Wednesday 19 February 2014

Review of "River Monsters" Loch Ness Special




Though I suspect most readers have seen Jeremy Wade's "Legend of Loch Ness", the two episode special may be viewed by British viewers for a limited time at ITV's online catch up website. The obvious spoilers will now ensue.

The first episode focused on Loch Ness as Wade attempted to form a picture of what he was looking for by pouring over old reports, speaking to contemporary witnesses (Val Moffat's account from 1990, reproduced below by the show) and local expert, Adrian Shine.  However, the analysis began to take a turn in a certain direction as Jeremy discarded all long necked sightings as irrelevant to the investigation.


Now I have spoken in the past about cherry picking the data to suit one's theory. Admittedly, the sightings database is not a perfect representation of the mystery. It includes unrevealed hoaxes and misidentifications; but it also contains real experiences by people of an object unclassified and unknown. Add to that mix, inaccurate descriptions of the creature (as opposed to misidentified birds, waves, etc) and you see the magnitude of the work.

To this we can add the second unmentioned but discarded class of land sightings. With apologies to Oscar Wilde, to lose one class of sightings may be regarded as a misfortune; but to lose two looks like carelessness. But we defer to Jeremy as he develops his argument.

Having decided the Loch Ness Monster has no long neck, it opened possibilities to our renowned fish catcher. But first, he indulged in a spot of fishing at Loch Ness. Casting his line more in hope than realism, he pulled up a few eels. That surprised me somewhat as I was more expecting char, trout or something else. But a sturdier form of rod would appear later as Jeremy moved on.

Seeking a more ancient route, Jeremy looked at the well known but unknown Pictish Elephant of Highland symbol stones (below). What this might represent has always been a matter of debate, but in this program it is linked to the St. Columba story and then to Norse Mythology. Quite how I am not sure, but it provided the stepping stone to the next episode.



In episode two, it was off to Iceland as Mr. Wade linked the Loch Ness Monster to Norse monsterology. He surmised something that lurks in the cold depths of the North Atlantic could be a creature known to the Vikings and somehow made its way to Loch Ness.

That creature is the Greenland Shark, a twenty foot plus, two thousand pound plus brute that wouldn't think twice about snacking on a polar bear. It is a life largely mysterious to science but it is believed to grow at a slow rate due to the cold and who knows how long it lives for. Armed with sonar and a sturdy 2000 foot line, he attempted to catch one over an indeterminate number of days.



The small dorsal fin is seen as an advantage in Loch Ness Monster morphology as it allows a more hump like appearance on the loch surface. However, the picture above suggests a rather flat back on this shark which does not look capable of presenting the classic "upturned boat" presentation.

One interesting aspect of this creature as they fished for it was its invisibility to their sonar systems. The Greenland Shark possesses no swim bladder to register on sonar and it was plumbing depths of up to 2000 feet below. That made me contrast and compare it to our sonar shy quarry in Loch Ness. Does Nessie have lungs or a swim bladder? Perhaps not, though those flexible humps may contain gas of some description at various times.

Eventually, a smaller 400 pound Greenland Shark was pulled up but was too big to land on the boat. After looking it over, they let it go back. Again, because of its lack of a swim bladder, it was a creature that could be pulled up from the depths without suffering the equivalent of the bends and a ruptured swim bladder.

With that the search concluded. A Nessie sized animal from the seas surrounding Scotland had been suggested and in some ways it was not too dissimilar to the Atlantic Sturgeon theory favoured by more sceptical researchers. Apart from issues around long necks, how would such a creature get into Loch Ness?

This was not discussed, but I would presume they may favour a smaller, juvenile creature swimming in the River Ness. Only seals (and perhaps porpoises) have been proven for sure to make it into the loch from the sea, but no evidence for sturgeons or sharks is forthcoming.

Do I think the Greenland Shark is a credible theory? No, I don't, but in terms of size, weight and cold adaptability, it is perhaps the one animal in the region that comes closest to the large creature that occupies the attention of this blog.











74 comments:

  1. Well scdtics have always said that something large couldnt live in loch ness witjout bin seen regularly, nothing 25ft in length could live deep down and survive the cold depths without bin seen all the time. Here jeremy has prooved them wrong on that count at least !

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  2. Roland, what's the point of discarding long-neck sightings?. Cheers.

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  3. I wasn't particularly bowled over by the River Monsters specials, and I don't think a Greenland shark is a particularly good fit for the sightings - as you note, he avoids this problem by discounting lots of them.
    The idea of a visitor from the sea is obviously an old one - I think Witchell mentions the local MP writing to the Secretary of State for Scotland about how 'some sort of large animal has found its way into Loch Ness' back in the 1930s - and has some attractive elements. I think the best case made I've read is here http://www.strangemag.com/roguenessie.html. Occasional visitors would explain the difficulty of pinning the animals down, and they would not in fact need to be known animals like the Greenland shark - plenty of room in the sea for unknown creatures to hide. Still, based on the strength of the loch-based tradition, the absence of this tradition from most other lochs linked to the sea and the absence of a way in or out that a large animal could stay hidden in, I'm inclined to stick to the resident animal hypothesis...

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    1. Yes, I have read that article. It is possible (and perhaps a component of the general theory). But a centuries old tradition does not discount a more frequent visitor.

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    2. I don't think the two need be mutually exclusive. There have been dozens of reports of "Nessie-like" creatures in the waters around Scotland. I recall reading (can't recall where) that similar creatures were once routinely spotted by fisherman off of Shetland and other islands. Lots of other lochs with sea access (and sea lochs themselves) also have water monster traditions. Rather than each loch having a colony of monsters (and yet none yielding proof) I'd suggest there are marine creatures around these isles who routinely enter lochs (perhaps chasing fish or for spawning purposes) and some might occasionally get trapped. In my opinion, the big Nessie flaps of the 30s and 60s were the result of specimens being trapped in the loch and reaching maturity (and extreme size) there. Quieter periods before, in between and after may be due to these unknown creatures simply not being present or only making brief visits to do their business before returning to the sea.

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    3. It may be possible to suggest that marine creatures routinely enter lochs – but what about places like Arkaig and Lochy (if you give credence to those reports)? I reckon that cryptids could only get in with the special agreement of the Scottish Canals authority.
      Maybe there's some sort of Kondratieff Wave of Nessie sightings. The occasional visitor theory is one explanation, but, as discussed elsewhere, cultural fashions and preoccupations could account for this – not to mention such rude interruptions as World War Two. (And I admit that I want there to be a Resident Nessiteras.)
      I'm trying to work up some kind of theory that will account for the differences in types of sightings between places like the west of Ireland and the Great Glen. Could we actually be seeing some kind of unknown species splitting into two? Maybe the norm was for a beiste / piast to come ashore to a small or large loch / low-lying bog as part of its lifecycle (and that continued in the low-lying parts of Ireland west of the River Shannon). Perhaps similar creatures got trapped in the mountain-bound lochs of the Great Glen because of the more abrupt and catastrophic nature of the changes to the landscape there and somehow adapted. Maybe other deep lochs like Morar, Shiel and Maree were cut off more slowly but once cut off became more like the Great Glen lochs in nature (i.e. encouraging the creatures to spend more time in the water rather than attempting to move on land).

      *AnonStg*

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    4. Kondratieff Wave? Takes me back to my gold and silver investments! Are we in winter or spring? I can't really speak for the other lochs, they seem to come and go.

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    5. Has it occurred to anyone that the waterhorse story was simply a fable to stop children from playing near dangerous water? As I understand it, the story even involves the waterhorse taking children into the water to drown! Could this be the source of the modern day myth?

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    6. See my book on water horses for a fuller answer, but stories of children were in the minority of the repertoire of folklore.

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    7. Of course, it’s a cautionary fable, Geordie; it's like the modern day version of moms scaring their kids if they’ve been naughty that the boogieman is going to get them. Back in the days elders would admonish their children to stay away from the loch for fear of drowning or the real possibility of whatever unknown animal was in the loch attacking them. A myth concocted to explain the real possible threat of whatever unknown creature was believed to be in the loch.

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  4. I was a little frustrated on the emphasis on the St Columba story in order to shoehorn a shark into the focus of his argument.

    The programme was interesting, but I felt it was more a vehicle for Jeremy to pursue a certain quarry than have a decent stab at solving the mystery.

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  5. Now all we need is an explanation of why it's easier to catch a Greenland Shark in a 2000-foot deep fjord than in a 750-foot deep loch.

    *AnonStg*

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    1. Indeed, that was not mentioned either!

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    2. I wanted to say that! Oh well, I'll repeat the two other reasons I've dropped elsewhere since the Wade episode. The Greenland Shark is nearly the SLOWEST swimmer in the sea (does that sound like Nessie?) and they're easily baited with meat on a hook (that lamb carcass mentioned in a later comment would probably have worked if Nessie had been a GLS.)

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    3. Wade said it took "400 rod hours" to hook his shark.

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  6. Just as I suspected, the Greenland shark as the culprit. Like I said before, different “experts” attempt to adapt their expertise to a totally different and unique situation, also they always disregard the most important thread of evidence, eyewitness testimony (the long neck trademark of the LNM) Wade must think, just as so many debunkers before, that if they haven’t seen it with their own eyes, then it can’t be. Perhaps, like GB has suggested, he should stick to catching Monster Fish rather than the monster in the loch. To paraphrase one comment previously posted,"If he’s looking for the LNM, why is he doing it elsewhere!"

    To Geordie Sceptic: On second thought, I don't think you are the anonymous skeptic I hand in mind .The one I was referring to had a smug, condescending, and sarcastic tone to his comments and they were sometimes short one liners. You don't sound like that. There has to be another or other anonymous skeptics. If I offended you, please accept my apologies.

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    1. Your description does sound like me at my worst I'm afraid.

      I never get offended unless someone sets out to deliberately do it. Besides, we're discussing a monster in a lake (or not), so there's no reason for anyone to get too serious.

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    2. Ok, We'll leave it there. Welcome to the blog.

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  7. It seems to me that it should be relatively easy to prove Jeremy Wade's theory. If you can catch a Greenland Shark in a Norwegian fiord, then - if Nessie is in fact a Greenland Shark - you should be able to catch one in Loch Ness using the same method Wade used in Norway.

    Paddy

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  8. Has anyone ever tried fishing for nessie?

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    1. Not in any special way I am aware of. One or two bloggers have suggested a sturdy line with an electric charge running down it jsut to make sure. :)

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    2. I've certainly read accounts of attempts to fish for Nessie, ranging from the semi sane (fish used as bait), to the ludicrous (sheep carcass on a giant iron hook).

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    3. Even if one did by chance snag a mature Nessie with hook and line, can you imagine trying to land it on a boat. It would probably be like reeling in a killer whale! "We're gonna need a bigger boat skipper!"

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    4. Impossible to land without stunning it somehow and dragging it ashore.

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  9. Anyone been able to determine how a Greenland Shark could survive in a freshwater environment? As far as I know, the list of shark species able to live in freshwater is quite small and doesn't include the Greenland Shark or any others in the same genera.

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    1. Hmmm, good point. Perhaps we should airlift one into Loch Ness to find out!

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  10. It's not long at all since the time Loch Ness was a solid glacier, therefore any unknown animal in there would have to be either (a) identical to an animal from the fossil record of that time; or (b) almost identical due to the relatively very short time since, or (c) identical to an animal alive today.
    There simply have not been enough years since the ice for an animal species to have significantly altered through the natural selection process.
    Discuss.

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    1. What adaptations do you deem necessary?

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    2. My point here is that whatever theory is put forward, the animal proposed needs to basically be virtually identical to a known animal because the loch was pure ice 12,000 years ago, and that's virtually the blink of an eye on the evolutionary scale.
      So you need a known animal which can survive 5 degrees centigrade, can breathe water, has at least one hump and something resembling a long neck with a head on the end. It also needs to be able to swim fast and be comfortable enough out of water to deliberately go onto land occasionally.
      See the problem here?

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    3. Do you believe in Punctuated Equilibrium?

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    4. I'd like you to come up with anything in the fossil records anywhere in the world which indicates a significant evolutionary change in a species over a 12,000 year timescale. There are no examples of anything like this.

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    5. I agree, with the proviso that the animal in question need not be known to science. One possible scenario is that something like Heuvelmans' long-necked seal got into the loch via the River Ness and bred there. Meanwhile it may or may not have gone extinct in the oceans.

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    6. Ever heard of the thailasine (not sure on the spelling), the Tasmanian Tiger, died out only 70odd years ago. Believed to only live in Tasmania, why then is there a cave painting of it in the Northern Territory?????? Possibly an Aboriginal travelled from Tasmania across Bass Strait then walked across the Australian centre to the NT and painted it.!!!??? Highly unlikely an Aboriginal would bother traversing a death desert from a life giving abundant Forrest to paint ONE picture of an animal only found on an island that is still only accessible by risking life.

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    7. Michael, you're wrong about our long lost Thylacine. It lived in Tasmania, Continental Australia and New Guinea.

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  11. Once again, I must thank you, Roland. I just lost my elderly Pug dog, and upon reading the words "Greenland shark", I had my first hearty LOL in days. My brain is still in that weird state of confusion and scatteredness that comes with grief, so even trying to contemplate this just messed me all up. I can get down with the pros and cons on the debates regarding The Creature being a large sturgeon, an enormous eel, and even the giant salamander theory has gained some credence with me, the more I read about it. But, seriously, a weird, obscure shark, with no explanation as to how or why it got there? As you lovely lot like to say; is he taking the piss??

    Never stop, my Internet friend. The world needs you and your blog, in more ways than they, or you, even realize. Thank you for renewing my interest/faith, and for being here to take my mind off my troubles when I need it.

    Yours In Nessiana,

    Storm

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    1. Glad to help, Storm. Commiserations on your loss (as one dog owner to another).

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    2. Thanks, really. I never realized how very quiet this place is without a Pug snorting and carrying on, but I'm getting used to it.

      So hey, Discovery Channel played this program on Sunday night, with the silly new name, "Loch Ness: The Original Cryptid". I set my DVR for it, unaware that it was this same show you'd posted about; I've never seen "River Monsters", so I didn't recognize the presenter at all. It took me about 15 minutes to realize, "Oh, for the love of Bowie, this has GOT to be that show/guy!" It really was just silly; the lengths that he went to and leaps of logic made in trying to find a "real" creature that could possibly look anything like Nessie are just as ridiculous as some of those made by "true believers" over the years, yet somehow worse, because he was SO VERY SERIOUS, dismissing every other theory or possibility as impossible while presenting the most ridiculous candidate/theory I've ever heard. The insulting derision with which he treated the people of the Highlands and their history was as infuriating as it was absurd; Scotland was invaded by Vikings, Vikings saw a lot of monstrous things in the water between Norway, Scotland, and Iceland, Vikings told the Picts about them, and that's where kelpie legends came from? Local ancient legends concerning water creatures can and should be discarded because they weren't written down, but the Norse did, so they must know better? I'm just a third gen Scottish-American, and it pissed me right off, so I commend you for your patience and tact in your review, being a Glasgow Boy and all.

      As the kids over there say: it was PANTS!

      Yours In Nessiana,

      Storm

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    3. I am sceptical on everything I read but I can't disregard something just because the native peoples did not "write". Obviously facts are distorted over time, "especially considering no written evidence" although the bible is full of bullshit and was written at least a thousand years after the fact, and considering the Australian Aboriginals are the oldest continueous civilisation on the planet , 'they didn't write. How can we disregard myth,' no matter how old'just because it wasn't written and considering cultures such as the Chinese ie, medicines, just because it started before the written word. What if the Loch didn't freeze to the bottom or it became shallower from rock moving with the ice settling in the Loch. Or, was the ocean higher for a short period after thawing.......????? Also I have read that there are some small gaps under the surface of the Loch that could lead to the sea that a juvenile monster could possibly have moved through 'some time in the past'. I live in Australia and have no scientific training but I have spent a lot of time in the bush and have seen things with a witness that science does not answer and regardless of what anyone says we know what we both saw. I will NEVER disregard legend completely 'most are planted by some truth' and I can never disregard the possibility of the unknown. We can't say 100% that ufos are all fake and we can never disregard the natural environment can be crazier than fiction. The Loch has secrets as the ocean always will have. Maybe exaggeration has distorted the truth but ALL myths lie with an element of truth.

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  12. Adapt from salt water to freshwater.

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    1. I speculated on that some time back. The ice age sheets I believe were made mainly of fresh water and when they melted that may have created areas of brackish/fresh water which would allow salt water creatures to approach and adapt into over the millenia that the ice melted.

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    2. But the fact remains - favourable genetic mutation is a very rare event, and hence the evolutionary process is incredibly slow. Even if a sea creature adapted to tolerate fresh water it would in essence remain the same in other respects over 12000 years. So you have to pick a saltwater animal that is known and fits the bill. Otherwise your only option is a creature which moved into LN while simultaneously disappearing from the sea and also leaving no fossil records.
      So any theory cannot be a completely new animal, such as a giant water-breathing seal type animal which has grown a long neck. There hasn't been enough time for an exotic new species to develop.
      Still waiting for Roland's propsed species description.....

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    3. Well, adaption may not be necessary for fresh/salt. Salmon, trout and eels can function in both, why not other species?

      Also, mutations may already be in the DNA accumulated over ages and can be switched on/off.

      This species is new to science, so how do you expect me to describe it?

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    4. That's vmy point. A solid ice loch 12000 years ago says it isn't a species new to science.

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    5. And there's the freshwater powan in Loch Lomond, which was open to the sea maybe 6000 - 7000 years ago.Not sure quite how different this is from the saltwater herring, but maybe someone can explain.

      *AnonStg*

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    6. Well there are species of whale new to science, but that doesn't mean new to nature. Fossils in significant enough numbers for us to find take many tens or I should say hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate, so there is room for "old" species to still be too "young" to turn up as fossils.

      I agree whatever species is in the Loch today has to look almost exactly identical to what it looked like 12,000 BP. Punctuated Evolution is real, and very important, but even that can't work morphological miracles in 12000 years. By "miracles" I mean doubling the number of vertebrae or completely losing (or adding) limbs. Some things though like skin color are very plastic, and most species can change coloration in just a few generations to suit a change in habitat.

      Now Roland has brought up something important: some animals do carry extra DNA blueprints, pre-adaptations as it were, and the right environmental nudge can trip the right genetic switch. A marine animal might not be able to adapt to fresh water overnight (and 12000 is genetically overnight) nor would it work the other way. But an animal adapted to brackish water already has more than one mechanism in place, and might well make the leap to either an exclusively fresh water or an exclusively marine environment in what would appear to be a geologically short period. It's not being asked to evolve something new, only to suppress one mechanism it already had in favor of another mechanism it was already using.

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    7. *AnonStg*, the powan is locally called a "freshwater herring" but it is actually a whitefish in the family Salmonidae, not a freshwater version of a herring species (family Clupeidae). So it's not a case of a saltwater fish adapting to freshwater.

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    8. Thanks for putting me right on that. It's easy to spot the non-scientist.
      Re Loch Lomond, I was looking through MacFarlane's Geographical Collections (1767) -- fascinating set of volumes -- yesterday and found the following:
      "Of Loch Lomond there is no mention in ancient writers. For Ptolemy marks only the arm of the sea. It is then the largest of several bays on the coast."
      Now it really couldn't have been part of the sea at this late stage -- could it?

      *AnonStg*

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    9. And thanks for confusing me with a real scientist :) Hey, I just look this stuff up on the Internet. Although I couldn't find when Loch Lomond was last connected to the sea, dang it. Surely not in Ptolemy's time though -- the Roman's had already invaded Briton by then.

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    10. Still, could be some surprises from Roman times. It may not have been possible to take a "Ferry cross the Mersey". They listed various English rivers, but not that one. Some think that the current broad estuary was an inland lake which reached the sea via Chester. And before they reached Loch Lomond they had run into some serious trouble from the local Nats. Could Ptolemy have been relying on reports of traders from hundreds of years earlier?
      Also, to tip people off that an article on a possible Loch Lomond monster appeared in the Winter 2013/14 issue of the "Scottish Local History" magazine. Although the author, John Mitchell, has done more detailed and interesting work on the area in the past this was really a fairly flimsy rehash of things said before. Not sure why he published it, unless Internet Poster Syndrome is now spreading to the regular media. Basically:
      1. The Waves Without Wind &c. routine
      2. Reference from Macfarlane
      3. Someone saw something in 1964
      4. There's an American kids' book called "The Loch Lomond Monster" – and she eats peanut butter and honey sandwiches [Sub-text: Well, what do you expect from the Yanks? ;) ]

      *AnonStg*

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    11. Bronze Whaler crossed with the Bull shark,,,,,,,, now kills more people in Australia than the Great White. All because of the man made canals. It and it's adaption parents use freshwater to breed and give birth.

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  13. How does anybody know how long it can take an animal to adapt? What a load of rubbish. Guess work thats all. Looks like we have a bunch of know alls on here. Hilarious .

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    1. The albino crabs of Lanzarote are a great example of an animal adapted to a unique environment. The crabs are endemic to (only found in) a lake on the north-east corner of the island of Lanzarote in the Spanish Canaries.

      The lake is found in part of a 4km lava tunnel created by molten lava from a volcanic eruption about 4,000 years ago. The lake at Jameos del Agua is the habitat of the pale white crabs, which are completely blind.

      The crabs' colourless appearance and blindness is due to the lack of sunlight in the tunnel. Because of a lack of predators the bottom of the lake is densely populated by the crabs which have no camouflage and no need to hide from view.

      This change in the physiology of the crabs has only happened in the last 4000 years or so, since the crabs became cut off from the sea and trapped in an underground lake.

      I have personally visited this place on one of my holidays and it is very much a fact and not anybody's guesswork Mr. Anonymous

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    2. Interesting, Pete. Makes me think about the LNM and its possibly diminished eyesight over time in the peaty darkness.

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    3. I was wondering about information on the relative clarity of water in different lochs / lakes. There's a World Lake Database ( http://wldb.ilec.or.jp/ ) which gives certain other information on various inland waters. Nothing obvious on the Scottish Natural Heritage site.

      *AnonStg*

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    4. I surely meant to type "Punctuated Equilibrium" in my last post -- my apologies to Stephen Jay Gould.

      Now on a small scale paralleling this topic, we have the tiny blind Olm (Proteus anguinus), once thought to be baby dragons. Its salamander ancestor moved into the Alps only 10,000 years ago, hot on the heels of the the glacial retreat. They got trapped in lightless underground river systems and rapidly evolved into the only European cave salamander of today. It adapted to a fully aquatic life cycle through neoteny. It has nearly lost its limbs. It lost all pigmentation. It lost its eyesight, but its senses of smell and hearing became acutely developed. A lot to get done in only 10,000 years!

      Come to think of it, any species colonizing that "peaty darkness" of Ness around the same time should probably be expected to have, by now, developed that extra sensitivity to sound attributed to Nessie.

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    5. Secchi disk tests have been done at Loch Ness, not sure what their answer was, may have been 10 feet before the white disk disappeared, not sure.

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    6. Sometimes I wonder if a population of creatures could have staggered on in certain Scottish lochs into historic times before succumbing to some peculiar disease of orns or amphibiians. I'm thinking of Lomond in particular. Who knows if lack of water clarity might even have been a protective element against such? So many possibilities and 'unknown unknowns'.
      Viva Pickled Nessie!

      *AnonStg*

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    7. I've read somewhere that on one of the occasions that a camera was deployed on the bottom of loch ness a strange looking, small white creature was momentarily in full view before moving out of shot. I can't remember where I read about and saw this video but if my memory serves me right the creature in question was spider/crab like in form. Do you know anything more about this GB as it sounds similar in some way to the Lanzarote cave albino crabs.

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    8. Ah, you mean the "white mice" episode? I don't recall any being captured for identification, some thought them to be small fish like charr.

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    9. And by contrast, the Secchi disc reading was 42 feet at Loch Morar (recorded by the 1903 Bathymetric survey). Now Morag reputedly shows none of Nessie's aversion to engine noise, even approaching, chasing, and in one famous case overtaking and ramming a boat while under power and doing 6 knots (McDonell/Simpson encounter, 1969).

      If you start with two populations of the same species adapting for 10,000 years to two different Lochs, one dark and peaty and the other crystal clear, one could expect those in the first Loch to develop more acute hearing and turn out much more sensitive to sound than those in the second Loch. And lo and behold, that is one of the characteristic differences between reports from Loch Ness and reports from Loch Morar. Coincidence? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

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    10. I expect the creature in the dark and peaty Loch to evolve poor vision,so popping up to look around may not be worthwhile.Maybe this is the explanation for long neck sightings being rare.Or perhaps the neck is a tail.
      Jack.

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  14. I agree with you pete. Thats exactly my point. Doooooohhhh..

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    1. Perhaps you are in the wrong forum dude as you seem to have some difficulty understanding the debate but using the anonymous profile isn't really a clever move to hide your real name as it's obviously Homer Simpson.

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  15. No i think you need to read it properly or maybe get to specsavers dooooooohhh

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    1. Funnily enough I went to Specsavers yesterday lol. No problems found. They are experts after all.

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  16. I think the point he is making is that people assume that creatures need so much time to adapt but nobody really knows how long certain creatures take! I agree with him , so pete i suggest you follow the conversation instead of squabbling like a schoolboy !!

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    1. And the point I am making is that this adaption time is known in certain species. His comment of "How does anybody know how long it can take an animal to adapt?" is the smoking gun to his ignorance John (at least you have the sincerity to use a named profile). Some may call it squabbling but as I always say this is a blog with points for debate.

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  17. Agreed. Amphibians can adapt very quickly. I read about some frogs somewhere that were introduced to kill off certain insects. At first they couldnt jump high enough to catch them, withiin a few months their legs grew longer so they were able to catch them. Maybe a head and neck could do the same........food for thought .

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    1. In other words, don't underestimate what nature can achieve!

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    2. Yes GB, the adapt or die switch in a creatures genetics can be quite successful sometimes.

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  18. OK - at least a year too late by all accounts.... I really liked the program as it is the only sensible look at the issue. So first - no long necks - basically the plesiosaur which is rightly identified as a reptile that would have to surface on a frequent basis for air. Skip to the end. I never heard Jeremy say there was a Greenland Shark in Loch Ness, what he did say was that this shark was part of the Viking Legends and that these legends would have followed them to Scotland. There was a takeaway thought that one of these creatures could have entered the loch from the sea (sharks seem to habitually check out freshwater habitats and survive) and not got out. This sole specimen may already be dead.

    One interesting point, the woman "over turned boat" witness I caught on another program on the subject as a born again Long Necker! Whatever pays the bills eh!

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  19. Something almost unrelated to this programme, but I've been struggling to pin a name to the Pictish Elephant, and then I remembered the animal from Morar, and the painting of said animal. It saddens me to know that science does not accept eyewitness reports, and certainly I don't think they are the be all and end all. But the gentleman who instructed the artist in the reproduction was either lying or telling the truth. And if he was lying, I struggle to think how he could come up with such an odd thing. We see 'what we know' almost by nature, and this was none of those things.

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  20. After watching this episode AGAIN. Has anyone thought that maybe it could be what in China they call the Chinese Sea serpent.

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