Page 112 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

92 Mysterious Creatures

Nessie for himself. In the middle of the lake,
his binoculars focused clearly on the creature
for 10 minutes, he saw what looked like the
back of an elephant. He shrugs off the skeptics
who say that he merely saw a school of fish or
a trick of the light. He is familiar with the
dwellers of the deep. It was his groundbreak-
ing research on sonar that was used to locate
the Titanic.
In 1972, Rines set up an underwater sound
stage at the lake, designed to trigger lights and
start a camera whenever a large object passed the
station. In 1975, the camera, rigged to roll at one
frame every 45 seconds, captured the image of a
creature that he believes resembles a plesiosaur,
an aquatic, air-breathing dinosaur that should
have been extinct 65 million years ago.

Film crew preparing to marine that he had built to explore the murky In March 1998, Scottish pet food salesman
film a lake monster. depths of Loch Ness. It was on one of his last Richard White won a prize award of $825.00
(ARCHIVES OF runs around the loch that Taylor encountered for the best photograph of the Loch Ness Mon-
BRAD STEIGER) Nessie. The submarine was hovering around a ster of the year. White had been on his way to
depth of 250 feet when he said that he felt the the village of Foyers above the loch when he
craft beginning to turn, unnaturally, “like the noticed an unusual disturbance in the water
secondhand of a clock being pushed backward halfway across the loch toward Urquhart Cas-
by a finger,” he told J. R. Moehringer of the Los tle on the opposite bank. He stopped to take a
Angeles Times (August 16, 1998). Taylor knew took, grabbed his camera, and began snapping
that something had pushed up against the sub- photos of the monster in the water.
marine and turned it around, but he said that it Gary Campbell, president of the Official
didn’t dawn on him that it had been Nessie Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, declared
until he surfaced. White’s photos of “Nessie” to be among the

D. Gordon Tucker, head of the electronic best that he had ever seen. The fact that scien-
engineering department at Birmingham Uni- tists using computer enhancement techniques
versity, and a team of sonar experts did have had been unable to assess exactly what the pic-
better luck finding evidence of Nessie in the tures showed, Campbell said, only added to the
peat-stained loch waters with the special mystery of Loch Ness. Although Nessie is far
equipment that he had developed. During a and away the most famous of all monsters
number of expeditions to the lake (1968–70) inhabiting inland bodies of water, there are
and probing Loch Ness with sonar, Tucker’s reports of equally large, equally strange aquatic
study appeared to provide evidence that a fam- creatures in lakes all over the world.
ily of monsters does indeed inhabit the loch. In
M Delving Deeper
one 13-minute period, Tucker stated, sonar
Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. Alien Animals. Harris-
echoes defined large objects moving underwa-
burg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 1981.
ter. A massive object was recorded swimming
Coleman, Loren. Mysterious America. New York: Par-
at a speed as high as 17 miles per hour and div-
aview, 2002.
ing at a rate of 450 feet a minute. “From the
Dey, Iain. “Monster-hunters Set to Trap Nessie with
evidence we have,” he concluded, “there is
the Net.” The Scotsman, October 30, 2001.
some animal life in the loch whose behavior is
[Online] http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/text_
difficult to reconcile with that of fish.”
only.cfm?id=119742.
In 1971, Bob Rines, a world-renowned Dinsdale, Tim. Loch Ness Monster. 4th ed. Boston:
patent attorney, physicist, and engineer, saw Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.
The Gale Enc y clopedia of the Unusu al and Unexplained