CRYPTOLINK: Loch Ness monster's cousin? Believers claim evidence of creature in Lake Champlain

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

Since the 17th century, sightings have been reported of a mysterious creature in Lake Champlain. Now, two true believers think they have hard evidence that something monstrous is lurking in the lake's murky depths.

Over the years, it's been described as having a long snake-like body and a flat, horse-like head, and being roughly the size of a yacht. This rumored creature has become lovingly known as "Champ", or "Champy," and some people believe it to be a distant relative of Scotland's fabled Loch Ness Monster.

Most evidence of Champ comes in the form of blurry photos or recounted sightings, most of which have been discounted, according to Motherboard. But two cryptozoologists—people who study unknown animals like the Loch Ness monster—have used underwater recording equipment to capture loud clicking sounds, which they claim constitute evidence of Champ's existence.

Read on...

NICE ONE, SCOTT :)

In stunning news that not only confirms the existence of the long sought-after Nessie but also the existence of life on other planets, Pharmaceutical giant Dopemol announced today that they had isolated a DNA sequence from a photograph using advanced laser scanning technology that confirmed that the so-called Loch Ness Monster was in fact a Giant Squid (Gigantoteuthis mobiggius) from Jupiter’s moon Europa.

In consultation with Astrophysicist Fuller Bolshetikov, it was deduced that the Nessie DNA was 500 million years old, having traveled through space frozen in a comet ejected from Europa. Photographs from space taken by NASA satellites orbiting Europa have produced images of Nessie-like objects in the oceans of Europa over the last 40 years. With the recently developed DNA Laser Sequencing Image Scanner, a full DNA strand sequence can be quantified from space based on dermal ridges in the image. A chance DNA imaging signature that matched a previous Loch Ness DNA imaging signature was correlated with fossil evidence that indicated that cephalopods native to this planet did not evolve until 300 million years later in the Cetaceous period or Age of Whales.

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CRYPTOLINK: No Loch Ness Monster sightings for first time since 1925

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

For the first time in almost 90 years no "confirmed sightings" have been made of the Loch Ness Monster, a veteran Nessie spotter has said.

Gary Campbell, who keeps a register of sightings, said no-one had come forward in 18 months to say they had seen the monster.

Bookmaker William Hill also said the three entries to its annual Nessie spotting contest could be explained.

They were images of a wave, a duck and a picture not even taken on Loch Ness.

Mr Campbell said it was the first time since 1925 that there had been no confirmed reports of the monster.

He said: "It's very upsetting news and we don't know where she's gone.

"The number of sightings has been reducing since the turn of the century but this is the first time in almost 90 years that Nessie wasn't seen at all."

Read on...

CRYPTOLINK: The Loch Ness monster, 1934 - a picture from the past

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

This photograph reporting to be of the Loch Ness monster was published in the Daily Mail newspaper in 1934. It became known as the 'Surgeon's Photograph' after Colonel Wilson, who offered the picture to the paper, refused to have his name associated with it. The image is, in fact of a Woolworth's toy submarine with a sculpted wooden head attached and was made by Chris Spurling. Spurling later confessed that the conspiracy was hatched by his father-in-law, the hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, who was hired by the Mail to find the monster and after faking his own sighting, was publicly humiliated by his employer. He allegedly hatched the elaborate plan to get his revenge on the paper

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/picture/2013/oct/23/photography

CRYPTOLINK: 2013 Loch Ness Monster Sighting

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. This post, however, is particularly interesting and the author should be congratulated...

KARL SHUKER: TAKING A SHINE TO NESSIE RECEIVES THE STAMP OF APPROVAL

 Karl Shuker returns to his old stamping ground of cryptozoological philately.

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KARL SHUKER: DOES THE LOCH NESS MONSTER HAVE A SPLIT PERSONALITY?

Karl Shuker reveals some of the strangest identities ever proposed for Nessie, the Loch Ness monster.

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CRYPTOLINK: Tony Harmsworth LNM book free download

Tony Harmsworth, long time Loch Ness researcher, is putting his book Loch Ness Understood online for free viewing. The book also goes by the former title Loch Ness, Nessie and Me.The Loch Ness Monster blog reviewed this book last year but now you can read it for yourself at Tony's link.

Tony says the project has not quite finished, so check back for updates.

NEW PHOTOGRAPH PURPORTING TO BE OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/loch-ness-monster-photographed.html

CRYPTOLINK: Loch Ness Monster Revealed

http://www.irenesinternet.com/what/loch-ness-monster-revealed/

THE GREAT LOCH NESS BACKLASH BEGINS

Yesterday I posted a link to an article by Hayley S in which she bemoaned the fact that the skeptical community had been 'disappointing' in their reaction to the recent photograph from Loch Ness. Now, just like everyone else I have no idea what this picture shows. If I were to hazard a guess I would say a seal. However, especially in view of the way that some blurry and unconvincing `bigfoot` photographs are latched-on to by all and sundry, I am quite surprised by the level of disbelief that this picture elicits...

A new photograph, supposedly of the Loch Ness Monster, is making the rounds online, creating quite a discussion as it does. Reportedly taken in 2011 but not publicized until now, the photo claims to show the fabled Loch Ness Monster in unrivaled clarity that was only imaginable in previous decades characterized by grainy black and white images and movies.

So, could it all be real? My bet: probably not, for two reasons.

Read on...

PLEASE TELL ME THAT THIS IS A JOKE: How American fundamentalist schools are using Nessie to disprove evolution

It sounds like a plot dreamed up by the creators of Southpark, but it's all true: schoolchildren in Louisiana are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real in a bid by religious educators to disprove Darwin's theory of evolution.

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Nessie is used in the ACE teaching materials as proof that Darwin's evolution theory is false

Custom byline text:

EXCLUSIVE by Rachel Loxton

Thousands of children in the southern state will receive publicly-funded vouchers for the next school year to attend private schools where Scotland's most famous mythological beast will be taught as a real living creature.
These private schools follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.
One tenet has it that if it can be proved that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man then Darwinism is fatally flawed.
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LINK: Nessie on Land: Making an Impression

Moving on from our overview of Loch Ness Monster Land Sightings, we have an aspect of these cases which turns up now and again and is best exemplified by the one case ascribed to the late monster hunter, Ted Holiday in 1962. We take up the story in his own words from his book, "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" (p.11, 1st Edn).

Passing the stony beach I moved on to prospect the wooded shore beyond Inverfarigaig which is hard to reach and seldom visited. A black fir-wood led down to a tract of bracken which ended in a beach. It was narrow, steeply-angled and overgrown with saplings. I examined this beach for some distance in both directions but the only organic object discovered was the drowned carcass of a wildcat. However, at one spot there was a curious patch of bent and broken bushes several yards wide beside the water for which it was hard to think of an obvious explanation. Years later, I learned that local people do occasionally find these patches and they associate them with the Orm.


The "Orm" was Holiday's own name for Nessie. The maps below shows the houses of Inverfarigaig and the circle is where I think Ted Holiday's beach was (I take "beyond Inverfarigaig" to mean west towards the shore and not south on the road). Though it may not be the only candidate it certainly is out of the way of the main road and looks hard to get to. Some may think the locals were pulling Ted's leg but whatever you think of this story, it stands to reason that if the Loch Ness Monster takes to land then it is going to leave evidence of its journey.

Read on...

LINK: Interesting blog about the Rupert Gould Loch Ness Monster book.

http://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog/2012/04/the-first-book-on-the-loch-ness-monster/

Today we often laugh about the myths that have grown up around the Loch Ness Monster. Recalling all the hoaxes, we wonder how people could be so gullible. But when the first widely-reported sightings stoked a media frenzy in 1933 it was unclear what was happening and many people, journalists and scientists alike, believed it possible that some type of unusual animal could be living in the loch. This led to the first ever book on the monster, The Loch Ness Monster and Others, a 1934 collection of eyewitness accounts gathered by Rupert T. Gould (1890–1948), a renowned horologist and former Lieutenant Commander in the British Navy.

Read on...

JON'S JOURNAL: Ness than Zero

So it's that time of the year again; the time that the media, prompted possibly by those jolly nice people at the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club remind all and sundry
that there is a prize on offer for the person or persons who made the best 'Nessie' sighting of the year.

There were, apparently, three sightings last year, and two of them were photographed. According to Fox News (and as someone who hardly ever watches television any more, I don't understand nuances of the 'Fox News Jokes' that circulate the web on a regular basis) the contenders for the prize are as follows:

1. While on vacation in May, William and Joan Jobes saw what appeared to be a head peaking above the water 200 to 300 yards off shore in Fort Augustus, Inverness-shire.
2. In June, Jan and Simon Hargreaves caught a glimpse of Nessie in the Loch near the village of Foyers, but didn't manage to get the monster on film.
3. Then in September, fish farm worker Jon Rowe snapped an idyllic photo of a large, dark shape and two humps in the water beneath the arch of a rainbow.

All very well and good, but the pictures themselves are hardly conclusive:

Joan Jobes' picture

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Jon Rowe's picture

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At least both pictures appear to show something. Many pictures from Loch Ness show nothing more than peculiar waves (this picture below was taken by yours truly in December 2005, when Richard and I visited the Loch to make a particularly futile slice of Mickey Mouse television).

I have no idea what either of them show, but I have my doubts that either are of a bona fide unknown species of animal. I would, however, love to be proved wrong.

Whilst on the subject of Loch Ness check this out:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/loch-ness-monsters-home-not-on-the-level-111231.html

A blog post by Tim Wall on Discovery News, claims that: "Just as the bubble in a carpenter's level moves back and forth depending on the surface it rests upon, Scotland's Loch Ness tilts back and forth according to the movement of the ground beneath it caused by the tides on the nearby North Sea. The motion is so subtle GPS couldn't even track it."

What impact this peculiar geophysical enigma has on the cryptozoological life of the Great Glen, I don't know, but it is interesting nonetheless.

LINDSAY SELBY: New Nessie Sighting

Loch Ness monster: new pictures and sighting of Nessie

The legend of the Loch Ness monster is alive again after a mysterious shape was caught on camera.

By Shiona McCallum26 November 2010 10:57 GMT

The legend of Nessie has resurfaced with a new sighting and pictures of the Loch Ness monster.Richard Preston, a landscape gardener, has been the latest person to spot a mysterious shape that might be the Loch Ness monster and capture a series of images on camera.While working on Aldourie Castle gardens on the banks of the Loch Ness, 27-year-old Mr Preston spotted a shape on the loch's surface out of the corner of his eye.He told STV News: “I was just walking through the castle gardens and I spotted something in the distance. When I looked closer I could clearly see the four hump-like features. I thought I’d take a picture of it, to see if there was anything in it, to see what others thought.“I was surprised that it stayed there as long as it did. I took various shots of it before it suddenly disappeared. I literally just turned my back and it was gone.”He showed one of his friends who was also convinced there was certainly some mystery in the pictures.When asked whether or not he believed in the monster, Mr Preston said: “Well there’s definitely something in the myth.There were no ripples in the water, no boats, nothing around. I have no idea what it was, but it undoubtedly looks like Nessie.”The latest sighting has brought hope to monster enthusiasts, as it had been a relatively quiet spell for spotting any activity in the Loch. Fears had been mounting that Nessie might be dead since reports of any sightings had been diminishing.In July 1930, three people in a boat at the north end of the loch saw a 6m long hump-like shape travelling fast through the water. In April 1933, Aldie Mackay saw a violent disturbance in the water and a hump “like that of a whale” while driving along the north side of the loch.

See photo here : http://www.stv.tv/topics/nessie/

DALE DRINNON: Amendment to Arthur Grant's original Nessie Sketch as reproduced in Costello's book `In Search of Lake Monsters`

Peter Costello's book has been widely used as a source for material on lake monsters. He is the first to publish the original version of Arthur Grant's sketch for his sighting of the Loch Ness monster ashore at night in January 1934, Costello's Figure 10 on page 46. The figure differs from other, later drawings done by Grant and significantly because the rear end ends at one edge of the paper and does not appear to show a tail.

But in fact the tail is clearly shown on the drawing. Because Grant ran out of paper on the one end, he drew in the tail starting at the other side again, as a sort of wraparound image. The tail is clearly drawn underneath the front end of the monster.

I have attempted to correct the image somewhat in my version. Grant did seem to draw the blunt end of the tail turning up, which I have omitted; and in fact Grant's version makes the tail much larger and thicker than I have drawn. I am not so certain he meant it as being in exact scale to the rest of the drawing, however.

(Source: Peter Costello, In Search of Lake Monsters, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, NYC 1974)

ANDREW HOPCRAFT: Loch Ness Monster

A while ago I purchased two slim discarded volumes from my local library, both seemingly self-published and written by a Mr G. Colman Green. Within the slowly yellowing pages are a collection of poems, paintings, recollections, reminisences and of a more fortean bent, short passages on such subjects as 'earthquake waves', 'milk-drinking snakes', a 'fall of newspapers' and perhaps most relevent to the realm of cryptozoology, 'The Loch Ness Monster Considered.'

The short passage pre-dates the 'monster hunts' of the The Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau and so adds a little background chatter against which the early searches of Loch Ness were made. However, I feel there is something to be further explored of Mr Green's connections between earthquakes and lake monsters. Charles Fort drew connections between earthquakes and anomolous falls, of sounds and lights in the sky - a forerunner to the fringe science of earthquake lights. At the time G. Coleman Green wrote his notes upon the beast of Loch Ness, the theory of plate tectonics would also have been considered a fringe science - I can still remember the incredulity I felt as a child when my father told me he wasn't taught about tectonic plates at school!

Loch Ness is seemingly unique in its position in that it runs the length of a geological fault line (The Great Glen Fault); I can think of no other lake supposedly inhabited by a monster that shares such a position, perhaps other than those beasts said to inhabit the lakes that sit within The Great Rift Valley of Africa. Bubbles of escaping seismic gas disturbing the surface of the Loch have been put forward as an explanation for some sightings of the Loch Ness monster. I can't but wonder how an 'earthquake light' may appear underwater when viewed from the surface. I'm now begining to think of those luminous wheels seen from the decks of the Patna steaming in the Persian Gulf.

THE LOCH NESS MONSTER CONSIDERED

Allow me to comment on a subject which has been kept well before the public by our ubiquitous Press in the hope that some light may be directed towards a solution of the mystery of Loch Ness on the Caledonian Canal.

Before adding my own ideas about the strange visitor I think it proper to refer to Mr. J.H. Peel's article in the Birmingham Post, 2nd July, 1960, which raised the question if research men at Oxford and Cambridge - experts in zoology -have their nets cast wide enough to catch anything fresh from the depths of knowledge which help us to understand that deep and elusive creature we call the Loch Ness Monster.

But this is not a simple question of zoological knowledge and I propose to recapitulate some other facts which seem to be related and which are drawn from my own experience at sea.

Firstly, if you will refer to Dr. Cornwall's "Unique Geography" on page 174 of this fine old book you will learn that at the time of the Great Earthquake at Lisbon in 1755 (which incident had a rebound as far away as the coast of South America) - both Loch Ness and Loch Lomond rose 2 feet above their normal level.

As Loch Ness is over 20 miles long and Lomond has a great mass of water two miles wide some immense pressure from below must have caused this vast surface to rise so abruptly and I suggest that on the principle of the Brahma Press this pressure originated from the same volcanic centre as the Lisbon catastrophe.

This implies a long submarine tunnel - probably very deep and, in part may be water-logged - very ancient and sensitive to volcanic thrust with occasionally superheated water.

These volcanic tunnels spread like the tentacles of an octopus all over the North Atlantic as far as the Azores westward and Iceland in the Arctic.

Earthquakes of more or less intensity have occured in England throughout historic times - in 1400 which set the church bells ringing, to 1930 when pictures tilted and beds moved in East London. Other dates 1165, 1445 and 1756, 1860. As compared with the Agadir earthquake of 1960 the road casualties caused by excessive speed (18,000 killed in three years) it makes one gasp with horror.

Space forbids discussion of all the forces operating in Mexico, Chile and Peru which, though mainly volcanic in origin, may be tipprd off by the seasonal throw of the earth (Swing of the belts); variation of spin and some other causes.

In 1914 when the world was thrown into the turmoil of war, few people took notice of the terrific eruption which blew the top of Mt. Elburz in Russia and caused widespread destruction (60 villages wiped out). This mighty mountain, 18,000 ft. high, was thought to have been asleep for a million years. The Russians claim the Noah's Ark had rested there.

Wales has been volcanic and much of King Arthur country is said to be beneath the sea.

The Wrekin in Shropshire is said to be a burnt-out volcano - but is it? It is quite speculative!

Secondly, in 1920, whilst homeward bound on the S.S. Marathon with a school of children on board I had a series of conversations with Captain Williamson about these various phenomena and prevailed upon him to take the ship along the northern shores of Teneriffe in the Canary Islands so that the youngsters could see the volcanic forces of the island.

Steaming slowly along at a reasonably safe distance, the ship's company experienced a thrill that impressed everybody with its awful intensity.

Teneriffe is in effect the Volcanic Bomb-Centre of the North Atlantic and the probable cause of earthquakes in this part of the world.

Returning to the Loch Ness Monster, it must be remembered that the ancient plesiosaurs were egg-laying creatures. Indeed, we have in the South Kensington Museum some large fossilized specimens about three feet high and I think it quite conceivable that an egg deposited a thousand years ago (or more) lodged on a warm, a superheated rock, far down in the cavernous, "unfathomable caves" may have at last generated into something like a Sea Serpent or a Saurian of a more or less degenerate breed. Who knows?

On Sunday, February 12th, 1961, the experts on the various sea monsters gave an entertaining account of what they knew about the history of great eels in larvae form, octopus of great size and air breathing sea reptiles which were variously described a sea serpents or plesiosaurii, defunct for 80,000m. years. They left the whole subject an open question when they suggested these creatures had possibly found a way to adapt themselves to modern conditions.

G. Colman Green, M.R.S.T, R.D.S.

Panorama of Adventure in the realm of Art and Education

Panoramic Sketches

1961

DALE DRINNON: CryptoClydes

Since the remains of possible post-Cretaceous Plesiosaurs seem to indicate an as-yet-not-properly named genus (or closely related genera) related to the well known Cryptoclidus at about 25-35 feet long, I have done some comparisons between some depictions of the Loch Ness Monster and reconstructions of that genus.

The first one of these was done at the beginning of the Frontiers-of-Zoology group and compared Arthur Grant's land sighting to the Cryptoclidus represented in Walking With Dinosaurs. This was a paste-up I called 'CryptoClyde' and was meant to demonstrate that Grant's sighting corresponded in proportions and dimensions to the reconstructed plesiosaur. I have cannibalised that comparison into the larger version below. I added the insert with the 'Surgeon's Photo' from Loch Ness on the strength of Paul LeBlond's analysis of the photo from CRYPTOZOOLOGY, in which he estimated the size of the thing being depicted as about four feet high, six feet long when stretched out. In another article in CRYPTOZOOLOGY, LeBlond had compared the 'Surgeons Photo' to the Mansi photo from Lake Champlain and found them to be similar enough to most likely be the same sort of creature.

The neck in the 'Surgeon's Photo' is also just about the same size as Grant had reported. I add another comparison with the Rhines AAS underwater head and neck photo, of similar proportions but estimated as twice the size, and then another comparison with the Rhines head and neck to another reconstruction of Cryptoclidus.

Frankly, I do not like the way the head and neck in the 'Surgeon's photo' are aligned if it is actually a plesiosaur, but then perhaps current theory on the flexibility of Plesiosaur necks does not cover living Plesiosaurs, n'est-pas? I also did a very exhaustive comparison of the head and neck in the photo to various kinds of waterbirds native to the area and none of them match at all well. It is the opinion of both Mackal and Coleman that the photo is authentic but represents a bird in the water. Such a bird must therefore be an unknown animal in itself.

There have been attacks made on both the 'Surgeon's Photo' and on Rhine's underwater photo at Loch Ness, most infamously with the assertion that Christian Spurling confessed to hoaxing the 'Surgeon's Photo' on his deathbed. Christian Spurling's account 'frames' the Daily Mail for hoaxing the photo to boost readership and is a libelous statement. Christian Spurling did not make a deathbed declaration and the account shows that he had no real knowledge of the photos in question - specifically the fact that there was more than one photo, with the object in different configurations, and not possibly the same object photographed twice.

There have also been statements made that a toy submarine made of materials at hand in the 1930s with a monster's-head superstructure would be top-heavy and tip over rather than stay afloat. A rather more peculiar problem is that there seems to have been no model he could have copied to look like the 'Sea Monster' in the photo: I have not seen any previous Plesiosaur reconstructions that actually match it. After the image of the photo was established in the imagination of the public, it seemed obvious to say that "I made a model of how the Loch Ness Monster looked" but it was not possible to say that before hand!

As to the Rhines AAAS underwater photo from the mid-1970s, it has been criticised by saying the head is not obviously continuous to the neck and that it needs to be aligned in the vertical plane. The critics that say this then go on to re-orientate the photo in the horizontal plane, inverted of its usual orientation. They then say it is a photograph of the bottom. It does not match the other photos more obviously showing the bottom, but the real problem is that saying this destroys their own argument. If the photo is indeed meant to be horizontal, then there is no reason why you need to say it must be vertical, and if it represents the bottom, then the tow parts really are continuous and the apparent break is only a trick of the shadows. Which is what supporters had been saying all along.

I am not saying that the 'Surgon's Photograph' is necessarily NOT a hoax; what I am saying is that it is consistent and that part could not have been known before hand. And in the matter of analysis I defer to LeBlond.

REFERENCES

CRYPTOZOOLOGY vol. 1, winter 1982
"An Estimate of the Dimensions of the Lake Champlain Monster from the Length of Adjacent Waves in the Mansi Photograph" Paul H. LeBlond, p. 54
CRYPTOZOOLOGY vol. 6 , 1987
"The Wilson Nessie Photo: A Size Determination Based on Physical Principles" Paul H. LeBlond and Michael J. Collins, p. 55
Le Blond is also the source for the comparison of the Wilson Nessie and Mansi Champ photos. The Champ photo depicts a much larger object but of similar shape.

Additional note: Many sources attribute a date of April 1 to the Wilson photo. The date was meant to be April 19, and what had happened was that one popular source had printed the '19' at the end of one line of text and the last digit '9' had fallen off the end of the line of type. This happened in Gould's book The Loch Ness Monster and Others, and I own a copy.

LINDSAY SELBY: Lack of Interest in Loch Ness?

There have been less and less sightings of the Loch Ness creature over the last few years as can be seen from this article:

Achtung Nessie! Loch anglers in Dores drama

By Claire Doughty Published: 17 August, 2006

A STUNNED German schoolboy spotted Nessie last week and shouted to his dad: "Look, a U-boat!" Ryan Macdonald's father, Gordon, who also got a monster fright, declared: "I used to think Nessie was a joke, but now I am not sure." Gordon and his eight-year old son and Gordon's pal, Tony Mulgrew, caught sight of the legendary beast during a fishing trip near Dores. Joiner Gordon, of Drakies, Inverness, told the Highland News: "We were near the Dores Inn when we saw this object." Whatever it was rose out of the water by about a few metres. It was there for five or six seconds."

Ryan said it was looked like a U-boat coming out of the water. We weren't scared, we just couldn't believe it. "He's now desperate to tell his friends back in Germany where he stays with his mum, but he is worried they won't believe him. "I was totally sceptical about From Page 1 stories of the Loch Ness monster in the past, but to see something that big was just unbelievable."It was about three quarters of the way across the loch, I wanted to take a picture, but it was too far away." Gordon added: "It was massive. The wash that was created from this thing was as though a boat had passed at high speed, but there was definitely no boat in the area." Tony Mulgrew said: "It is hard to say what it was exactly, but I have fished up at the loch 300 to 400 times and I have never seen anything like that. "There was something strange. There was an upsurge of water and a lot of froth came off the object. Whatever it was was going towards Drumnadrochit."

The father and son's Nessie sighting is only the second this year. The news has come as a relief to Gary Campbell of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club who was worried that global warming had made the loveable beast reluctant to surface. He said: "It is great news. It is such a relief there has been another sighting of Nessie. This is only the second this year. "Just a few weeks ago we were saying that she has been put off coming to the surface because of global warming and the increased temperatures, but I am glad that she has proved us wrong." However, Willie Cameron, director of Loch Ness Marketing, was more down to earth about the alleged sighting. He told the Highland News: "There has been a boat going up and down the loch at tremendous speeds. You won't necessarily see that it is a boat from so far away, you will just see a solid mass. "It could have been either the ferry or this speed boat which both create a tremendous wash. "I am not saying that that is what they saw, I am just being open-minded." He added: "There haven't been many recorded sightings this year. It can be disappointing getting an explanation as people come here and they want to see something."My late father was one of the people who have had one of the best sightings, so I am not saying it doesn't exist because I would be calling my father a hoaxer. I am just explaining what it might have been."

Source:
http://www.north-star-news.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/352/Achtung_Nessie_Loch_anglers_in_Dores_drama.html

Could this be the reason:

White witch curses latest Nessie hunt

Amateur scientist’s plan to search Loch Ness ‘equivalent to grave-robbing’Published: 22/03/2008 A witch last night cursed a Nessie-hunter’s bid to find the legendary beast, by casting a spell to sink his monster-seeking boats. Amateur scientist Gordon Holmes has installed sophisticated electronic equipment in two radio-controlled model boats in a bid to find the beast, but the move has angered Kevin Carlyon, the High Priest of British White Witches and self-professed “High Priest of Loch Ness and Protector of Nessie”. He described the latest “monster hunt” as sad and laughable, but is concerned it may open the door for more Nessie-hunters.

The white witch said: “I have several plans of how to scupper the latest hunt. “The first will be to send a wish for a large wave or visualise an iceberg in the loch to sink the ‘toy boats’, to using modern-day science in the form of high-powered radio-controlled radio equipment to send the boat to a different destination. “I’m not being a killjoy or wishing to ruin the tourist trade around the loch but I do believe there is a creature the-re, but not a solid one. I feel it is a spirit from a bygone age. What these people are doing is equivalent to grave-robbing. Nessie deserves respect, not exploitation.”

Kevin claims he has previously had success in scuppering the search by Swedish Nessie-hunter Jan Sunberg on his GUST expedition in 2001. Since then sightings have dropped rapidly each year. The latest hunt for Nessie is being spearheaded by a tiny navy of radio-controlled boats. Amateur scientist Gordon Holmes, of Yorkshire, has installed electronic equipment in two vessels. He hopes his use of the 2ft-long remote-controlled boats will finally prove the existence of the monster. Mr Holmes plans to return in the summer with the craft to carry out further searches.

Read more:
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/551471#ixzz0bdKZmhlj

Well, I am a bit sceptical about the 'curses' but maybe it is because people are less willing to say they have seen something or simply that the creature is not surfacing as much. Perhaps Robert Rines was right and Nessie has died out?

There are less people around the loch watching for appearances these days and possibly interest has waned in the virtual world of online watching via webcam and satellite. Whatever the reason, we hear less and less about sightings since 2000. Maybe this new decade will herald a resurgence of interest. I hope so. As I am no longer able to travel up to the loch myself it would be nice to know someone is there, watching.