Loch Ness Monster AAP 1975

Triumph at Loch Ness climaxed the June 1975 expedition mounted by the Academy of Applied Science. Added to the team's arsenal of detection equipment was an improved camera-strobe system incorporating new techniques designed to correct some of the technical problems that had hampered the 1972 investigation.

The 1972 apparatus was taken along to serve as an auxiliary system. Both cameras were provided with higher-speed, more sensitive film. The main camera system, which was to be triggered by the sonar, was placed on a bottom ledge at a depth of 80 feet. The backup camera-strobe was suspended from a boat at a level of 40 feet above the primary system.

But the simpler backup system at 40 feet functioned faithfully throughout a 24-hour period beginning late on June 19 and ending late on June 20, shooting frame after frame at preset intervals.

Several pictures show large objects within the strobe light beam. One includes a portion of a pinkish body; another shows what looks like the upper torso, neck and head of a living creature with two stubby appendages.

Sandwiched between shots of eels and fish is a sequence of frames revealing that the camera had been disturbed and set in a violent rocking motion so that at one stage it pointed directly upward and photographed the bottom of the boat.

Then, in the next frame, facing the camera, is the head of the monster-or something resembling an underwater dragon. The head is in half profile, showing nostrils, an open mouth, and several hornlike projections.

A study of the several frames showing body segments suggests a living creature with an overall length of 20 feet, a neck about l 1/2 feet thick, a mouth 9 inches long and 5 inches wide, and horns about 6 inches long, set about 10 inches apart. Other specimens may, of course, be considerably bigger.

Whether or not this manifestation is the famous Loch Ness Monster, it is undeniably an unexplained phenomenon that begs to be explained. (Technology Review, 8:28, 31-40, March-April 1976)

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