The Loch Ness Mystery

My picture of the Loch Ness Monster (?), taken on one of the boats that tour from Fort Augustus. This picture has not been retouched electronically, or otherwise, it looks the same on the original negative. Its not The Loch Ness Monster, but if you think you know what it is send me an e-mail.

The most common answer is a swimming Elephant! We have no wild ones in Scotland. More elaborate answers include "It looks to me like a fat guy, Floating on his back with his right arm in the air!"

Loch Ness is 23 Miles long, 1 Mile wide and averages 700 feet deep, with some parts going down to 754 feet. Visibility is almost zero, due to the peat content of the water.

There either is a "Monster" or there is not. To prove there is no monster is more difficult than proving there is one. Think about it. If there is no monster, how do you prove this? Searches that do not get any results can be dismissed as being unlucky. They searched too small an area, they did not search for long enough, the way they searched frightened the monster off. Just because the search gets no results, does not mean there is no monster. Thus, the continuation of the Loch Ness phenomenon is assured Nice shot of Loch Ness with snow on the hill tops

Nice shot of Loch Ness with snow on the hill tops

Although I would like to be proven wrong, and still hope some good evidence is found, I'm 90% sure the Monster does not exist. At various times there may be large fish, seals, otters or Sturgeon, which have been mistaken for a monster. It would take a book to explain why I don't think there is a monster. The fact is that over recent years all of the major evidence has been explained. The surgeons picture, the flipper picture, the head and neck and gargoyle head pictures, Tim Dinsdale's film, the 1982 sonar contacts, the 1987 operation Deepscan contact. The SONAR evidence has taken so long to find false because the unique shape of the loch (sides and bed) does strange things to SONAR that doesn't happen in many places. Not to mention the rotten vegetation on the bottom releasing methane gas bubbles that look like strong moving SONAR contacts. According to Roy Mackel in his book "The Monsters of Loch Ness" 85% of "good" eyewitness reports take place in early morning, just the time when the weather conditions make visibility the most deceptive on the loch, making common wildlife look larger.

One piece of evidence that is not mentioned very often is way in which the number of sightings seem to go down the more the Loch is watched and visited. With many more people carrying cameras nowadays, we would expect the number of pictures of Nessie to rise in proportion to the number of visitors. In fact the reverse is true. We have less pictures in recent years than were presented in the early years. After the A82 was opened in 1933, giving much easier access, the number of sightings increased, and this is when the whole story really begins. The Chairman of Eagle star insurance, Sir Edward Mountain, was so interested in all the sightings that he hired 20 men to watch round the circumference of the loch in July 1934 for 5 weeks. None of the photographs showed anything conclusive. Sir Edward eventually hinted that the Monster was probably a gray seal. In the Sixties when the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau maintained a constant look out over the summer months, the number of sightings and photographs were less than for any 10 year period before this.

The still photographs taken above water are all quite different, and it would be difficult to see how the best of them could show the same creature. We would have to believe in a variety of creatures of different size and shape who take turns to come to the surface.

The strongest evidence by a long way is the eyewitness reports. In his 1976 book "The Monsters of Loch Ness" Roy Mackal claimed there were 10,000 reported sightings, of which 3000 had been recorded. Mackal studied these and concluded 251 of them were "valid" meaning they could not be accounted for by any other explaining. Lets look at an example of this: The reported sighting on land by Mr. and Mrs. Spicer on 22nd July 1933. this is one of the most famous early sightings, it was unusual, because it was on land. It is mentioned in all of the books and several web sites. Most accounts are edited to suit the opinion of the author. To get a proper view of the story it has been necessary, as with lots of evidence, to read all the published accounts as well as the full reports from newspapers concerned.