Wednesday 2 October 2013

Henry Bauer on Abominable Science!




Veteran Nessie researcher, Henry Bauer, has entered the fray in critiquing Loxton and Prothero's "Abominable Science!". Last month, I pointed out its deficiencies from a Nessie point of view, but Henry has found even more holes in this Swiss cheese of a chapter.

He hopes to review the whole book in due time, but click on this link to get his critique of their Loch Ness Monster chapter.



Monday 30 September 2013

An Interesting Photograph from 1938

Back in May of this year, I came across an auction for a picture which was described as a photograph taken at Loch Ness in 1938. The seller was actually not quite sure if it was but thought it the most likely place. The item sold for £26.00 and that was the end of that. However, my curiosity was piqued and I took a closer look at the JPEG image that I grabbed from the eBay website.




The eBay page is above but the actual image is shown below. Now this is the type of Loch Ness picture that would have been unlikely to make it into a newspaper of its time. After the excitement of the Surgeon's photograph four years previously, the bar had been set pretty high.




Nevertheless, was it taken at Loch Ness and what could it be? Using Google's ever useful StreetView, it came as no surprise that the picture had been taken beside Urquhart Castle at the place where the highest proportion of sightings have been recorded. Using the background hill contours as a guide, a rough location was determined.





Superimposing the two pictures confirms the location and increasing the transparency of the 1938 photograph gives an idea of the scale of the object which was photographed.





If you compare the size of the object (or area of water) with the boats to the left, it covers a fairly large distance in the horizontal. Perhaps 200 to 300 feet in extent using the boats as a guide. Of course, the Loch Ness Monster is not 200 feet long, but a large object could cause a similar water disturbance. Or perhaps it is just a plain old wind slick or windrow which is a common sight on the loch?

By way of cross reference, I wondered if there was a reported sighting in the vicinity of Castle Urquhart in 1938. A perusal of the archives brought up one possible candidate which was reported in the Scotsman newspaper for the 7th of September. This is reproduced below.




The photograph fits the article to some degree. This was a two hump sighting which was described as lower in the water than a previous sighting by a tug crew earlier that Summer. Certainly, if there is anything in this photograph, it would be low in the water. Also, the stated distance of three quarters of a mile is agreeable with our superimposed photograph. Unfortunately, such a distance is not commensurate with detailed photography.

However, I am not that convinced that this is a windrow and more that this is a genuine water disturbance. It does not appear to be a boat wake as the other arm of the bow wave is not visible. A higher resolution scan of the picture would help pick out details which are merely hinted at in this low-res image. For example, there does appear to be something like water being thrown up to the far left of the disturbance. 

So, with this in mind, I will ask the original eBay seller to pass this article onto the purchaser in the hope that a higher resolution picture will be available for further examination. Until then, the picture enters the archive of alleged pictures of the Loch Ness Monster after being hidden from view for 77 years!


Tuesday 24 September 2013

Logs and Nessie

I have posted on logs being misidentified as Nessie before, but a recent video from a Welsh river was the best Nessie-like log I have seen in some time. This log steadily "swam" past the observers as the river currents paraded it in front of them. If it had just been a snapshot, some may have found it curious, but after viewing the video clip, it is clearly a log. The video itself can currently be viewed here.




However, this prompted me to write a provisional formula for determining the "reliability" of a sighting. That equation is:






R = reliability rating of the event
W = witness experience and trustworthiness
t = time spent observing the object
o = obscuration factor
d = distance from object

The equation will be improved in several ways but it gets across the idea of what goes into a credible  sighting. The experience of a witness concerns the observational skills of the witness. This can be influenced by several factors such as age, familiarity with water based objects and objectivity. There is also trustworthiness which is basically the hoaxer factor. Somebody such as Frank Searle would bring that number and hence the whole value close to zero.

Clearly, the longer a witness spends observing the object, the greater chance that misidentification can be eliminated. In contrast, the further away the object, the more chance of misidentification. The obscuration factor denotes the viewing conditions. Was it misty, were there trees hindering the view and so on?

But applying this formula to this Welsh "Nessie" would be pointless as we all know it is a branch. So, ultimately, a degree of human judgement is still required.


Thursday 19 September 2013

Nessie the Plesio-Turtle



Animal Planet re-ran the 2009 documentary "The Loch Ness Monster Revealed" recently as part of their "Monster Week". So while it is fresh in my mind, I'll review it here.

The plot is familiar, a group of experts in one or more fields came to Loch Ness in an attempt to shed some light on the 80 year old mystery. They go over the past, they do some exploratory work in the present and they predict what it might be if anyone in the future catches it.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The thrust of this documentary was to attempt identification with a few experiments thrown in. Three experts in marine science and paleontology were brought with Philippe Cousteau (grandson of Jacques) in order to provide some answers while Adrian Shine provided local support and expertise.

SIGHTINGS

The investigation began with what the Loch Ness Monster could look like based on eyewitness, film and video evidence. One could see them leafing through old Loch Ness Investigation Bureau reports from the 1960s. This is no easy task in general since the data set is corrupted by a subset of hoaxes and misidentifications. There is also a smaller degree of error in what people describe when they see the real Nessie.

Some of the old sceptical ground was covered as the Surgeon's Photo hoax was explained while the weak "bow wave" argument was trotted out for the MacNab photograph. To that end, some waves from passing boats were filmed and suitably zoomed in to make them look bigger (though I doubt anyone would be fooled by them).

Some vehicles of misidentification were also discussed such as the underwater currents generated when the thermoclines tilts and recovers. Then we had the ducks, logs, swans, logs and seals. Did I say logs twice? Well, you get the picture.

The Spicers' famous sighting was also discussed near the spot it happened and was discussed in a bit of a woolly manner I thought. The idea that the Spicers' long neck feature set a precedent for future Nessie stories is not tenable. It was perhaps the seventh report that made it into the newspapers. However, less than 20% of all reported sightings are head-neck, which suggests that being one of seven sightings is not statistcally significant. The more likely stance is that this is how the creature was always going to be reported.




They also mentioned the so called "King Kong" effect, of which much was made of. I covered this canard in a previous article.


CANDIDATES

Nevertheless, they came to the conclusion that a morphology not unlike our traditional plesiosaur was the best line of enquiry. So, that most familiar of Nessie candidates was examined along with some nice CGI of plesiosaur shaped Nessies swimming in a murky Loch Ness. You can always tell a Nessie programme is populist when it trots out the plesiosaur!

The speculation revolved around whether some plesiosaurs survived the great Cretaceous extinction and what form they could take today after over 65 million years of evolution. There was plenty of scope there for possible paths of modifications. But for me, plesiosaurs today could look very unlike their well known predecessors. In fact, they could bear little resemblance to their forebears.

But having decided plesiosaurs in this day and age were unlikely based on the the fossil record, they moved on. Other animals were briefly discussed but the discussion soon moved onto the modified sea-turtle theory. This basically was a sea going turtle with the shell removed, its neck extended and other additions such as blubber for the coldness of the loch and even some parthenogenesis to cope with low population numbers (it seems a Komodo Dragon performed parthenogenesis without male contact in a zoo recently).

This all seemed logical to a certain extent and I always wondered whether reptiles evolved adaptions to cope with the current ice age we are in which has so far lasted about 2.6 million years. In situations like that, your typical reptile species either dies, moves to warmer climes or adapts to the cold which exists at the fringes of the advancing and receding ice caps. Such adaptions could prove useful in the relatively warmer waters of Loch Ness.

FOOD

The matter of food stocks was addressed and attempts were made to measure the levels of plankton in the loch. Here we had a chance to see Philippe Cousteau take to the loch depths and comment on how it was like swimming in tea ... or whisky. Their estimate came out at 200 tonnes which they translated as 20 tonnes of fish and hence 2 tonnes of higher predator (monster). That doesn't seem a lot but the estimates were lowballed in my opinion.

The 20 tonnes of fish is consistent with the Loch Ness Project's estimate of 17-24 tonnes of pelagic fish but neither includes the migratory fish including salmon, trout and eels. The 10 to 1 ratio between fish and their predators (i.e. Nessie) looks more suitable for warm blooded creatures. What would a cold blooded plesio-turtle population require? How active could they be? Do they hibernate to conserve energy intake? Do they have other food sources? Crocodiles can drop to a ratio of nearly 1:1 in their domains. As you can see, not all the values in the equation were explored.

In that light, the actual Nessie tonnage could easily rise above this meagre two tonne estimate. No one, in my opinion, can be dogmatic on these numbers ... but that doesn't stop us trying!


ENTRY AND EXIT

Finally, the issue of how the monster got into the loch was explored. As said above, Scotland was in the grip of a gigantic ice sheet which temporarily receded over 10,000 years allowing the Ness valley to fill with water and let animal life come back in.

How and when a Nessie sized creature got in is no mystery. It would have swam through the River Ness to the new loch when feeding opportunities consistently presented themselves. What is not so clear is this idea of Nessie getting "land-locked" as the land rose when the icesheets melted. I don't think Nessie was and is in any sense land-locked. Doubtless, the changes to the river made with the construction of the Caledonian Canal presented challenges, but that is it.




In an experiment that looked more fun that serious investigation, our team's boat tried to get over what looked like Telford's Weir in an attempt to simulate Nessie heading into Loch Ness. They failed miserably but given the fact that Nessie goes onto land for short periods, I would reckon it would be less of a challenge to her. How often the Loch Ness Monster actually attempts this, I have no idea.

All in all, a documentary that was more entertaining that informative. Could Nessie be a plesiosaur shaped turtle? I personally doubt it, just because I would expect it to be seen more often. Put a leatherback turtle in Loch Ness and see how good it is at hiding. I am not saying you or me personally would find it from a standing start, but I am sure adequate pictures would begin to turn up in the days and weeks ahead (assuming it survives in the loch). The Loch Ness Monster is a primary water breather, so excursions to the surface are rare to say the least.










Sunday 15 September 2013

The Classic Authors on the Classic Pictures

In the light of recent sceptical remarks about gullible and naive Loch Ness Monster proponents, I wondered what the classic books actually said on these well known pictures. So, I dug out what books I had on the pictures and drew up a matrix of opinion.

The authors I was interested in were Rupert Gould, Constance Whyte, Tim Dinsdale, Ted Holiday, Nicholas Witchell and Roy Mackal. What did they make of the Gray, Wilson, Adams, Stuart, MacNab, Cockerell, O'Connor, Dinsdale, Rines and Shiels photos? The answer was not uniform as one would expect.

The books examined were:

Gould, The Loch Ness Monster and Others (1934)
Whyte, More Than a Legend (1957)
Dinsdale, Loch Ness Monster (1961 and 1982 editions)
Holiday, Great Orm of Loch Ness (1968)
Holiday, The Dragon and the Disc (1973)
Witchell, The Loch Ness Story (1974 and 1989 editions)
Mackal, The Monsters of Loch Ness (1976)

The photographs in question are:

Hugh Gray (1933)
Kenneth Wilson (1934)
F.C. Adams (1934)
Lachlan Stuart (1951)
Peter MacNab (1955)
Hugh Cockerell (1958)
Tim Dinsdale (1960)
Peter O'Connor (1960)
Robert Rines Flipper (1972) ("RINES 72")
Rober Rines Body (1975) ("RINES 75 B")
Rober Rines Head (1975) ("RINES 75 H")
Anthony Shiels (1977)

Some pictures and films are not included but it always strikes me how thin photographs and film are on the ground. No photographs between 1935 and 1950 and very little between 1961 and 1971 despite the LNI's attempts. Put it another way, where were all the so called hoaxers? One simple rule should apply, the number of hoaxed Nessie pictures should be proportional to media interest. I don't actually see proof of that statement in the overall record.

I added the author's judgement on each photo/film designated by:

Y (green) = Accept
N (red) = Reject
I (orange) = Neutral
NA (yellow) = Not Applicable
NC (blue) = No Comment (photo not mentioned)

The "NA" applies to photographs published after the book in question. Sometimes the author's opinion seems ambiguous in that they offer a sceptical or proponent interpretation in which case the inconclusive or neutral category is assigned. The table is produced below and you should click on it to enlarge it for closer detail. There may be some mistakes in the table, point out any you think are there. These are judgements based on the written evidence, authors may well have altered their opinions later, confirmation with sources would be appreciated.



The results are not too unexpected, though some things should be highlighted. Firstly, the F.C.Adams picture is not so much rejected as ignored. Only Mackal accepts it while Witchell merely calls it an unidentified object in Loch Ness which to me is a neutral statement. The rest say nothing which may mean nothing but I suspect silence suggests the preconception of a very long neck is being mapped onto this picture and hence leading to a quite passing on.

Holiday is the most non-committal author in his two books as only four out of the nine he could comment on actually get a mention. I wondered if omission is as good as rejection here? The Adams and Rines flipper pictures would not have fitted in with his Tulliomonstrum invertebrate! I suspect where the "NC" appears elsewhere, there could well have been more personal bias than just no room to mention it in the given book, but that is very much for each reader's opinion.

Nobody backs the O'Connor picture, even Dinsdale drops it in later editions after giving it the nod in his first edition. Holiday gives it no mention although looking quite Tullimonstrum like! The Dinsdale film is the only one to get 100% green positives.

Comparisons between first and later editions tells us something about the given author's journey. Dinsdale grew cold on the Gray, Wilson and O'Connor pictures but "promotes" the Stuart picture along the way. Interestingly, Dinsdale only explicitly rejects the 1975 "gargoyle" head picture. One wonders where Dinsdale would have stood if he was alive today? The sceptics would doubtless have him over in their camp, but I would not be so quick to judge the man. I don't doubt he would have dropped the support for the Shiels pictures. What he would have done with Frere's pronouncement on the Stuart picture, I don't know.

Witchell between 1974 and 1989 has definitely grown more negative about the evidence. Three pictures are downgraded and the 1975 Rines pictures are rejected. Though these were not mentioned in the 1974 book, they were promoted as positive evidence in the 1975 edition. Witchell seems to have completed his journey over to the "other side" in later years.

Roy Mackal is still with us and I would like to know how he would assess his 1976 list today. The one person that interests me most would be Ted Holiday. Since he believed in a paranormal Loch Ness Monster, how would that have influenced his assessment? He and Dinsdale had about seven sightings between them and that has an effect on assessment. If you do not think there is a large creature in Loch Ness, then the whole line is red. But I don't think that Holiday and Dinsdale would run the red line right through.

One thing seems for sure, I doubt many pictures would be promoted as opposed to downgraded today.




Tuesday 10 September 2013

Abominable Science! and the Loch Ness Monster




(This review also appears on the Amazon website)

A book has been recently written by Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero that seems to have to caused a bit of a stir amongst the skeptics. That book is called "Abominable Science!" and one reviewer has gone so far as to describe it as a "groundbreaking new book on the subject of cryptozoology". Groundbreaking? Does that mean it breaks new ground on the subject of my favourite cryptid, Nessie? Only one way to find out and that was to buy it (at the cheapest possible price, of course).

Being numbered at 411 pages, it certainly carried weight gravitationally. Would it carry weight in the matter of cryptid critique? Now, I am only reviewing the specific chapter on the Loch Ness Monster as well as the general chapters on the science and culture of cryptozoology. The latter two would give an idea of the authors' generic approach to the Loch Ness Monster.

I will not presume to judge them on the Sasquatch, Yeti, Sea Serpents or Mokele-Mbembe sections. The simple reason being I would not be able to tell how weighty their specific arguments would be. I may find these chapters entertaining, prosaical and historically informative, but that is not the main point ... how accurate are the arguments against the cryptid in question?

But onto the Loch Ness Monster which occupies about 67 pages including notes. Now I have been interested in the Loch Ness Monster for nearly forty years and continue to believe there is a mystery to be solved in the loch. 

The question for me is where this mystery finds its true place between the overly simplistic view of excited tourists seeing boat wakes and the fantastical view of a resident colony of dinosaurs? Would this book prove to be ground breaking and offer new insights? The answer is a definite no.

Loxton and Prothero play it safe by taking refuge in the over hyped theory of misidentification and hoax. Is there anything that could be called original and new in this chapter? Somewhat, but I will come back to that. 

But let us get over with the formalities first. Yes, we know there have been hoaxes. Yes, we know people can mistake everyday objects for monsters. And, yes, we know, no one has yet produced a specimen, dead or alive. Does that kill the story? Of course not.

Indeed, it would have been better if they just stuck to their empirical mantra "show us the body", moved on and left the rest of us to get on with it. The problem here is that they won't and we end up with an inadequate explanation for what over a thousand people have claimed to have seen in the last 80 years and beyond.

So, we know about the fake Surgeon's Photograph, Marmaduke Wetherell's Hippo tracks, the 1975 underwater tree stump  and the other spurious inventions of men. These aside, the authors began to dig a hole for themselves in terms of accuracy.

They first attempt to prove that any timeline of evidence before Nessie appeared in 1933 is fabrication. The matter of the dreaded water horse is rejected as irrelevant to Loch Ness and "none of them is indigenous to Loch Ness" anyway. This is just plain wrong. The imagery and folklore attached to those creatures is as much a cultural expression compared to the present day when we see all manner of strange representations of Nessie in film and other media. Do we doubt people claim to see things in Loch Ness just because a horror film depicts a green, seventy foot, man eating Nessie? Neither should it be the case with the Kelpie cultural representations two hundred years before.

The authors' claim that no water horse was "indigenous to Loch Ness" is also wrong. There are multiple references to such a beast in the old literature. In fact, there is even a reference to such a story from 1852 a mere two pages on in their own chapter! An epic fail on the proof reading front?

Furthermore, a monster hoax is mentioned from 1868, but it doesn't seem to occur to the author that a monster hoax in 1868 may presuppose a monster tradition in the loch pre-dating 1868. A major omission is also made at this point as this old article says that a "huge fish" attested to by only the "most credulous natives" was occasionally seen in the loch. What was this "huge fish" and why do the authors omit this reference? Note if it was only a sturgeon, I doubt anyone would be dismissing these dumb natives! I find this omission strange to say the least.

The author makes a further error when he quotes Rupert T. Gould's 1934 book "The Loch Ness Monster and others". Gould refers to a letter from the Duke of Portland talking about stories of a "horrible great beast" back in 1895. The authors make mileage out of Gould when they quote him as saying these "stories are of no great value as evidence". Evidently, this is meant to demonstrate the irrelevance of these old reports. Yet, in an astonishing act of omission, Loxton and Prothero do not quote what Gould then says:

"But the same cannot be said of a statement which I recently received from Mr. F. Fraser"

Gould then goes on to describe Mr. Fraser's sighting from 1904 and others from before 1933 also gain Gould's attention. It was clear to me that Gould's disinterest was towards second hand accounts as opposed to those with which he could interview the witness face to face. Basically, Gould has been misquoted in this tactic of promoting the weak evidence and ignoring the strong.

And then we come to the story of St. Columba and his monster encounter. Keen to get rid of this most ancient of Loch Ness tales,  the author basically rubbishes it as religious propaganda. I don't doubt the story is embellished, but Loxton and Prothero completely fail to explain why the story happened in of all places, Loch Ness. Coincidence? Some people may jump here and say it didn't happen in Loch Ness but in the River Ness. That's okay. Adamnan calls Loch Ness "the Lake of the River Ness". It was all the same river complex as far as he was concerned.

Moving into the Nessie "era", it came as no surprise that old Alex Campbell comes in for a bit of a bashing. Campbell reported the first Nessie story involving the Mackays around March 1933. He is accused of hyping the story to further his monster agenda. Furthermore, the authors try to palm the whole thing off as two seals. I address these weak arguments in this article.

Campbell is further accused of embellishing a reported sighting from 1930 involving three fishermen. However, Campbell is again vindicated by Gould who interviewed the witnesses who spoke of two or three shallow humps which were not seals! But since the authors footnote Gould's book, surely they would have known this?

Is there anything novel in this chapter? There is one thing. It is the suggestion that the famous Spicers land sighting was a rehash of a scene from King Kong involving a Diplodocus chasing some men. Loxton and Prothero are somewhat ambiguous in deciding whether George Spicer lied about the whole thing or in some strange way "filtered" the scene through a view of an ordinary animal. How exactly does one do that (and how did he convince his wife to lie?).

Loxton begins this King Kong theory with a very unscientific "I believe .." which suggests the evidence for his stance is not going to be strong and this is the case. Firstly, he selects a still from the Diplodocus scene that most resembles the Spicer drawing and redraws it accordingly. This makes one wonder what is wrong with the other stills? The answer is they do not support his theory.





Loxton then attempts to tick off a comparison checklist:

Both had long neck? Check.
Both had no feet visible? Check.
Both had tail curved round side of body? Check.
Both had victim in mouth? Check.

On closer examination, only a sycophantic skeptic would swallow this argument whole. The Spicer neck writhes and undulates, the Diplodocus one is rather stiff. Yes, both feet are not visible, but why is this "a striking detail"? And where exactly does a Diplodocus' feet begin?

The tail is plainly seen not to curve elsewhere in the film and George Spicer cannot ultimately decide whether there was anything in a mouth or not. A bit of a mixed bag and not very convincing.

Both Spicer and Gould had seen the Kong film, and various Nessie sceptics have flagged this film as an important influence in the perception of the Loch Ness Monster. Though one can understand how the dinosaurs in "King Kong" would make people think of the Loch Ness Monster, it is not clear how that translates to people allegedly mistaking birds for plesiosaurs on Loch Ness.

Indeed, a look at the newspapers of the time does not exactly strongly link the two in the minds of the local, Scottish and British public. For starters, the only Kong you will see mentioned at the Highland newspapers archive is Hong Kong!

Widening out, the nationally read Scotsman newspaper only mentions the film nine times to the end of 1934 but a review of the film in October 1933 does say the monsters of Loch Ness would feel quite a home on Skull Island!

The more widely read London Times only mentions "King Kong" eight times in the same period and makes no linkage at all with the Loch Ness Monster. Not exactly compelling evidence.

Exception must also be taken to a loose piece of logic when this quote appears:

"Before Spicer's land sighting there were no long neck reports at all and it was the long neck that was so crucial."

The problem here is a statistical one. There were in fact only two other reported sightings in 1933 before Spicer which were correctly stated as involving no long neck. But only about 10%-20% of sightings are known to involve a long neck which means our two sightings are not statistically significant. You would perhaps need at least 10 sightings on the record before you could attach any meaning to the long neck of the Spicers (note to myself - Ulrich Magin list claims 3 more reports - but not on my photocopies - double check).

Going back to the photographic evidence, the authors seem to be selective in what they say about the first picture of the monster taken by a Hugh Gray in November 1933. The book says there is nothing to see in this picture but omit to mention the fish like head that can be seen to the right. They must surely have known about this as a google for "hugh gray loch ness" reveals an article at the top of page one which discusses this very thing. Or perhaps they only got their Nessie data from books published up to the 1970s? Again, it is what is not said rather than said that is significant here.



Like Alex Campbell, the indirect approach of character assassination is chosen. Gray claimed six sightings and in a piece of flimsy guilt-by-association, Hugh Gray is lumped in with arch-hoaxer Frank Searle. Why? Because Searle also claimed multiple sightings!

So, how often is someone allowed to see Nessie before they are branded a liar? Two, three, four? However, Loxton has not done his homework here. Consulting Dinsdale's book "Loch Ness Monster", it turns out these other sightings were only low grade wakes and bow waves. So, ermm,  why didn't our liar Hugh jazz up his sightings a bit with humps and lomg necks?

You can't win with skeptics. Gray is taken to task for holding onto the film for nearly three weeks. Yet if someone like Lachlan Stuart in 1951 has his picture processed the very same day, they also object with the accusation of fast profiteering.

Speaking of Lachlan Stuart, this three hump photo was always an easy target for skeptics because the creature was in shallow waters. An easy spot to dump some hay bales according to a Richard Frere. Frere alleged that Stuart had owned up everything to him. However, the written record of what Frere said is contradictory and would not make it into a court of law as evidence. As it turns out, critics of the Stuart picture are quite accommodating to this contradiction ... a lot more than they would be to any flaw in an eyewitness account of a creature in Loch Ness!

Regarding the Dinsdale film, the authors repeat the ongoing controversy about whether he only filmed a boat, but conclude the film's mysterious blob cannot tell us for sure whether it was a monster. Rather, Tim's observational skills are called into question because he had two false alarms before then but it is a fact that his own self-judgement rejected them! On this basis, a head-neck sighting by Tim 11 years later is also called into question. But surely after eleven years of subsequent loch observation, Dinsdale would have been one of the most experienced observers of the loch and conversant with almost every deceptive appearance the loch presents?

Furthermore, the ad hominem implication that Dinsdale was not a fit witness because he believed in the supernatural/paranormal does the authors no credit at all. Finally, the alleged issue of the Dinsdale family not publishing the film in order to allegedly hide the "truth" is also now a non-issue. They put the whole film on the web this year.

The authors also look at other ventures such as expeditions and sonar. The 1972 flipper is correctly shown to be "over-enhanced" but I must admit that having seen that picture, I can still see a similar flipper shape in the unenhanced picture! Pareidolia or something else?

Surface watch expeditions such as the LNI from 1962-1972 are discussed and the authors compute that quality evidence should have been obtained. Unfortunately, they again indulge in selective quoting when they quote Roy Mackal in his book "Monsters of Loch Ness" where he says there are about 3,000 recorded sightings in a 30 year period since 1933. However, they then completely ignore what Mackal says on the next page of his book when he reduces that number to 10 valid sightings per year (a number I agree with but for different reasons). Why did they not use this number instead? Because 100 sightings per year bolsters their argument better than 10!

The sonar evidence is dismissed on the basis that false positives from reflection and refraction can mislead. Which leads me to ask whether the authors consider sonar a viable instrument given these limitations? Sadly, the three mysterious sonar hits from Operation Deepscan in 1987 are dismissed as "wobbly scratches". On the other hand, Loch Ness researcher, Adrian Shine, says he cannot explain them (though that does not mean he admits they are monsters).

Misqouting is also evident when the authors state that work by Adrian Shine found only 22 tonnes of fish in the loch. This is not true either, his sonar work only refers to the open pelagic area of the loch which omits the littoral and abyssal regions. That would exclude the bulk of shore hugging fish such as migratory salmon and trout and the deeper fish such as eels.

So the authors plump for the misidentification of everyday objects and hoaxes as the reason we have the Loch Ness Monster. What can we say about this? The first thing that came to mind was the author's own plea for scientific testability in chapter one. When you bring anecdotal evidence to this theory, how is it testable? Or to be more accurate, how is this theory falsifiable? What theoretical eyewitness case would falsify this theory? None it would appear because the theory is a classic example of circular reasoning. To wit, "if it is not misidentification it is a hoax" and "if it is not a hoax it is misidentification". This theory would appear to be about as useful as a chocolate teapot in evaluating eyewitness testimony.

The diversity of descriptions of the creature is not a game changer either. It is readily admitted that a proportion of stories are hoaxes and misidentifications. This is inevitably going to corrupt any attempt to form a picture of what any creature may look like.

Faulty perception and memory are also said to play a big part in what people claim to see in Loch Ness. That is a pretty generalised statement. It would be more accurate to say the reliability of a sighting is proportional to the experience of the observer, the distance to the object, the time spent observing it, the clarity of the scene and the time elapsed since the event in relating it. But this book seems intent on whitewashing every witness with the same brush. We have witnesses who have claimed to have seen the creature close up and we have witnesses experienced with the loch's conditions. But you know why these are not a problem? Because we just shunt them in a non-falsifiable way into the "hoax" section!

The discussion on memory distortion is over-stated and like real-time misperception, is not very well cross-referenced in the book's footnotes (i.e. next to no research has been done to prove any of this in a cryptid context). In fact, shall we say that much of the evidence is ... anecdotal!

Many sightings are recorded within days by the newspapers or by on site investigators.  If you are talking about years and begin to ask detailed questions about time of day or weather conditions then you will get some degree of error. But put it this way, if you saw a ten foot hump rear itself out of the water only 200 metres from you, how burnt into the memory would that be? It is a well established fact that traumatic events are more easily imprinted on the memory. That fact does not seem to be factored into our authors' thinking.

So where does this all leave us? A lot of misquotes, faulty reasoning and weak assumptions.

Do the authors offer anything valid in their defence. They do.

The lack of a live or dead specimen is the strongest argument. I don't necessarily accept their argument about finding bones. If the Loch Ness Monster was a fish like animal, its cartilaginous bones would dissolve in the waters quicker. That is why advocates of the Sturgeon theory are less likely to find a dead specimen at the bottom of the loch. The bottom of the loch is also about 12 square miles in extent and barely explored. Furthermore, the bottom is in a continual state of silting up which perhaps progresses at about a rate of one millimetre per year.

The loch's chemical nature also ensures decomposition progresses at a slower rate allowing scavengers (and other Nessies?) to strip a body before it bloats and becomes buoyant. Nevertheless, it is the strongest argument against large creatures in Loch Ness.

The point about the infrequency of sightings is also explained if the creature is not the plesiosaur type that is so often set up as a straw man argument, but a primary water breather. What that might be is a matter of speculation.

Finally, the matter is raised about Nessie-type fossils or rather the lack of them in the surrounding region. I confess I could not point you to one, primarily because I do not know what species the creature belongs to. If I had an idea of that, I would begin to look at the fossil record. Until then, I do not have the information to make an informed opinion. But the question has started a train of thought.

So, going back to the beginning. Something that lies between boat wakes and a colony of dinosaurs. Like the dark abyss of Loch Ness that lies between surface and bottom, no one seems to want to explore that region much!

























Friday 6 September 2013

The Man Who Filmed Nessie (Review)



Twenty six years after his untimely death, a biography on the greatest hunter of the Loch Ness Monster has finally arrived. The author is that hunter's own youngest son, Angus Dinsdale, who was born the night the BBC televised Tim Dinsdale's famous footage on their Panorama programme.

Perhaps that juxtaposition of Loch Ness Monster and family life sums up the man who devoted twenty seven years to the hunt for that most elusive of quarries. It was some weeks earlier that he had shot a minute of film showing a dark object crossing Loch Ness. The author of the book is in no doubt as to what he filmed. He was the man who filmed Nessie.

Angus' book fill in the gaps left by his own father's works. Tim had written of his times at Loch Ness in his books "Loch Ness Monster" and "Project Water Horse".  However, not much is known of the child, youth and man prior to 1960 or the man in his twilight years. This book reveals more of the man who began life in Aberystwyth, Wales in 1924.

Tim's life continued in the Far East where his father worked and in those Depression years, we learn something of his formative years which took in the normality of school life but also the tale of pirates hijacking the ship which was taking him back to school for a new term.

Needless to say, he survived to tell the tale and the story continues into the war years as Tim joined the Royal Air Force and afterwards as he pursued a career in avionics. Add to this his marriage to Wendy and the arrival of children and you have the formula for a normal, happy life.

Then the Loch Ness Monster came along.

We read how Tim's interest in Fortean phenomena began with a haunted house in Quebec. When he moved back to England, a curious magazine article entitled "The Day I saw the Loch Ness Monster" piqued his curiosity further. Before long, he was off on a week long trip to investigate it for himself and the rest is history.



Did I say happy, normal life? We read that within some years Tim gave up his aeronautical career to pursue Nessie and constantly skirt on the edge of financial insecurity held back by book sales, TV appearances and the lecture circuit.

Once the book enters monster territory, the author draws on Tim's own words from his two main books, but especially from "Project Water Horse" which tracks Tim's activities up to the early 1970s. The man's determination is evident and is bolstered further by two head and neck sightings. But the conclusive proof he sought never comes and the 1970s fade into the 1980s.

I was especially interested to see what Tim got up to in the 1980s but that which comes upon all men as the eye grows dim and the natural force abates came upon Tim Dinsdale. It was evident that health issues and a damaged boat put an end to the long days of drifting by boat along the loch shores and pulling his weight with the LNI and Rines team.

The end came with a heart attack on the 14th December 1987.

I had recently read "Project Water Horse" and so the stories of various personalities, experiments and events around the loch were familiar. So, in some sense I am the wrong person to speak on the book as the impact is somewhat lessened by this familiarity. I am sure others will not be so "disadvantaged" as they read it.

Angus also tells the story from a child's point of view since he was a school boy throughout these times. We have tales of family ventures, injuries, frivolity and the time his Dad ruined the washing machine in the name of Nessie research. Angus relates his own volunteer work for the LNI (despite being only ten years old) while one reads with amusement of the "leisure activities" such as the races to empty the latrines in the quickest time.

The human element is very much present in this book but do not expect a long and detailed defence of the Loch Ness Monster. Certain photos, films and sightings will be cited but the ongoing debate about various items is left for others.

The Man Who Filmed Nessie completes the story of the man who summed up the search for the Loch Ness Monster. I am not sure we will see his like again as scepticism rolls over the loch like a Highland mist. Individuals still visit the loch in search of the prized picture of Nessie, but not at the sacrifice and cost we saw exercised by Tim Dinsdale. It may take another better Dinsdale type film to start the circus again. However, I suspect most are convinced that will not happen.

The book is also prefaced with an introduction by Tim's widow, Wendy. Further details can be obtained at this link.