Loch Ness is a large, deep freshwater lake 23 miles south of Inverness, Scotland. It is the largest lake in volume in the British Isles. With its deepest point at 755ft, it is the second deepest loch (lake) and the second largest in surface area in Scotland. It contains more freshwater than all the lakes in England and Wales. Its wildlife includes eels, lampreys, minnows, pike, salmon, sticklebacks, trout, char, and many other freshwater species.
But none of this is Loch Ness’s true claim to fame.
Mystery
Stories surrounding Loch Ness have existed for thousands of years. There is one story of a beast emerging from the waters to snatch a servant of St. Columba, who fought the creature back into the depths. This was in 565 CE. However, the true mystery of Loch Ness emerged hundreds of years later in the 1930s. In 1933, the construction of the road A82 began, disrupting the quiet loch and, apparently, the monster in its depths. Independent sightings began to emerge of a massive creature appearing on the surface. A circus offered 20,000 pounds for the capture of Nessie in the same year.
Curious, the Daily Mail commissioned Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter, to track down this elusive monster. Wetherell failed to find the monster, but found large footprints that likely belonged to an animal approximately 20ft long on the shores of Loch Ness. Zoologists from the Natural History Museum followed up this investigation and found that the tracks had been made by a lamp stand or ash tray that had a hippo leg as its base. It is unclear if Wetherell was the dupe of this scam or the perpetrator of it.
In 1934, a man by the name of R.K. Wilson visited Loch Ness and snapped the now-infamous photo of Nessie. In 1958, four separate investigations were launched – by the BBC, Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Birmingham. They used sonar in the lake and, while there were large, underwater, moving objects that couldn’t be explained, all investigations were inconclusive.
In 1961, the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, a group of amateurs watching the loch, was formed. They began a ten year survey of the lake, with about 20 reported sightings per year. They also used mini subs to explore the lake. In the 1970s, the Bureau released a photo they captured underwater of a supposed flipper of an unknown, massive creature.
Theories
Ancient Plesiosaur
Nessie is usually depicted as a green or black creature with black humps, a long and thin neck, a tail, a snake-like head, and flippers. This image is most reminiscent of the ancient plesiosaur. It is believed that either a single plesiosaur or the species managed to survive since the mass-extinction of the dinosaurs in this isolated lake. However, if it is more than one creature, there have been no proven skeletons of Nessie. There was a skeleton to wash up near Aberdeen in February of 2020 that some speculated as Nessie, but it was 200km away from Loch Ness and likely a whale carcass. Unless we’re saying any unknown skeleton that appears on the shores of anywhere in Scotland are Nessie, then maybe it is.
Over 600 sonar and satellite scans have not turned up any evidence of a plesiosaur in Loch Ness.
Wayward Large Animal
Another issue with the plesiosaur theory and with this large marine animal theory is that in 2018, a DNA survey was conducted of Loch Ness. The survey, which took hundreds of samples of water of Loch Ness, which revealed the presence of over 3,000 species of animals in Loch Ness, but none resembling the DNA of a plesiosaur or any other large marine animal, such as a shark, catfish, or sturgeon. There was no reptilian- type DNA (the plesiosaur was a marine reptile). This also excludes the theory that a wayward sturgeon got trapped in Loch Ness, as the European Sea Sturgeon is known to have been in nearby rivers. It could possibly be a massive eel because the survey did reveal large amounts of eel DNA in Loch Ness.
Scam from the Beginning
It came to light in the 1990s that the most famous evidence for Nessie was a hoax. The 1934 picture was revealed to be a hoax by one of the hoaxers in 1994. Apparently, this came out of the embarrassment of Marmaduke Wetherell’s discovery of the hippo footprints the year prior. Wetherell had become a laughingstock. And, so, he recruited his son, stepson, and Dr. R.K. Wilson to perpetrate this hoax. It was his stepson, Christian Spurling, who divulged this information later. Spurling’s job was to create the device, which was actually only a few inches long. The picture was cropped so it appeared larger. He grafted a head and neck onto a submarine toy so that it would float just under water, revealing just the head. Marmaduke Wetherell and his son, Ian Wetherell, placed the device and took the photo. It was given to Dr. Wilson to develop and claim as his own, due to his trustworthy reputation and not being known to be a friend or acquaintance of Wetherell.
Could Spurling be lying? Yes. But what reason would he have? He was elderly and likely wanted to get things off his chest. The uncropped photo does make the creature look miniscule. And no evidence since then has been as convincing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think many of these explorers are hoaxers – much like Bigfoot, where the biggest historic piece of evidence was a hoax (the Bigfoot video footage was later revealed to be a hoax by the perpetrators), I believe the people that followed, for the most part, were interested in finding the cryptid and genuinely believed any evidence they got was Nessie. There might be some genuine hoaxers out there – after all, Nessie is the biggest tourist draw for Loch Ness – but most people likely have a genuine interest in proving this non-existent creature does, in fact, exist.
And, if it does, I will eat my words.
The Sapphic Academic 