The Loch Ness Monster

[BIAD]

I've been surprised to the lack of 'silly-season' images of Nessie in the papers and on television,
maybe it's due to the Brexit-gossip is more convenient to the London-based media.

Anyway, the scientific survey of those peaty waters has ended and here's the result.
I wonder if Professor Neil Gemmell feels any better for killing a legend?

Loch Ness Monster may be a giant eel, say scientists.

'The creatures behind repeated sightings of the fabled Loch Ness Monster may be giant eels,
according to scientists. Researchers from New Zealand have tried to catalogue all living species
in the loch by extracting DNA from water samples.

Following analysis, the scientists have ruled out the presence of large animals said to be behind
reports of a monster. No evidence of a prehistoric marine reptile called a plesiosaur or a large fish
such as a sturgeon were found.

Catfish and suggestions that a wandering Greenland shark were behind the sightings were also
discounted. The aim of the research was not to find Nessie, but to improve knowledge of what plants
and animals live in Loch Ness.

European eels are among the creatures in the loch, and whose DNA was picked up by the new research.
Juvenile eels, known as elvers, arrive in Scottish rivers and lochs after migrating more than 3,100 miles
(5,000 km) from the Sargasso Sea near the Bahamas, where the animals spawn and lay eggs.

Prof Neil Gemmell, a geneticist from New Zealand's University of Otago. said: "People love a mystery,
we've used science to add another chapter to Loch Ness' mystique. "We can't find any evidence of a creature
that's remotely related to that in our environmental-DNA sequence data.
So, sorry, I don't think the plesiosaur idea holds up based on the data that we have obtained."

He added: "So there's no shark DNA in Loch Ness based on our sampling. There is also no catfish DNA in
Loch Ness based on our sampling. We can't find any evidence of sturgeon either,

"There is a very significant amount of eel DNA. Eels are very plentiful in Loch Ness, with eel DNA found at
pretty much every location sampled - there are a lot of them. So - are they giant eels? "Well, our data doesn't
reveal their size, but the sheer quantity of the material says that we can't discount the possibility that there may
be giant eels in Loch Ness.
Therefore we can't discount the possibility that what people see and believe is the Loch Ness Monster might
be a giant eel."

DNA from humans, dogs, sheep, cattle, deer, badgers, rabbits, voles and birds were also identified by the
researchers. The Loch Ness Monster is one of Scotland's oldest and most enduring myths. It inspires books,
TV shows and films, and sustains a major tourism industry around its home.

The story of the monster can be traced back 1,500 years when Irish missionary St Columba is said to have
encountered a beast in the River Ness in 565AD. Later, in the 1930s, The Inverness Courier reported the first
modern sighting of Nessie...'

So basically speaking, mainstream media cannot be relied on to tell the truth?!!

'...In 1933, the newspaper's Fort Augustus correspondent, Alec Campbell, reported a sighting by Aldie Mackay
of what she believed to be Nessie. Mr Campbell's report described a whale-like creature and the loch's water
"cascading and churning".

The editor at the time, Evan Barron, suggested the beast be described as a "monster", kick starting the modern
myth of the Loch Ness Monster. In 1934, highly respected British surgeon, Colonel Robert Wilson, claimed he took
a photograph of the monster while driving along the northern shore of Loch Ness.


Nessie made an appearance in the 1969 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
Young eels arrive in the River Ness and Loch Ness every year as part of their life cycle.

Known as the "Surgeon's Photograph", 60 years later it was confirmed as a hoax hatched in revenge after a
newspaper ridiculed journalist Marmaduke Wetherell for finding "Nessie footprints" on the shore.
The "monster" caught on camera was apparently a toy submarine bought from Woolworths, with a head fashioned
from wood putty. The hoaxers then gave the photo to Wilson, a friend who enjoyed a good practical joke.



Explanations for the monster offered in the past include it being swimming circus elephants.
In his research of Nessie, Glasgow-based palaeontologist Neil Clark found fairs and circuses were a common
occurrence in the Inverness area, particularly from the early 1930s.

He said elephants may have been allowed to swim in the loch while the travelling carnivals stopped to give the
animals a rest. Another theory is that large fallen branches floating in the loch are the cause of monster sightings....'

BBC: