The Loch Ness “monster” — affectionately known as “Nessie” — is an alleged plesiosaur-like creature living in Loch Ness, a long, deep lake near Inverness, Scotland. Many sightings of the “monster” have been recorded, going back at least as far as St. Columba, the Irish monk wThe Fake in the Lakeho converted most of Scotland to Christianity in the 6th century. Columba apparently converted Nessie, too; for it is said that until he went out on the waters and soothed the beast, she had been a murderess.

The modern legend of Nessie begins in 1934 with Dr. Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London physician, who allegedly photographed a plesiosaur-like beast with a long neck emerging out of the murky waters. That photo created quite a fuss. Before the photo, Loch Ness was the stuff of legend and myth. The locals knew the ancient history of the sea serpent. But people came to the lake more to relax than to go on expeditions looking for mythical beasts. After the phwilson hoax photooto, the scientific experts were called in. First, they examined the photo itself. Could be a plesiosaur. Yes, but it could be a tree trunk, too. Or an otter. Later, there would be explorations by a submarine with high tech sensing devices. Today, we have a full-blown tourist industry said to have generated about $37 million in 1993, complete with submarine rides (about one hundred bucks an hour in 1994) and a multi-media tourist center. For those who can’t go to Scotland, there is a webcam site for your viewing pleasure.

photos and tabloids

There have been other photographs of Nessie, as well. The tabloids will pay good money for a photo of Nessie, and some enterprising souls have camped out for years in hopes of capturing the elusive beast on film. One good photo and they can retire for life! The Smithsonian even has a WWW page on Nessie, where it advocates continued scientific investigation into the matter. According to the Smithsonian,

Even though most scientists believe the likelihood of a monster is small, they keep an open mind as scientists should and wait for concrete proof in the form of skeletal evidence or the actual capture of such a creature.

We suggest…that those individuals interested in such a phenomenon…join the International Society of Cryptozoology, a scientific organization that critically looks at issues involving unknown creatures of unexpected form and size, and subjects them to technical review.

Keep on looking! Of course, this is the same Smithsonian which, in the January 1996 issue of its monthly magazine, ran a highly uncritical article on dowsing. We have come to expect the disingenuous defense of open-mindedness from the tabloids as they exploit our love of mystery and wonder; but we thought the Smithsonian would take a higher road and present empirical studies instead of uncritical wishful thinking. It may be the case that the Smithsonian has found that in order to compete and survive it must cater to the tabloid mentality of the general public and elected officials. What’s next? Bigfoot T-shirts as part of their annual membership drive?

sightings and testimonials

In addition to the photographs of Nessie, there have been numerous sightings reported in the testimonials of unquestionably reliable witnesses. How could anyone look at all this “evidence” and dismiss Nessie as a figment of people’s imagination, as just another case of pareidolia (another Virgin Mary in the tortilla)? Easy. Let’s start with the photographs.

In a story not nearly as fascinating or obscure as the Piltdown hoax, but at least on par with the faked fairy photos that gulled Arthur Conan Doyle, the most famous photo of Nessie as a relative of the long-extinct plesiosaurs was reported to have been faked. David Martin, a zoologist, and Alastair Boyd were members of a scientific project to find Nessie. They are credited by the London Sunday Telegraph [March, 12, 1994] as having dug up the story of the faked photo, which was staged using a toy submarine. Christian Spurling, who died in the fall of 1993, was said to have made a deathbed confession of his role in the prank. The fake photo was not taken by Wilson–his name was used to give the photo stature and integrity–but by Spurling’s stepbrother, Ian Wetherell. Ian’s father, Marmaduke (”Duke”) Wetherell, had been hired by the London Daily Mail to find the monster. Wetherell was a filmmaker who described himself as a “big game hunter.” What bigger game could there be than Nessie? Except that the big game was actually a small model of a sea serpent made of plastic wood attached to a 14-inch toy submarine! Actually, the game did get big as the little prank created such a huge fuss that the pranksters decided that the best thing for them to do would be to keep quiet.

Alastair Boyd, mentioned above as one of the researchers who uncovered the photo hoax, claims he made a genuine sighting of Nessie in 1979. His Nessie didn’t look like a dinosaur, though. More like a whale, he said. It was at least 20 feet long and he says he saw it roll around in the water. Now, it’s not likely that there are any 20-foot otters, but there are 20-foot logs. There are also errors in guessing at the size of things seen in the distance for a few seconds under less than ideal conditions. No matter, Boyd is convinced there are 20-foot long creatures in the loch. One would think they’d be hard to miss.

Whatever Nessie turns out to be, it is very unlikely that she is a plesiosaur. That marine reptile lived about 160 million years ago and and has been extinct for 65 million years. Furthermore, Leslie Noé of the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge, UK, who has studied fossils of the long-necked creature, says that “the osteology of the neck makes it absolutely certain that the plesiosaur could not lift its head up swan-like out of the water,” which is how Nessie has been described. Noé thinks that the plesiosaur used its long neck to feed on soft-bodied animals living on the sea floor.*

Is it a fish, a wake, a wave?

Since the Loch Ness monster story has been around for more than 1500 years, if there is a monster it is not likely that it is the same monster seen by St. Columba. Or, are we to believe that not only is Nessie very big, she is very old as well, a veritable Methuselah among beasts? In short, there must be more than one monster. I’ll leave it to the zoologists to calculate how many monsters are necessary to maintain the species over the years. One report I read claimed that a minimum population of ten creatures would be needed to sustain the population. The same report claims that Loch Ness is incapable of sustaining a predator weighing more than about 300 kg (about 660 pounds) [The Naturalist, winter 1993/94, reported in The Daily Telegraph]. Adrian Shine, head of the Loch Ness Project, once said the monster could be a Baltic sturgeon, a primitive fish with a snout and spines which can grow up to nine feet long and weigh in at around 450 pounds. This may sound like just another fish story to some, but there is scientific evidence that Nessie is, at best, a big fish in a big lake, or a big wake in a big lake. Shine, who has been studying the Loch Ness story for some twenty-five years, now thinks that what people see when they think they see the “monster” is actually an underwater wave. A similar view has been presented by Luigi Piccardi, an Italian geologist “who is convinced that seismic rumblings far below the famous Scottish lake cause the roiling waves, deep groans and explosive blasts that have for centuries led people to believe that a giant beast lurks below the loch’s murky surface (”Mystery unlocked? A scientist says he’s solved a monster controversy — the ‘beast’ in Loch Ness is merely an illusion created by earthquakes,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 27, 2001 by Chuck Squatriglia).”*