Monster hunter's deep obsession with Loch Ness

By REBECCA ROWE

There is no Nessie. At least, I didn't see her during the half hour I spent standing on the shores of Loch Ness, gazing intently into its murky waters, willing whatever was hiding beneath the surface to come up and show itself.

Self-proclaimed Nessie expert Steve Feltham agrees. The Englishman, whose business card says "Monster Hunter", has spent the past 10 years living in a converted mobile library on the shores of the lake searching for evidence of the legendary Loch Ness Monster.

For Feltham, it's not a question of if a creature exists, but how many of them there are. He believes there is no "Nessie" but more likely up to 30 giant sea creatures roaming the loch's mysterious depths. After all, the lake is 39km long and 275m deep in places - room enough for a whole clan of Nessies.

Feltham goes out on the water most days with an echo-sounder to detect traces of underwater life. He claims to have picked up movements in mid-water that are too big to be fish - creatures approximately 3m to 5m long.

Yes, but has he actually seen anything?

"A couple of odd disturbances," he claims. "One was as if a torpedo was going through the bay; all you could see was a wake, as if there was something there bigger than fish."

Such events - not quite sightings - have kept Feltham going in his pursuit of the Loch Ness Monster.

He became fascinated with the loch on his first visit at the age of 7 and felt drawn to the region as an adult. Every second year he travelled almost the length of Britain spending two weeks monster-hunting.

In 1991, he sold his house in Dorset, on England's balmy southern coast, to move to the shores of Loch Ness where winter temperatures dip regularly below freezing and snow often blankets the ground.

The former potter, book-binder and security alarm installer sells Nessie models to support his research and says people who quickly dismiss the idea of a Loch Ness Monster often know little about it.

He points to the many sightings, photographs and scientific experiments carried out at the lake as evidence that something does exist there.

Interestingly, the first reported sighting of a Loch Ness creature occurred in AD565 (long before the modern tourism industry which obviously thrives on the legend), when St Columba, who brought Celtic Christianity to the nearby region of Iona, is believed to have confronted a serpent in the River Ness.

But the first tangible evidence was provided in 1933 with a photo of an S-shaped creature, which one sceptic suggested looked like a dog with a stick in its mouth.

The following year, an English doctor on holiday at Inverness snapped a picture of what apparently showed Nessie's head and neck looming out of the water, then in 1955 a Scottish bank manager provided a photo of a large animal with two humps.

The negative was apparently checked by American photographic technicians who declared it to be original and untouched. The photo also had Inverness' Urquhart Castle in shot, which not only verified the location but provided a scale for estimating the creature's size at about 15m.

This year another alleged photo of the Loch Ness Monster appeared, although Feltham dismisses it as a hoax, saying the ex-newspaper photographer who took the picture was paid about $45,000 by a tabloid newspaper for a shot of what was probably just a stick. "It's not things like that which keep me convinced."

Rather, he points to the fact that over the past 30 years scientific experiments using sonar equipment have picked up blips which are difficult to explain in terms of normal fish life.

In 1968, for example, two academics from the University of Birmingham detected moving objects which did not appear to be fish. Their report was published in New Scientist magazine and reprinted in the annual report of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau that year.

In 1960 an Oxbridge scientific team announced the lake's fish population was adequate to support a large population of predatory animals, while Loch Ness theorists say the existence of prehistoric plesiosaurs is feasible as the lake used to be connected to the sea but was cut off at some point in history, trapping its inhabitants.

One such devotee, an American scientist, spent the past 30 years building a multi-million dollar Nessie-hunting submarine but abandoned his quest last year due to lack of sponsorship. His vessel never made it to Scottish soil, let alone the dark waters of Loch Ness.

There is even an official Loch Ness Monster Club in Scotland, the president of which, according to an English tabloid newspaper, insured himself for about $3 million in 1999 against being attacked by Nessie.

Feltham hasn't gone to such lengths in his quest, although he refuses to put a time limit on his monster-hunting efforts.

"I haven't made that plan yet. A decade is just the beginning of it."

He's gone a wee way towards converting me to the ranks of the Loch Ness Monster believers, however. I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist and would like to think there's some relic of a prehistoric era dwelling beneath the surface of this famous lake.

I was cynical before visiting Loch Ness but its eerie atmosphere encourages belief. Loch Ness has a mysterious feel to it, with towering mountains ringing the dark, peat-stained waters and billowing grey clouds hanging heavily.

I stand at the water's edge a moment longer, savouring the atmosphere and keenly scanning the surface. I catch my breath. Was that a ripple? Possibly, but if there's anything under the surface it's not coming up to reveal itself and give me the satisfaction of a glimpse.

The Loch Ness mystery will remain just that a bit longer.

Case notes

What to see:

Loch Ness is in the Scottish Highlands, where, at 3.45am on May 31 next year you can see an annular eclipse. The Moon will not completely eclipse the Sun, but create a ring-shaped Sun around dawn. Best seen from Inverness, Orkney, Shetland, Banff, Fraserburgh.

The Official Loch Ness Visitor Centre is on the north shore of Loch Ness (on the A82 trunk road from Inverness to Fort William) and is 20 minutes from Inverness train and coach stations.

Ph 00 44 1456 450573, email info@loch-ness-scotland.com

A one-hour cruise on Loch Ness aboard the Royal Scot from Fort Augustus costs £6 ($19) for adults and £3 ($9) for children. A family pass is £16 ($52).

Ph 00 44 1320 366277, email mackenzie@cruise.demon.co.uk

Getting there:

There are no direct scheduled services from New Zealand to Scotland. Use an onward connection from London, Birmingham or Manchester to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness or Aberdeen.

Getting around:

Fast and frequent InterCity rail services travel from all parts of England to many Scottish towns and cities. Once in Scotland there are good connecting ScotRail services, including links to the western seaboard at Oban and Mallaig, and to the north to Thurso and Wick.

A ScotRail shuttle service runs a 50-minute service between Edinburgh and Glasgow every 15 minutes. Other express services link Edinburgh and Glasgow with Stirling, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness.

There are also good bus services and the three-day Explorer Pass for £33 ($100) is ideal for getting around Scotland.

Visit Scotland

Loch Ness