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Unit 52

The Loch Ness Monster

Loch Ness, the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles, is twenty four miles long and, at one point, one and a half miles wide. It has an average depth of four hundred and fifty feet and at times drops close to a thousand. It is cold and murky, with dangerous currents. In short, it is the perfect place to hide a monster from even the sharpest eyes of science.

The Loch Ness Monster, also called Nessie, is supposedly living in this area. The earliest recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster was in the biography of St. Columba by Adamnan in the year 565 AD. The monster apparently attacked and killed a man who was swimming in the River Ness.

The monster didn't make headlines again until August 27, 1930 when 3 fishermen reported seeing a creature 20 feet long approaching their boat, throwing water in the air. As it passes them, its wake caused their boat to rock violently. In 1933, after a new road was built along the Loch, the number of reports soared.

Early in 1934 there was a land sighting of the beast. Arthur Grant, a young vet student, was out on his motorcycle one evening when he almost ran into the monster as it crossed the road. Grant's description of the thing, small head, long thin neck and tail with a big body, seemed to match the appearance of the Plesiosauru, an aquatic type of dinosaur that has been extinct for 65 million years.

In 1962 The Loch Ness Investigation Bureau was formed to act as a research organization for information about the creature. In the beginning it only conducted research for a few weeks in a year, but eventually the Bureau established mobile camera stations. Searches were conducted using hot-air-balloons and infrared night time cameras, sonar scanners and submarines.

Dr. Roy Mackal, a Loch Ness researcher, has suggested a large mammal like a primitive whale. Others suggest a long necked seal or giant otter. A few suggest an over-grown eel. Probably the most famous picture of the Loch Ness monster was the "surgeon's photo" supposedly taken by Colonel Robert Wilson. This photo was acknowledged as a fake, though, by Christain Spurling, who helped build the model monster that was photographed. He admitted the trick shortly before he died at age 90, in 1993.

Efforts have continued to find the monster. A great deal of information was discovered about the Loch, but they have yet to produce any concrete evidence of a monster.

Skeptics argue that the water in the Loch is too cold for a reptile like the Plesiosaur. They also argue an air breathing animal, like a whale or seal, would spend much more time on the surface than the creature seems to and would be spotted more often. Some scientists have wondered if the sightings might be caused by a underwater wave which is known to sometimes occur in deep, long, cold lakes, like Loch Ness. Such a wave might push debris to the surface that might look like a strange animal.