By Michael Gryboski

Introduction

Its legend is said to derive from the Medieval time period, with a missionary entering the isle of Britain and beholding a monstrous creature in the lake. Many have claimed to have sighted it in its watery dwelling place and countless others have come to Scotland in search of it. Numerous expeditions have been launched and a really famous photo purportedly captured its massive frame floating on the waters. This tourist trap of mysterious interest is the Loch Ness Monster, a large reptilian organism that lives in a Scottish lake. Many have posited that it exists and is a descendent of the plesiosaur species, remaining alive through the ages. However, as shall be noted, the famous photo of the creature is a hoax, the claim it’s a plesiosaur is dubious, and lastly as shown by a recent survey of the waters of Loch Ness the creature itself is nothing but mythology.

The photo

Nearly everyone born and raised in Western civilization has seen the famous black-and-white photo of the Loch Ness monster. Taken by Colonel Robert Wilson in 1933, any internet search brings the photo up on the first page of images. For decades it was seen as visual proof of the monster, the very being that many had claimed before the era of photography was roaming about the Loch. Involved in the find included Wilson, the photographer, journalist Marmaduke Wetherell, his stepson Christian Spurling, and two others.¹

However, as was discovered, the find was a hoax. It started with the doubts, as noted by the Museum of Hoaxes:

“For years skeptics were sure that the photo was somehow a hoax. But no rigorous studies of the image were conducted until 1984 when Stewart Campbell analyzed the photo in a 1984 article in the British Journal of Photography. Campbell concluded that the object in the water could only have been two or three feet long, at most, and that it probably was an otter or a marine bird.”²

The case for the falsehood of the photo was consummated by a deathbed confession. Christian Spurling, the stepson of Wetherell, admitted in 1994 that the photo was staged, 60 years after the image was first propagated as true. As reported by James Langton of the Sunday Telegraph, the famous photo was “one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century. The celebrated monster is a toy submarine bought for a few shillings inthe London suburb of Richmond and fitted with a classic sea serpent head and neck made from plastic wood.”³

The making of a monster was described thusly,

”Before his death, Spurling revealed how he had made the ‘monster’ to two Loch Ness researchers, David Martin and Alastair Boyd, who have subsequently unravelled the whole story. Spurling told Martin and Boyd that he got a message from his stepfather in January 1933 saying: ‘Christian, can you make me a monster?’ Ian Wetherell bought the basic materials, and his step-brother, a skilled model-maker, built the creature in eight days.”⁴

Loch Ness Monster as Plesiosaur

Perhaps it was the long period of time that the photo was considered valid by many, perhaps this idea was already around, but many viewed and continue to view the Loch Ness Monster as being a plesiosaur that survived the end of the dinosaur era. The shape of the creature, using the hoaxed photo, is similar. According to Dr. Richard Ellis, plesiosaurs are

”a group of marine reptiles that thrived for about 100 million years from the Triassic to the Cretacious periods and then, for reasons not understood, became extinct. Some had long necks, some had short necks; some were petite, and some were gigantic. Some had sharp little teeth like a python, while others had 8-inch daggers that rivaled the fearsome dental equipment of T. Rex. Like all reptiles, they breathed air, but some, unlike any living reptiles, probably gave birth to living young underwater.”⁵

Many believe the Loch Ness Monster to be a surviving plesiosaur. However, this theory too has been dealt a cruel blow by the scientific community. Enter Dr. Leslie Noe of Cambridge University. Noe studied the remains of an actual plesiosaur, one that died in antiquity. His findings note that “plesiosaurs used their long necks to reach down and feed on soft-bodied animals living on the sea floor. By examining fossils of a plesiosaur, Muraenosaurus, and by calculating the articulation of the neck bones, Dr Noe concluded the neck was flexible and could move most easily when pointing down.”⁶

As Noe told the magazine publication New Scientist, “The bone structure of the neck makes it absolutely certain the plesiosaur could not lift its head up swan-like out of the water.”⁷

The BBC Study

Even with the photo debunked and the claim of being a plesiosaur refuted, there are undoubtedly many who retain belief in a creature that prowls around Loch Ness. Well, if there is a creature, it must be a very small one for a recent survey of the Loch done by the British Broadcasting Corporation showed that there was no trace of any large reptilian creature. “Using 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology to ensure that none of the loch was missed, the team surveyed the waters said to hide Scotland's legendary tourist attraction but found no trace of the monster.”⁸ With all the modern technology at their availability, with some of the researchers being people who believed there would be evidence of a monster, the result came in as a negative.

One of the specialists who was part of the survey put it best: "We went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one, we have covered everything in this loch and we saw no signs of any large living animal in the loch."⁹

Conclusion

The march of science and reason is a beautiful sight to behold. Not only have the sciences time and again vindicated the factual claims of the Holy Bible, but they have also delegitimized the factual claims of superstitions throughout the world, including a gloomy loch in the green hinter of Scotland.

Sources:

1. “The Surgeon’s Photo”, Museum of Hoaxes, http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/photo_database/image/the_surgeons_photo/, accessed August 25th, AD 2009.

2. Ibid.

3. Langton, James, “Revealed: the Loch Ness picture hoax”, Sunday Telegraph, March 13th, AD 1994, found at http://tafkac.org/animals/loch.ness.monster/nessie_photo_hoax_1.html, accessed August 25th, AD 2009.

4. Ibid.

5. Ellis, Richard, Sea Dragons: Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans, University Press of Kansas, 2003, p.8.

6. Ross, Shan, “Scientist pours cold water on Loch Ness dinosaur theory”, Heritage & Culture, November 2nd, AD 2006, http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths/Scientist-pours-cold-water-on.2823361.jp, accessed August 26th, AD 2009.

7. “Monster myth is sunk by Dr Noe”, Metro.co.uk, November 2nd, AD 2006, http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=23548&in_page_id=34, accessed August 26th, AD 2009.

8. “BBC 'proves' Nessie does not exist”, BBC, July 27th, AD 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3096839.stm, accessed August 26th, AD 2009.

9. Ibid.