As for myself, the watching and research also continues. Good luck to all monster hunters in 2025 and a Happy New Year to all readers.
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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
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