Loch Ness Monster Captured (2024)

[bunniefuu]

Loch Ness, a mysterious

expanse hidden within the

Scottish Highlands, holds the

largest volume of freshwater

in Great Britain.

Stretching over 23 miles

and plunging nearly 800

feet deep, its dark

waters have cradled a

legend that has captivated

imaginations for centuries.

The Loch Ness Monster.

While I was out fishing,

it was really

the month of March,

middle of March, and

I was coming up past this spot here,

when I noticed some branches in

the loch, and I found them outside line.

So I tried to guide the boat so that

the line would miss the branch, and

when I looked out watching my line, I

saw this huge object

out between the waves,

going against the wind,

and I knew right

away it was something

very much alive.

We saw the head, the four humps, and all the body.

Can you tell me anything about its color?

Yes, it was the very same color as an elephant.

It had a small head, like a needle or

a snake, magnified about 10, 15, 20

times in the distance.

It was difficult to see.

Despite millennia of research

and speculation, the question

remains, hovering like mist over the water.

Does the Loch Ness Monster really exist?

Sightings of Nessie typically depict the entity as

sizable and green, featuring a pointed head and

an extended neck, emerging from the water's surface.

This imagery often evokes

comparisons to a serpent -like being.

One theory states that it could be remnant

from the era of dinosaurs, possibly resembling a

creature like the plesiosaur,

which lived during the

Jurassic and Cretaceous

periods, spanning a staggering 65

to 200 million years ago.

A famous enigma is connected

to the ancient culture of the Picts.

Among the carvings that adorn the stones in

this region, one peculiar figure stands out.

An entity with an elongated beak, a distinctive

head and flipper-like appendages.

Researchers have often compared this creature to a

swimming elephant, as it

represents the earliest evidence

of the notion that Loch Ness

harbors a mysterious aquatic being.

While I was out fishing, it was really

the month of March, the middle of

March, and I was coming up past this spot

here, when I noticed some branches in the

loch, and I found them outside line.

So I tried to guide the boat so the

line would miss the branch, and when

I looked out watching my line, I saw

this huge object out between the waves, going

against the wind, and I knew right

away it was something very much alive.

So I watched it, and I noticed quite

close to a matter of 30 yards from

it, I could even describe the color of the skin.

The skin was a sort of a dark

brown, very, very rough, scaly, and up towards

the shoulder, what I took of the shoulder,

the way it was going against the

wind, was this, what I took to be a

mane, but it could be a flipper,

it could be a fin or anything.

How long was the object you saw?

I would say 14 to 15 feet long.

Pretty big?

Pretty big, yes, pretty wide, I would say

roughly four feet in width, you know, across the back.

You didn't see any sign of a head?

No head, no head or no tail, none whatsoever.

Were you in any doubt that this was a monster?

Oh no, none whatsoever, none

whatsoever, because whatever

it was, it was very, very much alive.

You would see the spray coming off the

shoulder of the monster that was hitting the

wave, going against the wind, quite a big spray.

You've lived on this loch for 65

years, this is the first time you saw it?

I've fished the loch, I would say 45

years, every season, and I've seen things away

at a distance, could be anything, could be

barrels, could be floating logs, but I would

never say it was a monster because I

wasn't sure, but this particular time there was

no doubt whatsoever, none whatsoever.

How do you feel about telling

people you've seen a monster?

Do people believe you?

Well, I don't care if they believe

me or not, because I saw it, I satisfied

myself, I tell them what I've seen, if

they don't, they're entitled to their own opinion,

but I hope someday they will see it,

and they'll be the same opinion as me.

How do you feel about coming fishing on the loch now?

Well, I'll be truthful to you, I used

to fish in the loch quite well every

year, and I never thought of, it never

gave me a thought to cross back and

forth the loch, half a dozen times a

day, but now I don't cross often, and

when I leave one shore to go to

the other, I always look back and see

which is the shortest, the one

I'm going to, the one I left, in case it

does come up beside me.

Was it frightening?

It was frightening, yes, for a freshwater loch,

it's a huge creature to be in the water, oh yes.

It was the size of it?

The size of it, yes, definitely, definitely.

The earliest written record

of a monstrous presence

within these waters dates to the 7th century,

chronicled in the biography of Saint Columba, the

Irish missionary who brought

Christianity to Scotland.

In AD 565, Saint Columba, on a mission

to visit the northern Pictish king,

was drawn to the shores of Loch Ness.

He claimed that he saw a monster chasing

towards a swimmer, and he put his

arm up and with a cross said, go no

further, do not touch this man.

That is written in history by Saint Adamin,

the narrator for Saint Columba.

The monstrous entity receded into

the depths, never to harm another soul.

It's tempting to link this account with a

Loch Ness monster, but some consider that this

narrative may describe a walrus, a notion that

can relate to the recent

walrus sightings in Scotland.

Nevertheless, skeptics argue that

even individuals unfamiliar with

walruses would likely

describe the creature in terms

of more recognizable animals, as Saint Columba did.

Certainly we should always look at any report,

be it a water monster, be it a UFO, be it a ghost.

People have to look through prehistory and draw

their own conclusions as to what

people of that time were saying.

Scotland is a mythical country, and there was

a lot of creatures allegedly, you know, traversing

the lochs and traversing the

moorlands and stuff like that.

A lot of it's mythology, but maybe

some of it's not, maybe some of it could

be real, you know, we're dealing

with real bona fide sightings.

Because let us not forget, there's also a

monster in Loch Mora, which is to the

west of Scotland, and we did research

there with our society back in 1990.

Loch Mora's only 11 miles long, but I

think it's the third deepest loch in Britain,

and it's another freshwater lake.

And again, people have claimed to have seen

something, like a snake-like head, a small

sheep head, and this upturned boat shape moving

up on the surface of the water.

When General Wade's military road was extended at

one of the sides of Loch Ness, they

opened up, the Victorian ladies and gentlemen, to

come up to the Scottish Highlands to have

a look at the beautiful Scottish scenery.

And whilst they were there, there

were some Nessie reports as well.

So the gentry from England came up,

and they just made a name for Loch Ness

at that time.

So there was a number of sightings generated

by people who now had the access to

come to Scotland through the rail networks, and

also General Wade's military road.

On the evening in question, without doubt,

a shape like the prow of a Norwegian fishing

vessel is sticking right out of the water.

It had a small head, like a needle or

a snake, magnified about 10, 15, 20

times in the distance.

It was difficult to see.

It stood erect out of the water

and sailed right into our view.

In the dying sunlight, as you know from

the loch here, it travelled right across our

field of vision in the direction of Dorge.

It sank twice into the water

in that three or four minutes.

We then thought we had lost it.

It came up again and sailed further towards

Dorge, seemed as if it was getting into

shallow water, turned, got into the centre loch,

and then for the first time, it went

at full speed ahead with a wave and

a wash right up the centre loch and away from our view.

Yet the dawn of the modern Nessie legend

arrived in 1933, when a newly constructed road

offered unprecedented views of

Loch Ness from the northern shore.

A local couple's sighting,

chronicled in the Inverness

Courier, set the stage for a media

frenzy that persists to this day.

So basically what they claimed they saw was

again this upturned boat shape, but just they

knew that they were looking at something bizarre.

In the same way the other gentleman, it

was a long neck and a small head as well.

Again consistent from the time, it's never really

changed much even to present day.

This is the main sightings that we're

seeing on the surface of Loch Ness.

Underwater is a different story.

Quickly after, thousands

of other people claimed they

have also seen or captured evidence of the creature.

Again possibly because Loch Ness was now open

to the tourists and more and more people

were coming to this rural area of Scotland,

they had this opportunity to go to the

Trossachs, to the highlands and

viewing all these wonderful attractions.

Because Loch Ness had a paddle

steamer on it at one time, you know, so you

had tourists going up and down.

And that opened up the whole situation for

people to become more aware of these historical

stories and pursue the case of,

is there truly something there?

Maybe we might see it.

You know, we're not spending all this time

and money trying to prove that there's a

large unidentified species in Loch Ness.

We know that.

We've seen it and we know it's here.

What we are trying to do now is identify the species.

Clem Lister of the Bureau for Investigating the

Loch Ness Phenomena needs no

convincing that there is a monster.

He's not alone.

St Columba is said to have seen it in 568 AD.

Latter-day visitors have been seeing it since 1933.

So is it mollusk or reptile,

animal, vegetable or mineral?

Another man who has no doubts whatsoever is

Hugh Aiton of Dorsney in the Ness.

He told me how he once chased Nessie in his boat.

We saw the head and the four humps and all the body.

Can you tell me anything about its color?

Yes, it was the very same color as an elephant.

Now, how did it dive?

Oh, straight down.

Why do you think the monster went down?

- Was it frightened by the noise?

- Yes, the noise of the outboard.

And then what did you do after that?

Well, we came home again after that.

We never seen it after that.

Weren't you rather terrified being so close to it?

No, not at the time, but I wouldn't do it again.

What's the most you've ever

seen of it at any one sighting?

The best view I ever had was the very first in 1934.

I saw the head, the neck and the huge

body, which I'd say was about 30 feet long.

And what's the closest you've ever been to it?

Oh, within about less than 10 yards.

From 10 yards then, what does it really look like?

Well, the skin, the hump, the one big

hump on the skin was exactly like that of an elephant.

Wrinkly, tough looking.

Is it not possible, Mr Campbell, that you're

mistaken in this, either

because you're imagining things

or more probable because you've been

brought up to believe in this monster?

Not at all.

I'm thoroughly, I know perfectly well because I've

seen it and not only myself, but educated,

far better educated people than I am.

Since 1962, local experience has

been backed up by scientific study.

The Bureau for Investigating Loch

Ness Phenomena keeps constant watch.

Donations of 10,000 have kept it going.

It's short of funds now, but not short of results.

Clem Lister says he's seen Nessie five times.

I think the most exciting occasion was the

time I unfortunately saw it alone.

I was, my story's not corroborated at all.

I was coming across the lock up in

that direction over there, half past 12am.

I'd just run some soldiers over to

our site on the other side of the lock

and it was a flat calm and I had

a dinghy with an outboard and the

outboard packed up and I started a row.

I'd been rowing for about three minutes and

suddenly I heard this peculiar sound.

It was going sort of something like that

and I looked over my right shoulder and

there she was about 15 yards away from me.

I only looked at it very briefly because

after that I was only interested in putting

as much distance between me and it as possible.

So what particular species do you think it is?

The evidence as I interpret it all fits

and I know this is a fantastic

statement, but this all fits plethyrsaur.

Now as you know plethyrsaur is one of

the dinosaur families supposed

to be extinct for 70 million years.

Some experts say it's just rotting vegetable matter

brought to the surface in an expl*si*n of gases.

But Ted Holliday who claims

one sighting has other theories.

In my opinion and I've studied it fairly

closely, I think that it's some form of mollusk.

This is what?

The same class of animal to which

the octopus and the squid belong.

But what evidence have you for saying that?

Well the witnesses are, most of them are

repulsed when they get a very close sighting of it.

They're horrified.

Well I'd be horrified if I saw a

reptile out of the middle of the lock.

Well there are a lot of photographs been

taken allegedly of Nessie over

the years and a lot of hoaxes as well.

Some of the photographs I've seen over the

years have this this long tapering neck.

I can't get away from it obviously

and that's been compelling.

But it also asks and begs the

question could it not be an eel?

Because eels have been seen in Loch Ness.

Otters have been seen and seals

have been seen in Loch Ness as well.

There is an eel population in there

but can eels dive up out of the water

like that has been captured in these photographs.

Those photographs look

compelling but whether compelling of

what is what we have to ask ourselves of a monster?

Probably not.

Probably just of an eel.

Dr Robert Rynes was from the Academy of

Applied Sciences in America and he came over

to hopefully prove once and for all if

there was something in Loch Ness real or not real.

He was there. He was a man on the ground.

He brought over the most

sophisticated underwater technology.

Side scan sonar and other types of sonar

as well was deployed into Loch

Ness at Temple Pier at Castle Urquhart.

To find out if there was any evidence

to suggest that there was something in Loch Ness.

They came over in 1975.

They came over a few years later and he did.

He did manage to get some incredible photographs

of what appears to be an essay.

Yes, the first I think was this terrible

Rorschach test here which to our mind shows

a body, a rough body with all kinds

of highlights intense

strobe light is reflecting from

it and an appendage that's sort of diamond

or rhombic shape coming off

of it with a center rib in here.

Around 2,000 photographic frames were exposed and

expeditiously sent to the

United States for development

under tightly controlled conditions.

Three of these frames appeared to capture objects

allegedly taken simultaneously

with sonar contact.

Initially the main photograph

that caused a massive

stir worldwide was what's

known as the flipper photograph.

A diamond-shaped flipper

with a heavy ridge in its center.

It made a sensation throughout the world.

Here at last was proof of a creature in Loch Ness.

But when you look at the original photograph

the untouched photograph is just a blur.

It's just a blur.

Here again is the first flipper picture.

As photographers have to

enhance it and photographically

touch it up in that sense in order to make it print.

That's the first one and then this was

the second one which seems to show a

flipper in a different position.

Here's the original flipper

picture we just discussed

and then about 45 seconds later a second

flipper picture which seems to be either the

same one or another one in a different position.

And the corroboration of taking

two photographs is amazing.

As if that isn't enough at the same

time we got these sonar pictures because we

were exploring the same area with sound waves

which gave further corroboration

that indeed these were

real parts of real moving animals in that lake.

Obviously it's been pixel

separated enhancement to look

like a flipper and that caused a lot

of debate you know and I think it's

to me it's been doctored absolutely.

By all by all manner of means yeah

by all means tidy up a photograph clarify

the photograph bring up to the best you

can but don't doctor it to look like a flipper.

I'm not convinced that that is a flipper at all.

Not a chance.

Here is the most unusual film of recent

years for it proves the

existence of a monster in Ness.

Climatic conditions and exposure day and night to

bleak and stormy weather affected our film which

accounts for the misty results.

But this is unimportant in comparison to the

achievement of filming the monster

itself for the first time in history.

Over the years there have been many attempts

at Nessie hoaxes but some

evidence has never been disproved.

This film was shot in April 1960.

Detailed examination by reconnaissance

experts suggested the object

in it was a living creature.

It was filmed by aero engineer Tim Dinsdale.

Like a black anaconda that's what it looked

like came out of the water like

that and then it went down and was a

boil of white foam and then it broke

surface once again with a boil and went on.

I didn't see it again.

Throughout Nessie's history photographic

evidence played a pivotal role.

One image captured in 1934 features a slender

neck emerging from the water's surface.

Dr Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London surgeon found

himself in the Scottish Highlands on a hunting

expedition with his companion Maurice Chambers.

Wilson intrigued by what

he captured on undeveloped

photographic plates asked for the expertise of a

local chemist in Inverness.

To his surprise the developed plates revealed an

image that bore a striking resemblance to a

sea creature sporting an elongated neck.

The chemist suggested

Wilson contact the London Daily

Mail a decision that would alter

the course of Loch Ness history.

Wilson chose not to disclose his identity and

thus the iconic image became known

solely as the surgeon's photograph.

Well they're two different animals.

The, I don't mean animals in

the sense of what's in the lake.

The Wilson photograph or

the surgeon's picture pictures

by the way there were two created quite

a stir and apparently were quite consistent with

what eyewitnesses had seen through the years.

This photograph however turned out to be an

act of revenge by Marmaduke Wetherill.

The London Daily Mail had

commissioned Wetherill to

seek out the Loch Ness monster but when

his reported discovery of

intriguing footprints proved to

be a hoax the newspaper publicly humiliated him.

In return Wetherill planned to create a monster

using a toy submarine 35 centimeters in length

bought from a department store.

Collaborating with his stepson a sculptor they put

together a long-necked creature from putty and

put it on top of the submarine so

that its head and neck extended approximately 30

centimeters above the water's surface.

Turns out it was not Wilson who snapped

the photographs instead it was Wetherill and his

other son who orchestrated the scene.

This elaborate trick became a key moment in

the history of Loch Ness lore casting a

shadow of doubt and intrigue over

the quest for the mysterious creature.

For six decades this image stood as a

testament even as skeptics

speculated about driftwood elephants,

otters or birds.

In 1994 however the truth

unraveled revealing the hoax.

The surging photograph for

me personally obviously it's

a hoax we know that now it's a

bona fide hoax but that's an iconic photograph

of what I've been saying is the long

slender neck of the sheep-like head it

was in all the books, all the magazines

all the TV shows until it was unmasked as a hoax.

There was another photograph as well near Castle

Urquhart, PN McNabb I think it was,

and again you've got a long hump and a

smaller hump, and that's

been revealed as a hoax as well.

And it causes a lot of problems because

it's a fly in the ointment for people

who's trying to do serious research at Loch

Ness, and people's attention then goes away, well

we knew that, there's nothing in Loch Ness,

and they move away from it, well all

the time they really want, you

know, there is something there.

Same applies to UFOs, you know, you get

a lot of hoaxes and people move away from it.

Years back I used to refer to myself

as a charlatan, a fake, a hoaxer, a

liar even, but this comes

down to the creation paradox.

If I'm telling you that I'm lying, how

on earth could you possibly believe me?

Another popular name in the history of the

Loch Ness search is Doc Shields, a multi

faceted artist whose name

resonates with magic, surrealism,

and a touch of the paranormal.

He claimed that he captured two

pictures of the Loch Ness monster.

Hailing from Salford, the enigmatic artist known as

Doc Shields boasts a diverse range of occupations,

from magician and writer to busker, stage performer,

surrealist and psychic entertainer.

Yet, some have ventured to add another descriptor,

hoaxer.

Doc Shields attracted considerable

attention by thrusting into

the public eye one of the most

extraordinary images of Nessie.

According to his account, the Doc stood at

the base of Urquhart Castle when he purportedly

spied the mysterious creature

gliding through the water,

capturing two photographs of a smooth, glossy beast

with powerful muscles that

remained visible for four to six seconds.

Intriguingly, those present at the castle that day

somehow failed to share in his remarkable sighting.

You're asking me if I took an image

of the surface of the water and then

took it back, painted another image on that,

a painted superimposed

image, and then re-photographed

it, or I forgot the bit where it was

a very large piece of reversal film.

No, I did not do that.

What I did, what I actually did, to

tell you the truth, is take a couple

of photographs of the Loch Ness monster.

It's much easier doing it that way.

If you have the real monster coming up,

you don't need to bother with photographic fakery.

The thing is to point the lens at

the long-necked beastie

that's coming out of the water.

Then you don't have to bother doing it

with the brushstrokes or all that technical stuff.

You just photograph a monster, simple as that.

Yeah, yeah, he's a character, and, I mean,

obviously he's captured

Nessie in full glorious color.

I think it was back in the 70s at Castle Of Cork.

He claims he was on the Loch side,

and he was sending out thoughts for Nessie

to appear, Nessie to appear, Nessie to appear,

and then suddenly this creature rose up from

the depths of Loch Ness again with

a long neck in the head, and he got

this marvelous photograph of it.

Yes, he shows the neck coming out.

Well, you know, he came there to

Loch Ness to get a picture of the monster,

and so obviously he got a picture

of the monster, but he's a showman.

And, yes, that does reflect on us because

if it were represented as a real

picture and it turned out to be a hoax,

you could see the headlines saying, Loch Ness

Pictures A Hoax, and that means everybody's.

So serious scientists have been afraid to come

to Loch Ness because it's such an improbable

story in the first place, and they don't

want to risk tarnishing their

reputations because there

are a lot of people who are hucksters.

The old dye transfer retouches, the dye transfer,

you were able to strip and compose in

camera a certain amount of elements, and when

you started to blend them together to make

them look all as one photograph, the emulsion

of the dye transfer would only allow

you to work on it so much before it

started to break up.

Here you don't have that problem.

You can work on this file over and

over again, taking things in and out of

it, and it'll never matter.

And you could go back a year

from now, pull this up off of a disc,

read it back into the box, and start

over again, adding new elements.

The original film was analyzed by the Royal

Photographic Society, by the fellow who was the

president, or ex-president at the

time, of the Royal Photographic Society.

Dr. Vernon Harrison.

It was 200 ASA ektachrome slide film.

I shot the pictures with a 1.35

telephoto lens from Erkhurst Castle.

I can't remember how I opened the

aperture or shut it down at that time.

But yes, the original roll was analyzed.

Say an animal upwards of around 30 tons

comes up out of the water, there has to

be some kind of movement in the water.

There has to be some kind of effect.

Here this neck is protruding straight out of

the water with a shadow, but

yet the water is undisturbed.

Doesn't make any sense.

People have suggested that I went out and

photographed some water, happened to be Loch Ness,

where I did have to travel from Cornwall

to that part of Scotland, and then would

just take a few photographs of water

of the loch, and then go home and do

some kind of painted and sandwiched job with

the image I produced later, in theory, and

stick them, superimpose them on a few little

ripples on the surface of the loch.

Of course I didn't do that.

I don't have the technical

skills to do that photographically.

I can paint and I can draw, but I

paint and draw different things.

If I'm photographing monsters, it had better be

a monster there that I'm photographing,

otherwise why waste me time?

There's only 3 ways this could have been.

Is it the photo was taken and the

monster really existed, which is not possible, or

if it was actually

photo realistically illustrated in, or

if another image was created and it was

scanned in and it was actually composed and

blended to look like it belonged in this photo.

If you were suggesting to me that I'd

done the finest ever re-touching, re-photographing

job that anyone on the planet has

ever done, I'd say I wish I was that

good, but if I want to take pictures

of monsters, I just take pictures of monsters.

On the back of the neck here, you

can see indications of possible

bleaching from a dye transfer.

You can see areas of water going through

the neck in these areas, mostly in the

darker areas, because the dye would have been

added on top of the darker areas onto

the dye transfer, but in the lighter areas,

it would have been bleached out with chemicals,

so you wouldn't really see any of the

original image going through it, but there is

indication of it in the darker areas clearly.

I wish I knew the answer.

I wish I could safely say to you

that Torrey Dock Shields truly did capture that

photograph, because if he did, that would be

one of the best photographs we have

of Nessie ever, but I'm still 50-50 on

that particular photograph, this

beautiful color photograph, which,

incidentally, is not grey as

the normal signs of Nessie.

It's normally a grey creature, elephant grey skin.

Torrey Dock Shields captured a Nessie with a

green tinge running down its neck, etc.

And I'd like to believe it's true, but

knowing Dog's reputation, etc., I'm reluctant to put

any credence to that particular photograph.

Additionally, advancements in DNA

analysis have been applied to Loch Ness.

In 2019, scientists from New Zealand conducted a

study by extracting environmental

DNA from water samples.

Their findings suggested

the absence of large animals

like plesiosaurs or sturgeons,

which had been proposed

as a potential explanation for Nessie sightings.

Instead, they proposed that giant eels might be

responsible for some of the reported sightings.

Every single sampling site that

we went to pretty much had eels.

And the sheer volume of it was a bit of a surprise.

Now, is it possible that what

people are seeing is a giant eel?

Well, maybe.

This skipper says he's had

his own run -in with a monster.

A blip on his boat's sonar won him

the prestigious Nessie Sighting of the Year prize.

I believe that I've seen something

strange in the loch, for sure.

On my sonar screen that day, eight

years ago, was an object a meter to a

meter and a half wide.

Where could it go?

It could dive into the loch.

We've got 200 metres of water here, so

we've got caves, little caverns,

somewhere for a monster to hide.

Ah, totally, yeah.

Nessie's hiding.

Nessie's hiding, yeah.

Keeping the mystery alive is big business for

Scotland, and the DNA results

didn't put these tourists off the search.

We came to find a monster and, you know... We did.

We did!

We've got a sighting here.

It might be a giant eel.

I don't think so.

No? - Eels don't have legs.

If she's large and I can see her,

what difference does it make?

It's what's in your mind.

These DNA results are using modern techniques to

try and solve an ancient mystery.

But Nessie's not dead in the water just yet.

This loch is 24 miles long, well over

200 metres deep, and there are countless caves.

So for those who want to believe, there

is still room for the legend of this loch to live on.

Tales of a giant creature lurking beneath the

murky waves of Loch Ness have

been around for over 1,500 years.

But Professor Neil Gemmell hopes the marvels of

modern science can finally lay the mystery to rest.

Here we are at Loch Ness, just

with Urquhart Castle behind us.

We're going to be taking some water samples

at a variety of depths using this device here.

Neil has travelled over 18,000 miles from

New Zealand to hunt for Loch Ness monster DNA.

From a half a liter of water, we

can get a very, very good catalogue of

life within the loch, and we thought this

would be a great place to showcase that

technology because, of course, there's this hook of

there may be something unknown

to science lurking in those waters.

You know, most of the sightings are explainable

as either waves, boat wakes, logs that have

submerged and then re-emerged, and I suspect

that's what most people have seen, but, you

know, there's over 1,000 people

who claim they've seen a monster.

Those that have been searching Loch Ness for

decades hope Neil will finally get to

the bottom of this enduring mystery.

I'm sure that some species will be found

which have probably not been described.

Now, they might be bacteria.

In fact, they're more likely

than anything else to be bacteria.

If you did find something, and I do

emphasize the if, then you would actually get

quite a good handle on what sort of

a creature, what class of animal you were

looking at, whether it's fish, flesh or fowl.

The last reported sighting of the Loch Ness

monster was in March 2018 by an American

couple standing on the ramparts of

the majestic ruin of Urquhart Castle.

And tourists continue to come by the boatload

to catch a glimpse of this elusive beast.

These ongoing scientific

searches continue to show the

enduring fascination with

Loch Ness and its cryptic

inhabitant as researchers

continue to explore the depths

of this ancient Scottish lake.

In the present day, Loch Ness exploration leads

an unprecedented search

for Nessie, employing state-of

the-art technology from

thermal drones to hydrophones.

Though understanding has

evolved, the quest to demystify

the legend endures.

Every day, Ali Matheson takes

to the waters of Loch Ness.

We do have a monster in here, don't we?

Just in case you'd somehow not heard this news before.

Visitors from around the world join his tour

to try to catch a glimpse of the

so-called monster amongst the murky waters.

But even Ali has struggled to find it.

In the ExoSander, maybe three times in ten

years, I've seen big objects in

the water which have then vanished.

So that would be my closest

to a sighting of a monster here.

And it's tales of the elusive creature that

keeps the magic alive, even when

you don't get to see it for yourself.

In August of 2023, hundreds of hopeful volunteers

joined a two-day hunt for Scotland's fabled

Loch Ness monster on Saturday and Sunday in

what organizers described

as the biggest search for

Nessie in more than 50 years.

Somewhere in these 7,452 million cubic metres

of water, they believe Nessie hides.

Despite failed mission after mission to prove the

monster's existence, the biggest

search for half a century is underway.

200 volunteers lining the banks

of Loch Ness at 17 strategic points.

Drones with thermal imaging up above.

I'm taking part in the search.

We've come all this way.

I've been hunting Nessie for nine years.

This will be my seventh tour

on the loch, my first official hunt.

I love the paranormal.

I go on ghost tours.

You know, I go track down Bigfoot, Loch Ness.

I love all of it.

So I'm here for the biggest Loch

Ness hunting event in the last 50 years.

Volunteers from around the

world were allocated locations

around the 23-mile-long lake from which

to monitor for any signs of

Nessie, while others took to boats.

A hydrophone was also used to

detect acoustic signals under the water.

Unfortunately, not enough proof

was found to put the mystery to rest.

We heard some fantastic, bizarre sounds on Friday,

which was incredible.

I still don't know what that was.

So on the Saturday and today, we went

back over that area with the hydrophone on deep scan.

We went back to the same area, we

lowered the hydrophone again,

and we did not hear those sounds.

So I'll leave that up to you guys.

We still don't know what that was.

We will hopefully, in the

future, get to the bottom of that.

It may well be gas escaping from

the bottom of the loch, it could be an

animal, or, of course, it could

be the elusive Loch Ness monster.

In my mind, there are only probably about

1% of photographs that I would give any credence to.

The rest are just anomalies, water reflections, you

know, the standing wave, etc.

It could be an otter diving into Loch Ness.

There's so many things that could

be misconstrued as the fanciful Nessie.

And although I believe in Nessie with all

my heart, I'm not naive enough to think

there's other explanations to

account for what's in Loch Ness.

The ever-persistent mystery

surrounding Loch Ness and

its legendary resident

remains as compelling as ever.

The hunt for Nessie is far from over.

From ancient tales to modern efforts equipped with

advanced technology, the quest

for answers continues without pause.

While skeptics may question

these accounts, the fascination

with this elusive creature endures.

As the murky waters of the loch keep

their secrets, the search for the Loch Ness

monster presses on, ensuring

that this legend continues

to captivate new generations.