- 7 months ago
Two American scientists search Loch Ness using the latest in sonar equipment to find the sea creature first reported more than 60 years ago.
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00:00Tonight on NOVA, a mystery in the icy depths of Loch Ness.
00:06We saw this black hump come out of the water.
00:09We're about 30 feet in length.
00:11Eyewitnesses bring the legend of Loch Ness to life.
00:14Can science bring proof to the surface?
00:18Is Nessie a prehistoric monster or elaborate hoax?
00:23An expedition launches a search for the answer.
00:27The beast of Loch Ness.
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01:29And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and viewers like you.
01:34.
01:41In the remote highlands of northern Scotland,
02:11there is a place of haunting beauty steeped in mystery Loch Ness beneath this windswept surface lies one of the world's deepest bodies of water.
02:41It is a cold and forbidding environment.
02:48Drowning victims sink without a trace in the icy depths.
02:54Divers fear becoming disoriented in the eternal night.
03:00Ever mindful of the legend of Loch Ness.
03:07Many centuries ago, the people of these hills believed that a beast roamed these waters.
03:20In this century, thousands of sightings have brought the legend to life.
03:27I'm driving along the loch side, glancing out of the window, and I saw this, as I say, described to me like this boiling in the water.
03:36I looked up at the loch, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw this black hump come out of the water.
03:41About 30 feet in length, and nearly 10 feet in height from the water to the top of the back.
03:46It seems as if it had been still and started to move off, but there was a neck.
03:52And it flipped over, just flipped right over like that, crashed down, and you could see it.
03:58There's the chance, I've seen something in the water, but what is it?
04:05Is this what they are seeing?
04:08A photograph taken in 1934 shows an unknown animal, or an elaborate hoax.
04:16This film was shot by an aeronautical engineer in 1960.
04:23When computer processed for Nova, it shows a featureless black hump, quite different from the boat filmed later that day for comparison.
04:34Both are moving at 10 miles an hour.
04:38Photographic experts at the Royal Air Force concluded that the hump is at least 6 feet wide and 5 feet high.
04:47Probably an animate object.
04:55Is there something here?
04:58Many have tried to solve the mystery without success.
05:02But the quest continues.
05:04OK, let's go, fellas.
05:11Today, a new expedition arrives to search the loft.
05:15Pull our bugs out of our equipment.
05:18The leader is Bob Rines.
05:24Rines is a man of many accomplishments.
05:29A respected patent attorney and founder of a law school, he was trained in science and engineering at MIT, and helped in the development of both radar and sonar.
05:38But his true passion is a pursuit few scientists take seriously.
05:47The hunt for the Loch Ness Monster.
05:50If you don't have an open mind, in my judgment, you're not a scientist.
05:54If you don't have ideas, if you don't have adventure, if you don't have an open mind, you'll never make a discovery.
05:59And I think there's a misconception that science has to be something rigid, something sponsored by NASA or the government or millions of dollars.
06:06You know, a scientist is a scientist. I don't care where you put him.
06:09I'm going to suggest to Gordon that we go on.
06:11Rines' long-time partner in the search is Charles Wyckoff.
06:15You're sure to call him when we're ready to do something.
06:17A photographic innovator with over 60 patents to his name, Wyckoff created the film stocks that captured the first images of atomic bomb explosions and moon landings.
06:30It took time for this scientist to warm to the idea of the monster.
06:34At first I said it was a myth. Then I became an agnostic.
06:38And then pretty soon I said, gee, you know, there's more to it than that.
06:42I guess there's something down there.
06:44And then I got really intrigued.
06:46And the more instrumentation I cooked up, the more intrigued I became.
06:51For these two men, this expedition might well be the final chapter in a quest that began some 30 years ago,
06:59when Rines became intrigued by the mystery on a chance visit to Loch Ness.
07:04We can still do it, can't we?
07:06Yep.
07:11As a lawyer used to dealing with eyewitness testimony, he found the accounts of sightings persuasive.
07:18I just got this strong feeling that everybody wasn't a liar.
07:23Everybody wasn't a fool.
07:26That there was something there.
07:29His hunch turned to conviction in the summer of 1972,
07:33when he and his wife Carol had an experience that would forever haunt them.
07:38And we came out on the field over there.
07:41We looked down.
07:43And there was this big, grayish hump.
07:46It went out against the wind currents into the mouth of Eckhart Bay.
07:50It turned around and came back right in front of us and...
07:55sank.
07:56The sighting inspired Rines to mount an expedition combining old technologies in new ways.
08:06He aimed a sonar out into the depths and nearby placed a camera with a strobe light to take pictures every 45 seconds.
08:13After weeks of waiting, the plan finally paid off.
08:20Early in that morning, about one o'clock, we began to see the salmon jumping all over this bay.
08:26The rivers were dry, so they couldn't go up the spawn.
08:31And we could see it on the sonar, too. You could see the fish moving.
08:36And then this big target came in on the sonar.
08:39And we were praying.
08:42It was just the right distance that the Edgerton camera could pick up something if we were lucky.
08:48For thousands of frames, there was nothing.
08:54Then, suddenly, three frames showing an object reflecting the strobe light back at the camera.
09:01After computer enhancement at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the image revealed a flipper-like shape some six feet long.
09:15We got at least three frames corroborated by similar images on the sonar target.
09:26That was a thriller.
09:28Rines' excitement was shared by his mentor, Harold Doc Edgerton, a legendary figure at MIT.
09:35The inventor of both strobe photography and side-scan sonar.
09:40Edgerton would be an active participant in Rhine's later expeditions.
09:49New sonar hits, and this image, in which some see the body and neck of a large animal,
09:56helped to win another important convert.
09:59One of Britain's most respected naturalists, Sir Peter Scott.
10:02Is that there is a body of evidence, which I am prepared to accept,
10:08which cannot be explained in terms of known phenomena.
10:13With the support of Edgerton and Scott, the idea of the monster gained new credibility.
10:20In 1975, Rhines and Scott were invited to write an article in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.
10:27They were also given the chance to present their findings in a highly charged hearing at the House of Commons.
10:37Our sole objective to get the zoological community all over the world, as well there are other scientists,
10:43to analyze what we have produced, and indeed to debate what these things may be,
10:48and to get sufficiently interested that scientists dare to come to Loch Ness.
10:56For a moment, Rhines had the attention of the scientific world.
11:01But his case for Nessie was soon embroiled in controversy.
11:05The flipper photo, already computer-enhanced by NASA, somehow became this image,
11:12raising doubts about its validity.
11:15Even more controversial was Peter Scott's bold conclusion,
11:20based on the eyewitness sightings and the shape of the flipper,
11:24that Nessie was a plesiosaur,
11:27a prehistoric aquatic reptile believed to have died out some 65 million years ago.
11:33Zoologists at the British Natural History Museum ridiculed the idea.
11:40It seems to me that we have been invited to accept that in a relatively small body of water,
11:45in what is, from the zoological viewpoint, one of the best explored countries in the world,
11:50we have a population of large predatory reptiles, which could be warm-blooded,
11:56and which might even be cannibals with snorkels.
11:58Now, this I find very difficult to take.
12:00We've fought shy a little bit of the lock.
12:03One of my predecessors at the museum was actually sacked from his job for going up on the lock,
12:08and probably the monster here has had a very bad effect on science,
12:12in that many scientists had a nervous twitch when the lock was mentioned,
12:16for reasons you'll quite understand. It could be the kiss of death to your career.
12:19I think they got frightened. Those who make their living from this, as zoologists,
12:24are not ready to believe, on the basis of one picture,
12:27that something that should have been dead 65 million years ago,
12:31is still existing, in some form, at Loch Ness, Scotland.
12:35As the years passed, with no follow-up by zoologists,
12:42Rhines felt growing pressure to settle unfinished business.
12:47With only Wyckoff left of the original team, it is now or never.
12:51Recently, Charlie and I looked at each other.
12:55As a matter of fact, on his 80th birthday,
12:58he says, oh my God, Doc Edgert instead,
13:01Sir Peter Scott is gone, Carol Rines is gone,
13:05and here we still are.
13:08He said, I think we owe it to them
13:10to go back with improved technology,
13:14try to duplicate the experiments where we were successful before,
13:19just to see if there's still something left in that lock.
13:24And if there is, to have a bag of tricks to do much better to try to photograph it.
13:32But searching Loch Ness is harder than it looks.
13:35Stretching 24 miles from the cross Scotland Caledonian Canal to Inverness,
13:43where the river Ness empties out into the sea,
13:46the Loch fills a deep chasm with sheer walls that plunge 800 feet down,
13:53making it the largest body of water in the British Isles.
14:00To search this vast expanse,
14:02Rines has assembled a team of volunteers from the world of science and engineering.
14:08Thanks Gordon.
14:10I knew the line, I knew the line, I was right.
14:12And that meant it was just about you.
14:14Hey Arnie, how are you?
14:16The sonar experts, oceanographer John Fish,
14:19and marine biologist Arnie Carr,
14:21are partners in American Underwater Search and Survey,
14:24one of the leading sonar companies in the world.
14:26I specialize and my partner specializes in locating hard to find underwater targets.
14:32So, I just view this as another opportunity to look in a body of water we haven't been in before.
14:37High above the Loch, Fish and his assistant install a relay station for their global positioning system,
14:44a key tool in Rines' new, more aggressive search strategy.
14:47Instead of waiting for the monster to come to him, this time, Rines will sweep the lock with sonar.
14:56If the sonar team finds a target, the GPS will give them a precise location.
15:01The camera team, close behind in a second boat, will then move in and attempt to capture the target on film.
15:10I made a slight change in the camera, so we better make sure this thing is going to fit on.
15:18Getting pictures will take all of Wyckoff's ingenuity.
15:22You got the frame? You got the frame?
15:24Loch Ness is filled with peat particles, washed down from the surrounding hills.
15:29The yellow haze limits visibility to a few feet.
15:33It's like driving down the road at night in a fog.
15:36Your headlights create this fog and you can't see the road.
15:40Now, if we could separate the headlights off to the side, you'd have a better chance.
15:45You'd see the road. So I'm doing the same thing here.
15:48I'm separating the light source from the camera.
15:51With most of the expedition's limited funds devoted to sonar,
15:55Wyckoff and his colleague, Sheldon Apsel, have had to improvise.
15:59In the best MIT tradition, they have assembled a rig with a low-light video camera
16:03and car headlight mounted on an aluminum frame left over from an expedition in the 70s.
16:10We don't own very much of the equipment.
16:13We're known as scroungers.
16:15And most of us are MIT, and that's a natural thing at MIT.
16:19So all this stuff that looks like it came out of somebody's garage actually works?
16:22It actually works, yeah.
16:24It worked 20 years ago, it'll work now.
16:26The final team member will play a very different role.
16:34Hello, Bob.
16:35Hey, how are you there, Adrian?
16:36Well, a long time. What are you up to?
16:39We're going to scour...
16:41Local naturalist Adrian Schein came to the lock 20 years ago in the hope of solving the mystery.
16:47But his research has convinced him there is no monster here.
16:50Side scan and...
16:53You don't give up, do you?
16:55Never give up, never give up.
16:57Despite their strongly opposing views,
17:00Rheins has asked Schein to lend his expertise to the expedition.
17:04I have been granted an input to this expedition,
17:08the sort of resident skeptic.
17:10And it's a role that I am actually fulfilling to what extent I can.
17:15With the preparations completed, Rheins, anxious to get started, briefs the team.
17:22Science.
17:24But now, time has come for us to get going.
17:26We've only got five days with all the equipment.
17:29For purposes we basically came here for.
17:32We've got to scour this lake.
17:34A quarter of a century after his first attempt, Rheins is back in the hunt.
17:40Doc Edgerton would call me every couple of months,
17:42when are you going to give up what you're doing,
17:45a crazy practice of law,
17:47to do something worthwhile.
17:50Identify what these big things are that shouldn't be here in Loch Ness.
17:54I just didn't listen.
17:56Now, I'm listening, I hope it's not too late.
17:59The lead boat is packed with high-tech gear.
18:07Attached to the hull is a fish-finding sonar pointing straight down from surface to bottom.
18:13It will supplement the expedition's primary search tool, side-scan sonar.
18:18While it still looks like Edgerton's original device,
18:22today's model is far more sophisticated.
18:24Pulled below and behind the boat,
18:29the side-scan towfish sends out a sound impulse, or ping, in a 180-degree arc.
18:36Sound waves traveling through the water reflect off objects in their path.
18:41Signals arriving back at the towfish are sent up the cable to instruments on the boat,
18:47which gradually build up an image of the underwater environment.
18:52Any unusual mark on the printout will alert the operator to a potential target.
18:58As the sonar team begins its search, the mood is optimistic.
19:03In a lake where the largest known fish is a salmon,
19:08reports of moving sonar targets up to 15 feet long have persisted over the last 10 years.
19:14The most ambitious search ever made of Loch Ness was Operation Deep Scan in 1987.
19:25A flotilla of boats mounted with fish-finding sonar spent a week sweeping the loch.
19:31Most of the targets they encountered had a logical explanation.
19:35But not all.
19:37Expedition leader Adrian Schein.
19:39Three contacts we still can't explain, but that does not mean we never will explain them.
19:46In 1994, the British Natural History Museum took part in Project Urquhart,
19:52the first major effort to study the ecology of the loch.
19:56Monsters were not on the agenda.
19:59Yet its sonar experts said they too found large moving targets.
20:04It's hard to say exactly what it was.
20:08We followed it for at least seven, eight, nine minutes.
20:13But it's very difficult to say exactly what it was.
20:16They did find all sorts of interesting sonar targets, including moving targets.
20:21We've no idea what they were.
20:22While Rhine's systematic sonar sweep is going smoothly.
20:33Wyckoff is rediscovering the difficulty of taking pictures in Loch Ness.
20:39Moisture has seeped in and ruined the camera.
20:43They will have to send for a replacement.
20:46The timing couldn't be worse.
20:47Arnie, come up here a minute.
20:51Aboard the sonar boat, the fish finder has picked up a large target.
20:55What you got?
20:57Very big echoes here on the surface.
21:01Oh yeah? How deep are they?
21:03They're not that deep. They're only about, what, 20 meters down?
21:07You haven't had anything like that before?
21:08No, I've never seen anything quite as big as that before.
21:11Oh, goodness.
21:12Well, the side scan might pick that up, that it's not directly over, and it may not be directly over.
21:22If the side scan picks up the target, it may reveal more.
21:25That's interesting.
21:27But interpretation can be difficult.
21:30With sound waves bouncing off the steep sides, the lock is notorious for generating misleading sonar images.
21:37Even changes in the water temperature, or thermals, can create apparent targets where none exist.
21:46That target should have been here by now.
21:49I see bottom returns, I don't see anything in the water column.
21:52Could it be our beam is too low?
21:55I think it is.
21:56We may not have gone over it yet, maybe right there, but I think our fish is too low in the water, much closer to the bottom.
22:05The target that was seen on the sonar, on the depth finder, was high.
22:11Whatever the target was, the tow fish passed beneath it and failed to pick it up.
22:16Right to the camera crew, we had a whopping big target on Gordon's sonar, but unfortunately not on the side scan.
22:25Still, it's a tantalizing start.
22:28Even Arne Carr is beginning to believe there may be something here.
22:32I think there's a phenomenon here, or something that is really interesting, really I would like to get an answer to.
22:39And we had a target today.
22:41It didn't look like a thermal to me, it looked more biological, but I don't know what it was.
22:46For Rhines, this unconfirmed hit is an encouraging sign.
22:50Could the creature, he and thousands of others believe they have witnessed, still be here?
22:59The sightings began when a new road gave travelers their first good views of Loch Ness.
23:13It was here, in 1933, that two local residents reported seeing an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.
23:23An account of their sighting in the local paper brought the news of the beast to the rest of the world.
23:28The Loch Ness monster has been a media phenomenon ever since.
23:39Loch Ness, on which the eyes of the world are focused.
23:43The reputed haunt of a prehistoric monster or monsters, and the newly found adventure ground of modern gallivars.
23:48The intrepid, armed to the teeth, set out to capture the beast, to no avail.
23:57Capturing an image proved to be the next best thing.
24:02Some photographers resorted to outright fraud.
24:07Others succumbed to the Loch's powers of deception.
24:10Boat wakes, wildlife, and floating debris have all been mistaken for monsters.
24:20But one photograph stood above the rest.
24:24Taken in 1934, and attributed to a reputable London surgeon, Dr. R. Kenneth Wilson,
24:38it seemed to show an unidentified animal surfacing at Loch Ness.
24:43For 60 years, it was the definitive image of Nessie.
24:46Until 1994, when a story broke claiming this classic photo was actually an elaborate hoax.
25:00The man responsible for the story was Alistair Boyd, a Nessie believer.
25:05In 1979, Boyd saw what appeared to be a huge animal in Loch Ness.
25:11That experience made him question the surgeon's photograph.
25:16I was suspicious of a hoax, actually, to begin with,
25:18because I'd always felt that, firstly, the water texture in the surgeon's photo
25:24indicates to me that we're looking at a small object,
25:26probably no more than a foot high, and these are ripples rather than waves.
25:30Boyd's investigation led to a man named Christian Sperling,
25:34who claimed that he and the surgeon, Dr. Wilson,
25:37had been part of a plot to dupe a London newspaper.
25:41The object in the photograph was a one-foot plastic neck
25:44that Sperling had grafted to a toy submarine.
25:49This confession dealt a powerful blow to the Loch Ness monster.
25:55We don't know exactly where Wilson was when he took this photograph
25:58or claimed to take the photograph, but he...
26:02But to American journalist Richard Smith, the confession didn't ring true.
26:06With Ryan's support, Smith has come to Loch Ness to find out if the hoax story may itself be a hoax.
26:16It's extremely important to the academy, to us, to the public, to know,
26:21is the photograph possibly real? Is the photograph possibly a hoax?
26:25My research has shown that the circumstances, as best we know,
26:30surrounding the Wilson photo are consistent with Wilson's stories.
26:34I think that I'm willing to go out on a limb, as it were, and do this investigation.
26:39I think it's certainly worthwhile no matter what the outcome is.
26:41Is this a one-foot model photographed from up close, or the four-foot neck of a living animal shot from a distance?
26:50To find out, Smith has built floating necks, one and four feet high.
26:57His plan is to photograph them from different vantage points to see which one matches the original photo.
27:02Smith's experiment is possible only because of the discovery of a new version of the surgeon's photo.
27:13One thing that's absolutely crucial to understand is that the familiar Nessie image,
27:18the familiar surgeon's photograph, is actually a cropped detail of a central portion of a much wider view.
27:24The narrow strip of the far shoreline and the absence of near shoreline show how the picture was framed,
27:34and the ripples around the object provide another clue.
27:38The circular disturbance is also very interesting because it's been used to calculate the angle at which the picture was taken,
27:45assuming that that's a round disturbance in the water,
27:49but of course we don't see it round because we're at an angle, it turns into an ellipse.
27:52Analysis of the ellipse shows that the camera was pointing at an angle of 19 degrees down from the horizon.
28:00This area changed a lot, is the terrain different now?
28:03Using these clues to guide his experiment, Smith has recruited a surveyor and a professional photographer
28:09to help him duplicate the surgeon's photo.
28:14And put on the range finder, there we are.
28:17And that's very close, I think it's dead on to the original aspect ratio and the original scene.
28:29Stretch right out like that.
28:31What's that?
28:32What's that?
28:33What's that?
28:34What's that?
28:40Moved a little bit to this direction.
28:44Down on the shoreline where Sperling said the photograph was taken, Smith tests the one-foot model.
28:53Is this matching the original photograph at all?
28:56Yeah, the scale of the object is right, but it's far too far away.
29:00Uh-huh.
29:01Goes higher up in the picture.
29:02Yeah.
29:03So it seems like the problem is that when we get this thing more positioned that it's actually in the photograph,
29:07it becomes too big.
29:09The first one that we shot.
29:10Okay, now this is, and this is the four-foot-high target.
29:13Yes.
29:14That's at, as I recall, this is at the three-foot elevation.
29:18The next morning, the team get their first look at the prints.
29:21Okay.
29:22Obviously, to Rheins and Wyckoff, the one-foot model doesn't match the original photo.
29:28The four-foot model is more convincing.
29:30He's closer with the four-foot model, but I don't know why.
29:37Well, I think I may have a reason for that, which is when you put together the basic elements,
29:41the kind of camera Wilson claimed to have used, the position where he believed he was,
29:46and a target of about the size he reported, you come up with a photograph that he claimed to have taken.
29:51This is certainly, although not proof, it is, I think, some very compelling evidence that perhaps
29:55the original testimony of Lieutenant Colonel R. Kenneth Wilson was genuine.
30:03Smith is convinced. Now it's up to the doubters.
30:08It could be very possible that they could come up with a photographic experiment
30:11in which, you know, their picture will look a lot more like this.
30:14And I hope that will happen, but it needs to be done.
30:17A short way down the lot, Alistair Boyd decides to take up Smith's challenge,
30:21with the ever-skeptical Shine lending a helping hand.
30:26This looks about ideal, doesn't it?
30:28I mean, we just want to...
30:29With a one-foot styrofoam model, they hope to prove the photo was a hoax.
30:33Surface.
30:35They, too, are careful to angle their camera at 19 degrees.
30:39Okay, Adrian, yeah, just coming into frame slightly.
30:41That's... just back off slightly.
30:45That's good.
30:46On the left is the recreation.
30:52On the right is the original.
30:55Despite the near-identical images, Smith has reservations.
31:00You know, this is a very interesting experiment,
31:02and, you know, you're getting something which is certainly very close.
31:05One problem that I've always had, and it's certainly very much demonstrated by this,
31:08is the ripple patterns around the object.
31:11You can't reproduce them.
31:12No, no, no, we were getting ripple patterns.
31:14I'm sorry, we were getting ripple patterns.
31:16Well, I don't see them in the photograph.
31:17Boyd's experiment shows that a one-foot model can produce an image much like the surgeon's photo.
31:25The picture might be a hoax, but Boyd has no doubt that the creature in the lock is real.
31:32I know that the thing I saw was not a log, or an otter, or a wave, or anything like that.
31:39It was a large animal. It came heaving out of the water, something like a whale.
31:44I mean, the part that was actually on the surface when it stopped rolling through was at least 20 feet long.
31:49It was totally extraordinary. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life.
31:53And if I could afford to spend the rest of my life up here looking for another glimpse of it, I would.
31:58Day three of the expedition.
32:21With the cameras still out of commission, Wyckoff has joined Rhines aboard the sonar boat for a night run.
32:28I just hope we get something at night, though, because, you know, I almost feel it in my bones, or something's going to happen.
32:35You feel it? I'll feel it, too.
32:38That's where we'll get it if we get it.
32:43Tonight, they will concentrate on Urquhart Bay, where the ruins of a 14th century castle overlook the deepest part of the lock.
32:51And, of course, this is the time, this is the circumstances in which the academies had luck back in 1972, with big things coming in.
33:01After several hours of routine searching, there is a flurry of activity.
33:19What the heck is that? We've got a target.
33:23That's a very hard return. That's a very hard return, very discreet.
33:28A number of targets have appeared on the printout.
33:31One catches Arne Carr's attention.
33:34He estimates it is five meters, or 16 feet, long.
33:38Okay, height 180 to 4, and do a reciprocal of what you've already done.
33:43Using the GPS relay system, they come about to search the same area again.
33:48If the target is still there on the second pass, it's probably stationary debris.
33:55If not, it's moving.
34:01Gentlemen, we may just have seen nothing.
34:04It was a dense, discrete target.
34:06And what we expected to do is we did a quick reciprocal to come back over that target with the sonar, and we couldn't see it.
34:13It was gone.
34:14And so we saw it one time, went over the same area, didn't see it again. It's moving.
34:19To marine biologist Arne Carr, the size and density of the mark on the printout indicate a large, solid mass, very different from a school of fish.
34:32It's an unusual target, especially the density.
34:35I mean, a moving target we've had before, but one with such a density we haven't had.
34:41If you get into like a whale or something like that, yes, you will find something that dense.
34:47Usually some of the whales obviously will be larger, but five meters is not small.
34:51The next morning, Wyckoff's team is back in action.
35:06They've replaced their video camera with a professional underwater model.
35:10This camera is a much more sensitive camera, so we can see farther underwater, and it'll go deeper.
35:19The other camera was limited because we had a scuba diver's housing for it.
35:24We could only go down maybe 150 feet.
35:27This we can go down to several hundred meters.
35:31This definition we're getting is just fantastic.
35:35It really is.
35:36With the new camera performing even better than expected, the expedition is back up to speed.
35:42There is a sense of anticipation that the long search is about to pay off with an exciting zoological discovery.
35:53If Nessie is an animal, as the eyewitnesses say, the implications extend well beyond Loch Ness.
36:01Long-necked monsters have been reported in northern lakes all over the world.
36:06From Lake Cair in Siberia, to Lake Champlain in North America.
36:11Could these other lake monsters be flesh and blood too?
36:16A small group of investigators believe these creatures might in fact be species as yet undiscovered by science.
36:24We have multiple sightings of...
36:26They call themselves cryptozoologists.
36:28What do they pronounce next?
36:29So it's...
36:30Now from Lake Champlain, the descriptions seem to be much more serpentine.
36:33Slender, longer, and not a long thing...
36:36Like this one here, which is long...
36:38Yeah, but not like this.
36:40Cryptozoology is dedicated to the study of cryptids, or unknown animals.
36:46In almost every case, a search is triggered by eyewitness reports, a source of evidence most scientists disregard.
36:55Eyewitness evidence is completely useless in science.
36:58For science, something has to be repeatable.
37:01For repeatability, you have to have a specimen.
37:03You talk to an eyewitness, you've got no repeatability there.
37:06You can't go back in time and check what they saw.
37:09But eyewitness evidence sometimes leads to remarkable discoveries.
37:15The okapi in 1901.
37:18The mountain gorilla in 1912.
37:21And in 1994, the pseudo-oryx in Vietnam.
37:26These were brand new species, unknown to science.
37:32Science somehow has this blind spot.
37:36They've got to learn to evaluate eyewitness responses, emotional responses, and other things that are very real.
37:45They may not be anywhere near 100% accuracy, but they deserve to be fit into the totality of the evidence.
37:54How are ya? How are ya?
37:56Ryan's conviction is shared by Roy Mackle, a pioneer in the field of cryptozoology.
38:02Mackle, a molecular biologist by training, came to Scotland in the 1960s and joined a local group of enthusiasts,
38:12who kept a constant vigil on the loch.
38:15His work helped persuade Rhines that there was something here worth investigating.
38:21I came because I was curious.
38:24And all we had basically were a few still photographs, some of which have since turned out to be frauds.
38:31But the eyewitness observations, while the least valid evidence, nevertheless in some cases were very compelling.
38:37I wonder if you could sketch the outline of what you saw, just make a waterline and then sort of sketch what you saw.
38:46It's been 30 years since Mackle interviewed eyewitnesses, and the descriptions remain the same.
38:52Long before Sir Peter Scott and the Highland tourist industry made it popular,
39:01people were convinced that Nessie was a prehistoric relic.
39:07Above water level, I went straight home, into the house, got out my book of prehistoric creatures,
39:16and the nearest I could liken it to was a plesiosaure.
39:20Plesiosaurs were cold-blooded marine reptiles that coexisted with the dinosaurs during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods,
39:28feeding on fish in the warm inland seas.
39:32They looked like giant turtles with long necks.
39:37They swam rather like penguins.
39:39If you can imagine a giant penguin with four limbs going up and down, you've got a plesiosaure.
39:43As far as we can tell, they died out 70 million years ago.
39:48But the oceans are home to a variety of prehistoric relics.
39:55From the massive megamouth shark discovered in 1976,
39:59to the coelacanth, a fish once thought to have died out at the same time as the plesiosaurs.
40:05The coelacanth here is a very remarkable fish,
40:09because it's a form that was thought extinct for 60 to 80 million years,
40:14and then all of a sudden it's found alive, the form is found alive in 1938.
40:20It proves that if it can happen once, it can happen again.
40:24Could a small population of plesiosaurs have escaped extinction, taking up refuge in Loch Ness?
40:36The loch's geological origins hold the answer.
40:40Loch Ness straddles the Great Glen, a massive geological fault that nearly cut Scotland in two.
40:47As the land masses on either side of the fault slid by each other,
40:53they created an area of shattered rock, or breccia.
40:57Each time an ice age descended on the northern hemisphere, the glaciers returned,
41:03repeatedly carving out this breccia to form a deep basin.
41:07As the ice moved down from the tributary valleys on either side of us,
41:15it got confined into the valley created along the fault, and it accelerated.
41:21And this acceleration deepened the floor of the loch.
41:26So we've got successive major glaciations, and during each one,
41:29it gets deeper and deeper and deeper into the fault breccia along the line of the fault.
41:34And then it opens out, the ice opens out at Inverness, and so it ceases to erode down.
41:39So that's why we've got an enclosed basin over 800 feet deep at this locality.
41:45Plesiosaurs could not have survived in Loch Ness since the age of dinosaurs,
41:51because for much of that time, it was a solid block of ice.
41:55When the glaciers finally retreated 11,000 years ago, they left behind a deep pool of frigid water,
42:04and a shallow passage to the sea, the river Ness.
42:08Could plesiosaurs have used the river to enter the loch since then?
42:12It's an unlikely scenario.
42:16Even if they had somehow escaped extinction in the open oceans,
42:20these cold-blooded reptiles would have had to adapt to the near-freezing temperatures of Loch Ness.
42:26After carefully considering all of the evidence,
42:29most importantly, sonar contacts which gave some idea of how these animals move,
42:34and how fast they can swim.
42:38This convinced me that we had to have an aquatic mammal.
42:43Warm-blooded mammals have the metabolism to thrive in cold water.
42:49And one primitive species of whale had a serpentine neck.
42:54It's known as an archaeocete.
42:57This is a long, snake-like whale, known from the fossil record,
43:01thought to be extinct for 18 million years.
43:06But clearly some have survived, and this is not a surprise,
43:11because we have other animals which were thought to be extinct 70 million years ago,
43:15and they're alive and well.
43:17But can Loch Ness sustain a breeding colony of these animals?
43:21Adrian Schein and fish biologist Alan Butterworth have set out this morning to explain the loch's ecology.
43:34Loch Ness is a huge body of water, more water than the whole of England and Wales put together,
43:40but it's very unproductive.
43:41There are very few chemical nutrients, you know, the fertilizers, to start the food chain off.
43:48And the little microscopic plants have got another problem as well.
43:52There's very little light penetration, and I'm going to just show you here.
43:56This is called a Secchi disk, and it goes down, and I've got to see where I lose sight of it.
44:04So it's going down into the water, so you can see how brown the water color is.
44:09It's gone at about four meters down.
44:13Now, that's pretty poor.
44:16The dim light stifles plant growth, an effect that ripples up the food chain,
44:21starting with the tiny plankton that feed on vegetation.
44:25Well, we're right in the middle of the loch, we're in the deepest part of the northern basin,
44:29and what we're looking at is the food source of the fish that live out here.
44:35I'm pulling up through some 30 meters of water.
44:38That's just about down to where the plankton go by day.
44:42They migrate downwards by day.
44:45Here we go.
44:48Well, what's happened, this is actually not a lot of animals in there,
44:51but when you think that that's from about three cubic meters of water,
44:54there's not a lot left, you know, not a lot there to feed on.
44:57So the food supply is very poor.
45:00Because of this limited food supply,
45:02the number of fish living in Loch Ness is surprisingly small for so large a lake.
45:07But there's another possibility.
45:09Migratory salmon which pass through the loch on their way to spawn.
45:14You'll get quite large numbers passing up close on this shore.
45:18And these can be big fish, they can weigh up to 20 or 30 pounds.
45:21And we can work out that at most there will be something like 15 tons of salmon passing through the loch within a monthly period.
45:30That is still not a lot of food to support a population of large predators.
45:34There is only one other plausible explanation for what Nessie might be, a visitor from the sea.
45:42There is one creature, very reptilian in appearance.
45:46It is actually the largest fish you will ever see in freshwater where it eats nothing.
45:54I think it's possible that the tradition itself was begun by Baltic sturgeon making the occasional entrance to the loch,
46:04not finding mates and then going away again.
46:06A large sturgeon could pass in and out of the loch undetected, as could a large eel.
46:14Eels have been known to reach 10 feet in length in the open ocean.
46:19Either one would explain the sonar hits.
46:22But the eyewitnesses don't buy it.
46:25I, along with a friend, was on the south shore of Loch Ness fishing for brown trout.
46:33I saw an object surface.
46:38It was a large black object, a whale-like object, going from infinity up and came round onto a block end.
46:49Retired chief of detectives for Inverness, Ian Cameron, along with seven other people,
46:55reported one of the longest sightings on record, lasting almost an hour.
47:00The nearest thing would be sort of the back of a massive elephant if you cut bits off and replaced it.
47:07Have you ever gone out in the loch on a boat since?
47:10No, I didn't arrive.
47:11I wouldn't go out in a small boat to Loch Ness, but he'd give me the whole heirdom of the north.
47:20Day five.
47:22The loch is flat calm.
47:24A good day for Nessie hunting.
47:27Now this is our last day with Ernie, on the towing side scan.
47:31After that we have to do fixed side scan.
47:34So we've got to make the most of the day.
47:36We've got all our bugs out of our equipment.
47:38By now, Rines has complete faith in his battle-tested sonar team.
47:43The pressure is on the untried camera crew.
47:47You guys got to be ready.
47:49The minute we get that target, come.
47:51Yep.
47:52For today's last push, Rines has decided to focus again on Erkut Bay.
48:10Late in the morning, the boat's fish finder records a target at a depth of 25 meters.
48:31What have you got?
48:32Wow.
48:34What is it about?
48:3510 meters?
48:3620 meters?
48:37What?
48:38About 25 meters.
48:3925 meters.
48:40We might pull that out.
48:42Sonar.
48:43We'll check it.
48:45Charlie, we've got a target on Gordon's authority here.
48:48Helping the side scanner pick it up.
48:50Can you get over here with the cameras?
48:52Right-o.
48:53We're on our way.
48:54Well, I've got two targets in the mid-water area over here on port, about 60, 65 meters.
49:04Are you folks picking up anything now?
49:07Because we find a couple of targets off your port side, maybe about 50 meters.
49:11Get that location again.
49:12Towards us, as fast as you can, please.
49:13The camera flips over if we go too fast.
49:14Pull it out and come over then.
49:15This is the expedition's biggest challenge, imaging a moving target underwater.
49:16Three main targets, and they're spread out.
49:17If they moved off in that port side over to the left, they could probably pick it up
49:18with a camera.
49:19We're getting the mid-water targets here.
49:2018 meters or so to port of us.
49:24Come a fast as you can.
49:49I'm seeing a target. I'm seeing a target that's coming at cold.
49:51Look at the fish. Look at all those fish.
49:55A small number of fish.
49:58Well, that small number of fish may be attracting a lot of predators.
50:04Lonnie says a small number of fish may be followed by some hungry predators.
50:12We saw a small number of fish, but we haven't seen a hungry predator.
50:16What's that?
50:16Minutes later, the target is out of range.
50:21Just when they seem closest to an answer, the team runs out of time.
50:32Wyckoff has learned the hard way that tracking and imaging a moving target in the murky waters of Loch Ness
50:37requires resources well beyond the means of this expedition.
50:42And something even money can't buy.
50:45Luck.
50:46Stay about where you are now from us.
50:53But Rines has achieved his primary goal, finding out if there is still something here.
50:59We certainly weren't arrogant enough to think that we can cover every single spot in this lake and look in there and find a target.
51:08What we did was the most probable things, at least in our judgment.
51:11And if we can intrigue, and if we can intrigue, and I think we have intrigued this new generation to carry on, if there's enough excitement here about what we're doing, we will have accomplished a lot.
51:23I don't think Bob Rines is crazy.
51:24I don't think Bob Rines is crazy, he's obsessed obviously, but I think the obsession is natural, it's a good human instinct.
51:32I think there's something here that needs to be answered, there's something here that needs to be proven.
51:36I think there's something here that needs to be done.
51:43Parts of monsters in Loch Ness demand skepticism,
51:47especially given its long history of hoaxes.
51:53And the evidence from biology and geology
51:55seem to rule out plesiosaurs
51:58or any other large resident predator.
52:02But a lake so deep
52:04could well have a few secrets left.
52:07Someday, a more plausible explanation may emerge.
52:11Perhaps an occasional visitor from the sea.
52:15Until then, the unexplained sonar hits
52:18and the conviction of the eyewitnesses
52:21will keep the legend of Loch Ness alive.
52:27It was just big, I think is the best way to put it.
52:29So it certainly wasn't a seal, it certainly wasn't a fish.
52:32And all I can say is that, I suppose,
52:34that looking at the loch, that something in there
52:36is the Loch Ness monster.
52:38And as far as I'm concerned, I've seen it.
52:41Though I remain convinced of the sincerity
52:44of many of the eyewitnesses,
52:46the majority of sightings are actually boat wakes
52:48and all the other hosts of illusion
52:51that you can get on Loch Ness, particularly on a calm day.
52:56I saw what I saw and I'm not going to be dissuaded.
52:59I know and it wasn't just, you know, an imagination
53:03and I'm a sane guy, I've got no axe to grind.
53:06As I say, I sell pet food.
53:07What use to me is a Loch Ness monster.
53:11Yeah, I could wake up tomorrow and find
53:13that the Loch Ness monster has just crawled ashore
53:15with a large sign saying,
53:16get out, boo, sucks, fooled you again.
53:19Well, it wouldn't be the first time scientists have been wrong.
53:22We've been wrong before, we're going to be wrong again.
53:24And maybe there's something about Loch Ness we don't know after all.
53:31In no way am I even attempting to convert anybody
53:36to the religion of the object in Loch Ness.
53:40But I saw it.
53:41And nothing can take that away.
54:11The gorilla, the Vietnamese pseudo-oryx.
54:18The coelacanth, three animals that no one believed existed
54:22until they surfaced.
54:24Discover more, once mythical creatures, on NOVA's website.
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