Loch Ness Monster Explained

[While any part of this book can be read in isolation, you will probably understand it better if you start at the beginning.]

The first exhibition I staged in buildings to the rear of the Drumnadrochit Hotel was very much a personal opinion of how I saw the evidence fitting into the overall story. I was still a fan of the evolved-plesiosaur solution.

Room one, in addition to the contoured model of the loch, contained various items of equipment used in the early part of the search, including examples of early twentieth century cameras (courtesy Dick Raynor) and one of the giant lenses from the sixties' Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau period (courtesy David James). Today the same large lens is shown very effectively in a reconstruction of a loch-side camera station in the current exhibition.

The model of the loch also gave an indication of where eye witness accounts had occurred, but other than that I had decided that eye witnesses would not form a major part of the exhibit.

Exhibition panels showed the first ever picture – Hugh Gray's murky shape, the famous Surgeon's picture as it was known in the eighties (both versions), the three hump Lachlan Stuart photograph, the MacNab picture beside the castle, with an analysis of why it should be treated with suspicion, and the stills from the Dinsdale movie film. The theme was, "Look at all this evidence, surely some of it must be real".

Room two showed how sonar worked, interpreted from information provided by the Academy of Applied Science which I now know to be based on incorrect explanations by them. It then went into exhibits on the sonar system used in 1972 and the underwater flipper pictures, including the unenhanced versions, enhanced versions and a further digital enhancement of what is commonly called the "two body shot". Some of these will be analysed in detail later.

The information panels continued into the 1975 expedition and the underwater pictures known as "the body and neck" and the "gargoyle head". There was also a collection of actual equipment used by the American expeditions including a Klein side-scan sonar tow-fish (courtesy Academy of Applied Science).

The theme of the room was, "On top of all the evidence you have already seen, now look at this underwater evidence with real science coming to the fore. Surely there must be a monster.".

The final room was speculation. What might the monster look like and how could the mystery eventually be solved i.e. the dolphin expedition?

I finished the room with a very important eye witness, Dom Gregory Brusey OSB from Fort Augustus Abbey and a statement from Sir Peter Scott, founder of what is now known as the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

"That there are monsters in Loch Ness is highly improbable, that all the eye witnesses are mistaken or lying is even more improbable."

The theme was pretty obvious, "You have seen all the evidence which shows that there must be a monster. How can we now find out what it is?".

When I look back at the exhibition and its themes I cringe today, but we had to start somewhere.

Fortunately, when Adrian Shine, of whom I had never heard at the time, and Ricky Gardiner, his evidence analyst, visited the exhibition in mid nineteen-eighty, they decided that I was not quite a "hopeless case" and contrived to find an opportunity to get to work on me and my preconceptions.

The Loch Ness and Morar Project had been operating for about seven years and somehow I had managed to omit them completely. Adrian Shine tells me that, at the time, they were trying to keep a low profile, well they certainly succeeded in that.

If I had met them earlier, the exhibition might never have been staged in the way it was. Perhaps I might even have walked away from the subject completely; the exhibition would have been staged somewhere else, by someone else; Mr Bremner and his family would have remained struggling hoteliers and this book would never have been written. My involvement in the Loch Ness mystery has not just changed my life,but also that of many other people who have worked with or for me since the exhibition opened that 3rd May 1980. 

[Please vote on this chapter if you found it interesting.]

(C) 2018 Tony Harmsworth