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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 explosion 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.