With a history of sightings dating back to an encounter with St Columba around AD 580, Scotland?lusive Nessie, the long-necked hump-backed monster of Loch Ness, is probably the world?ost famous mystery beast. Inevitably, it has been the subject of numerous hoaxes, to the extent that sceptics have cast doubt upon many eyewitness accounts and virtually all-photographic evidence obtained of the monster above the surface of the water.
To my mind, however, there are two categories of evidence that offer convincing proof of the reality of a large, unidentified type of creature in Loch Ness. The first category comprises the handful of reports claiming sighting of the monster on land. Not only are these significant in that they provide a view of the creature in its entirety, but also they closely corroborate each other. Perhaps the most important terrestrial encounter with Nessie occurred at 1:30 a.m. on the moonlit morning of 5 January 1934, and featured a veterinary student, in other words, an eyewitness with a knowledge of wildlife, who would have been unlikely to mistake a commonplace creature for something else.
Arthur Grant was travelling from Inverness to Glen Urquhart on his motorbike when he noticed something dark moving in the bushes along the right-hand side of the road. Just as he road up to it, a long neck bearing a small snake-like head with large oval eyes turned towards him, and then a huge body bounded across the road up ahead and plunged down the steep bank to the loch, entering it with a great splash. In those few amazing moments, Grant distinctly observed two front flippers, with what seemed to be two others further back and a lengthy tail, probably two meters (5-6 feet), with a rounded tip. The animal appeared to be 5-6 meters (15-20 feet) long and over 1 meter (3 feet) high. Large flipper like tracks were later discovered in shingle near to where Grant had seen the mysterious animal go down the bank to the loch.
Grant?escription is a good verbal portrait of a plesiosaur- a prehistoric aquatic reptile with a long neck, small head, slender tail, robust body and four flippers. Although plesiosaurs officially died out over 60 million years ago with the dinosaurs, an undiscovered modern-day version is a popular identity not only for Nessie but also for a number of other long-necked freshwater monsters and sea serpents reported from around the world.
The second category of noteworthy Nessie evidence consists of underwater sonar/photographic recordings. These have been obtained by several scientific teams over the years, including researchers from Dr Robert Rines?cademy of Applied Science, based at Concord, New Hampshire. Indeed, this team obtained what I consider to be the most compelling evidence currently on record for the existence in Loch Ness of a very large species of living creature still undiscovered by science.
In the early hours of 8 August 1972, Dr Rines?eam was monitoring an area of the loch with sonar equipment and an underwater camera in Urquhart Bay when the sonar detected a shoal of fish moving very rapidly, as if fleeing from something else. Moments later, the sonar recorded a very large solid object, 6-9 meters (20-30 feet) long, pursuing the shoal in a deliberate, purposeful manner. As the object passed by, it triggered the underwater camera, which took a series of photos. When these were developed, two showed a remarkable flipper-like structure, 1.25-2 meters (4-6 feet) long and rhomboidal in shape, attached to a much larger body. Zoological analyses have confirmed that the flipper?hape is hydrodynamically efficient, and closely resembles the flippers of plesiosaurs. What is so impressive about this evidence is that it was obtained by two totally objective sources- machines- which simply record what they detect with no interest in whether or not there is a Loch Ness monster and also wholly corroborate each other. The sonar detected a moving body, and the camera photographed it.
Long-necked water monsters have also been reported from several other Scottish lochs, including Morar, Arkaig, Quoich, Oich, Lochy and Lomond.
Mysterious aquatic beasts have been sighted in some of Ireland?akes too, notably Lough Nahooin and Lough Fadda in County Galway, but these tend to be very different in form. Termed horse-eels, they are usually said to have a horse-like head but a very elongate, eel-shape body. Intriguingly, this description corresponds well with reconstructions of zeuglodonts- whose flexible backbone could have readily formed the vertically undulating shape commonly reported for this category of water monster.
Horse-eels have sometimes been sighted in Loughs to small to sustain them for long periods of time, but if they migrate from one Lough to another, not residing permanently anywhere, this would not be a problem. It is believed likely that zeuglodonts were able to move about on land albeit only for relatively short distances, unlike other types of whale.
Much less familiar is the Welsh version of Nessie, known as Teggie. Believed to inhabit Llyn Tegid, or Bala Lake, Teggie has been reported since at least the 1920s and has been variously likened to a crocodile or a small plesiosaur. In September 1995, however, a three-day search of the lake by a Japanese film crew using a mini-submarine failed to spot its elusive enigma.
Many sightings of marine counterparts to the horse-eels and long-necked lake monsters discussed here have been reported from the seas surrounding the British Isles. Although not likely to be of the same species, these sea serpents are presumably closely related to them.