WEBVTT - Season 07 Episode 03: Under Black Water (Pt.2 of 2) 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:13.440 You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained, 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:25.600 Season seven, episode three, Under black Water one late December 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.319 night in nineteen thirty eight, at the mouth of Shlumna Bay, 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:33.640 just off the coast of South Africa, Captain Hendrik Goosen 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.839 smokes a cigarette on the bridge of his fishing trawler 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:42.360 than the rhine reflections from the stars of southern constellations 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:45.960 sparkle and the calm otion waters as he watches the 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:50.720 crew haul in the ship's nets. Just then, his eye 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.360 is momentarily caught by the sudden appearance of an oddly 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:58.520 bluish colored fin amid the thrashing of fish and shark 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.720 caught in the nets. But with so much work to 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:04.920 be done, the captain thinks little more of it as 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:08.040 he finishes off his cigarette and heads down to help 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:13.480 his men on the deck. The next morning, Marjorie Courtney Latimer, 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.800 a curator of natural history at a small museum in 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:21.600 the port town of East London on South Africa's Eastern Cape, 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:27.000 receives a phone call a local fishing trawler manager wants 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:29.119 to know if she is interested in taking a look 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:33.399 at a strange fish that has just been brought in 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:35.640 an hour or so later, she was stood on the 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.319 deck of the Nerhine scouring the mound of dead fish 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:44.840 and sharks until she spots it, an unusual bluey gray 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:49.560 finn poking out of one of the piles. About one 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:53.000 and a half meters long. The fish was heavily scaled, 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:59.080 its fins, rough and stocky, almost limb like. One fisher 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:03.640 standing nearby tells Courtney Latimer that in more than thirty 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:07.240 years of fishing around the world, he's never seen anything 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:12.000 like it. In fact, nobody was thought to have ever 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:14.800 seen anything like it, since it was the post of 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:20.639 gone extinct sixty six million years ago. The fish was 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:24.440 a sealercanth. All that had been founded them prior to 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:28.680 then were fossils dating from four hundred to sixty six 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:32.079 million years ago, at which point they were assumed to 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:36.320 have gone extinct with the dinosaurs. Finding a living one 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.840 was like finding a Tyrannosaurus Rex wandering around your garden. 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.240 It was a rare instance of what is sometimes called 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:50.560 a Lazarus taxon, meaning a taxonomic group that disappeared from 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:56.600 the fossil record, only to mysteriously reappear again. Then, in 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:01.520 nineteen fifty two, a second was found near the Comoros Islands, 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:05.520 just to the east of Mozambique in Africa, and soon 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.240 some began to wonder if there were any other unknown 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:13.080 species still out there, waiting to be discovered in the 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:17.760 deep waters of the world's lonelier corners, lurking under the 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:25.200 nose of modern civilization. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:37.440 Richard McLean Smith. In nineteen fifty seven, author Constance White 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:41.600 published the book More Than a Legend, The Story of 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:45.240 the Lochness Monster. It spoke to the zeitgeist of the 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:49.520 emerging times with its renewed fascination in the possible existence 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:53.280 of cryptid creatures, fueled by the finding of the second 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:59.080 living selacanth. Extant monster sightings were also now being reported. 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:04.160 Bigfoot stories were emerging from America, and tales of the 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:09.640 Yeti emerged from the Himalayas. In her book, Constance White 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:14.360 cataloged around eighty sightings of the apparent Lochness Monster from 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:19.440 multiple witnesses, some corroborated by other observers who had apparently 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:25.359 seen the same thing simultaneously from nearby locations. Flat, calm 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.800 water and hot days were the most favorable conditions, with 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:33.479 hot spots for sightings tending to be where rivers ran 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.320 into the loch. Temple Pier on the north side of 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:41.760 Urkut Bay was the scene of hundreds of reports, while 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.640 Alexander Ross, the former peer master there, claimed to have 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:50.640 seen the creature at least fifteen times himself. On the 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:56.080 fourteenth of July nineteen fifty one, local woodsmen Lochland Stewart, 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:00.000 was clearing trees one hundred feet above the shore where 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.920 when he claimed to have spotted a humped object moving 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.080 fast up the loch. The picture he got with his 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:11.360 box camera showed three angular blackish humps, each about five 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:15.680 foot long and three feet out of the water. A 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.800 long neck with a sheep sized head was then said 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:23.440 to have appeared momentarily before it feared away with much splashing. 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:29.080 Constance White took a stab at creating a composite picture 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:32.919 of so called NeSSI from the multitude of reports and 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:37.840 photographs describing the creature as being anywhere from twenty to 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:42.039 fifty feet long, with a bulky body, a dark elephant 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:47.160 like skin, up to seven humps, a long snakelike neck, 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.680 a small flat head which had two horn like structures, 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:56.680 a long, blunt ended tail, two pairs of powerful flippers, 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:00.080 and the ability to swim at up to thirty miles 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:05.640 per hour. Many people thought it resembled at Plesiosore, mostly 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.479 on account of the famed surgeon's photo. As documented in 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:14.320 the first part of this episode. White postulated that the 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.920 creature had possibly got into the lock during the melting 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:22.680 of the last ice age. The nineteen fifties were a 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:26.359 time when most people got their entertainment from the radio 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:31.279 and books. Television was a luxury available to only a few, 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:35.400 but with the dawning of the nineteen sixties, small black 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:39.920 and white television sets started appearing in more and more homes. 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:44.839 Natural history was a popular topic for programming in these 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:49.040 changing times. Theories about the Lochness Monster, for those who 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:52.920 gave credence to the sightings, began to diverge into two 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:57.839 distinct camps, one that believed the creature was some kind 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:02.279 of supernatural phenomenon, and the other who preferred to take 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:16.400 a more scientific approach. It was the start of the 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:21.440 Easter weekend in April nineteen sixty when Tim Dinsdale arrived 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:26.440 at Lochness trained as an aeronautical engineer, but bored in 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.040 his job at Heathrow Airport. Dinsdale was excited to be 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:35.320 on holiday pursuing his true passion, searching for the Lochness Monster. 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.640 He spent his days driving along the shore road with 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:43.480 a Bolex Ciney camera loaded with sixteen millimeter black and 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.680 white film, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. That 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.920 was until the last day of his week long trip. 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:55.760 It was some time around eight thirty a m. When 0:07:55.840 --> 0:08:00.560 Dinsdale spotted a humped object around thirteen hundred year from 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:05.480 the shore. Dinsdale filmed the object in bursts, tracking it 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:09.200 for about four minutes as it carved a zigzag course 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.440 across the loch's surface before it disappeared into a patch 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:18.720 of dark water. A short time later, Dinsdale screened the 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.240 film for a gathering of top zoologists at London Zoo, 0:08:22.840 --> 0:08:27.800 converting skeptics into believers in the process. Among them was 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.720 a man named Peter Scott. Scott was the son of 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:36.240 famed explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who died in Antarctica in 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:40.200 nineteen twelve during a failed expedition to become the first 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:44.400 person to reach the South Pole. At the time, Peter 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.680 Scott was a respected ornithologist and conservationist who would go 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:52.560 on to help establish the Worldwide Fund for Nature, among 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:57.480 other notable achievements. In nineteen sixty he was perhaps best 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:02.080 known for presenting the BBC's natural life history show called Look. 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:08.119 In June, a still from Tim Dinsdale's film was published 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:13.000 in the British Daily Mail newspaper, while Dinsdale also appeared 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:17.280 on BBC News, and soon after he was introduced to 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:22.400 Peter Scott. Having been impressed by Dinsdale, Scott, who was 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:26.000 well known to the royal family, visited the Queen and 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:30.200 assured her that Dinsdale was onto something. The hunt for 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:36.160 Nessie was back on. One zoologist in particular, decided to 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:41.120 go all out for direct proof of Nessie's existence. Retired 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:45.840 senior zoologist at London's Natural History Museum, Dr Morris Burton, 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:50.720 knew that NeSSI could not be a plesiosaur. According to him, 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.640 even if some of these cold blooded creatures had somehow 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:59.200 survived the mass dinosaur extinctions sixty six million years ago, 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:04.160 they would not survive in Lockness's chilly waters. As a 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:08.280 first step, Burton brought together a team of scientists who 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.400 spent two weeks on the lock in a dinghy. They 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:15.240 measured the distances over which eyewitness reports had been made 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:20.000 to test whether human visual acuity could match the details relayed. 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.280 Their analysis of the data revealed that many of the 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:30.160 reports were simply beyond the realms of physical possibility. Next, 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:35.160 Burton and his team decided to try something altogether more practical. 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:39.560 In previous zoological hunting trips off the coast of Cornwall, 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.719 in the southwest of England, they'd found that dragging a 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:47.880 net containing rotting fish guts seasoned liberally with pilchered oil 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:53.360 was wonderfully effective at attracting sharks. How could such a treat, 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:57.400 they thought, fail to bring Nessie up from the debts. 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:02.960 Despite numerous efforts, however, the supposed monster refused to take 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:08.040 the bait. Burton concluded that in the most part NeSSI 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:13.080 was nothing more than rafts of decaying vegetation seen floating 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:16.200 on the surface of the loch, but it did little 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:27.640 to deter the true believers. In July nineteen sixty two, 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:33.120 David James, a former navyman turned politician, launched an expedition 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:37.640 for which he enlisted Lieutenant Colonel H. G. Hassler, a 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:42.679 hero of British World War II naval operations. The campaign 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:47.560 began in true military style with a scouting expedition. The 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:50.600 loch was swept from end to end with a sonar 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:55.640 curtain using echo location that spanned its width and plumbed 0:11:55.679 --> 0:12:00.600 its full depths. Three objects too big to be large 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:06.599 fish were discovered under the water, and so on October thirteenth, 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:12.400 the full assault began. Urkott Bay, located two thirds of 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:15.679 the way up on the lock's northern shore, was selected 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:20.080 as the key point of interest. There, David James and 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.360 an eighteen strong team set up a number of search 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:28.040 lights to rove across the bay after dark. When night descended, 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.800 the lights were switched on and swept across the black 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.160 water as the team kept watch for any sign of 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:41.040 unusual activity. Then, on James's signal, sticks of jellyg night 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:45.040 were lit and dropped into the water, and moments later 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:50.240 they exploded, sending huge plumes of water shooting into the air, 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.880 the idea being to try and scare anything lurking down 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:58.840 there up to the surface. The test was repeated for 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:01.920 a number of days, with only a few dead fish 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:06.640 and glimpses of familiar terrified living ones to show for it, 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:13.800 but then on October nineteenth, something else was spotted. As 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.280 the blast from another round of jellignite rang out, one 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:20.640 of the search teams spotted a vast shoal of salmon 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:24.880 thrashing about on the water's surface, about two hundred yards 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.600 from Temple Pier on the northern side of the bay, 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:33.240 and right behind them was a long, indeterminate shape roughly 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.760 ten feet in length that appeared to be chasing them. 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:41.920 This moment was captured on film by former naval seamen 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:46.560 John Luff. In all his years at sea, Luff said 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:51.480 he'd never seen anything like it. The Royal Air Force's 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:57.120 own Central Reconnaissance Establishment examined Luff's footage frame by frame, 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.560 concluding that it showed about eight feet of something dark 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:05.800 and glistening, which was not a wave effect, but rather 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:12.160 something with solidity. After also examining the evidence, a panel 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:16.400 comprised of members of the UK's Royal Society picked by 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:21.480 zoologist Peter Scott also concluded that there was indeed something 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:26.200 real there that would require more rigorous study. By then, 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:30.880 Scott had also spent some time actively searching for the creature. 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:35.560 In nineteen sixty three, he led three gliders in survey 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:39.440 flights over the loch, but the pilots failed to spot anything. 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:43.800 The same year, in the summer, David James and his 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:48.120 retired military helpers returned to the loch for a second time, 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:53.600 hoping to collect irrefutable proof of Nessi's existence. This time, 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:57.920 the team mounted two thirty five millimeter cameras on opposite 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.680 sides of the loch. The night before their mission was 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:05.920 due to start, a school teacher reported a convincing Nessy 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:10.280 sighting not far from Urkutt Castle, where the team were based. 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.480 It seemed like a good omen, but no sooner had 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.560 the cameras been started up, a mist crept across the loch, 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:24.280 limiting visibility to a hundred yards. Over the next six months, 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:28.600 there were just fifteen clear days in which David James 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:32.480 and his team captured nothing of note, and for the 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:37.400 best part of a decade no further credible sightings were reported. 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:49.280 One sunny day in June nineteen seventy two, wealthy American 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:53.880 lawyer and inventor Robert Rhines was enjoying tea and scones 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:57.840 with his friends Winifred and Basil Carey at their home 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:03.880 overlooking Urkut Bay. The China cups and saucers clinked daintily 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:07.880 on the terrace as Winifred poured out the tea. When 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.760 suddenly there was a disturbance in the water about half 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:16.920 a mile off shore. Basil hurried to fetch his brass telescope, 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:21.320 through which they all in turn observed a darkish hump 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:27.320 about twenty feet long gliding through the water. The American 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:33.000 Robert Rhines was transfixed. From that day on he became 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:37.840 obsessed with the possibility of the Loch ness Monster. The 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.280 following year, he returned to the loch, this time with 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:45.440 a hundred thousand dollars of equipment, which included two fully 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:50.920 start vessels, a sixteen millimeter underwater camera, and most crucially, 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:54.640 a sonar unit which would alert the team if a 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:59.680 large object passed in front of the camera lens. Rhines 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:04.720 the equipment positioned on an underwater ridge just off Temple Pier, 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:09.000 where frequent sightings of NeSSI had been reported, while his 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.760 two vessels, the Nan and the Narwal, hunted for the 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:18.240 creature on the surface. At one thirty am on August eighth, 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:23.440 nineteen seventy three, the waters were deathly still as Peter Davis, 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.960 captain of the Narwal, fought to stay awake on the 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:31.679 night watch. Ten minutes later, he was jolted from semi 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:35.680 sleep when the water's surface began to boil with turbulence. 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:39.800 Shining his torch over the side, Davis could just make 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.200 out the thrashing and leaping bodies of a large run 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:47.439 of salmon dashing past the boat. Davis rushed to the 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:51.760 bridge and checked the sonar. The fish appeared as pinpoints, 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.879 rapidly turning into flashing streaks as they sped away like 0:17:55.960 --> 0:18:01.200 a storm of shooting stars. Then something else, much larger 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:05.639 and denser, began to take form. Davis felt a surge 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:10.040 of excitement at the sheer size of it. The excitement 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:12.840 soon turned to fear, however, when he climbed into the 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.879 Narwal's small tender boat to alert the crew of the 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:20.040 Nan who controlled the underwater camera. With the prospect of 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.800 a very large animal moving about in the water just 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:29.399 thirty feet below him, with trembling hands, he cast off 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:33.919 and began to row. Before long, he'd made it the 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:37.480 forty meters across to the Nan, and the cameras were 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:42.760 promptly turned on Later that morning, the film was recovered 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:47.360 and sent to New York to be developed. Meanwhile, Rhines 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.800 and his team were left to pore over the sonar traces, 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:55.400 concluding that the large, dense object was an aquatic animal 0:18:56.160 --> 0:19:00.159 estimated to be between twenty to thirty feet long, with 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:13.920 appendages as much as ten feet long. When the photos 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.840 came back from New York, Robert Ryanes was disappointed to 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:21.720 find that almost two thousand frames of the developed footage 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:26.480 showed nothing but blackness. But then on four of the 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:31.200 frames was the hazy outline of something large and solid. 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.919 Encouraged by the images, Ryans had the frames sent to 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:40.880 a contact who worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:45.960 There they ran the images through the same computerized enhancement 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:51.120 that NASA used on images from space missions. The result 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:55.480 was four high definition black and white images which seemed 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:58.880 to show the clear outline of a massive object under 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:02.760 the water. Ryanes and his team were most excited by 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:06.440 the fourth image, which appeared to show a diamond shaped, 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:11.320 mottled thing with a central rib estimated to be six 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:15.280 feet long and two feet across. It looked like a 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:20.920 giant flipper. Unlike that of any known living aquatic animal. 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:26.040 With this sensational piece of new evidence to hand, Rhyanes 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:29.919 had the images published in the American news magazine Time 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:36.000 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies in house journal Technology Review. 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:42.160 In nineteen seventy five, Ryanes met naturalist Peter Scott, by 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:46.080 which time he'd collected even more images of the supposed creature. 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:51.359 One frame depicted a long, slender structure curving up from 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:57.040 a bulbous shape which had two angular flipperlike protuberances. A 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:01.879 second showed a seemingly organic man pock marked with deep 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:08.280 shadows with two peculiar stalklike projections for an ecstatic rhymes. 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:12.720 The first image was clearly the creature's torso, and the 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:17.000 second was the creature's face looking straight at the camera, 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:23.399 the deepest pool of shadow apparently its open mouth. Peter 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:29.080 Scott was intrigued, but soon afterwards five senior scientists from 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:34.280 the Natural History Museum in London, including experts in zoology, fish, 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:39.920 paleontology and fossil reptiles, concluded there was nothing to suggest 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:43.720 there really was an unknown giant animal in the photographs. 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:48.080 The apparent torso, they said, was more likely to be 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:52.080 a large log or a swarm of midge lava appearing 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.879 as a solid mass, while the apparent image of the 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:59.840 creature's head was more likely that of a dead horse. 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:04.520 By then, Peter Scott had become the president of the 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:08.800 World Wildlife Fund. Despite the debunking of the so called 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:13.600 NeSSI evidence by most in mainstream science, Scott was so 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:18.880 convinced the creature existed that he proposed the WWF adopt 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:22.600 NeSSI as a real creature and even use it as 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:27.280 their new logo. After all, if it were real, it 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:30.200 would prove to be a prime example of a previously 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:35.680 undiscovered species poised on the brink of extinction, the perfect 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:41.320 emblem for endangered animals across the globe. Scott also proposed 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:47.680 a scientific name for it, Nessiterus Rombopteryx NeSSI, from loch 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:54.520 ness Terras meaning marvel, rombo meaning diamond shape, and terix 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:59.520 meaning wing or fin. A paper by Scott and Rhines 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:03.959 dis describing the creature was even published by the journal Nature. 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:09.800 Within months, however, Ryan's images reached a wider audience and 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:14.840 a strong consensusubmerged among the experts that its creature was 0:23:14.880 --> 0:23:19.800 nothing more than a collection of inanimate objects. Nature was 0:23:19.840 --> 0:23:31.600 eventually forced to publish a retraction. In May nineteen seventy seven, 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:37.320 the self described wizard, psychic magician, and monster watcher Anthony 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:41.399 Dock Shields arrived at Lochness with members of a group 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:46.440 known as Psychic seven International. Together, they stripped off their 0:23:46.480 --> 0:23:50.320 clothes and stood by the locke, chanting for the apparent 0:23:50.440 --> 0:23:55.680 monster to reveal itself, though nothing happened. A short time later, 0:23:55.920 --> 0:23:59.600 as they trushed back to their cars, Shields and some 0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:03.560 other men members of the group reportedly saw three humps 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:07.919 gliding through the water towards Fort Augustus at the southern 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:11.760 end of the loch. Shields had a reputation for being 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:15.240 a prankster and would later create a series of hoax 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:19.960 photographs of the loch Ness Monster. He insisted, however, that 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:24.280 this first sighting was genuine, as an advocate of the 0:24:24.280 --> 0:24:28.320 theory that the monster was some kind of supernatural entity 0:24:28.720 --> 0:24:32.680 inadvertently brought to the lock by Aleister Crowley's unfinished a 0:24:32.760 --> 0:24:36.959 cult ritual back in eighteen ninety nine, it came as 0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:41.120 little surprised to him that soon after his first apparent sighting, 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:44.200 he and his family had a run of bad luck. 0:24:45.119 --> 0:24:48.920 Shields himself was set upon by a mob while in Plymouth, 0:24:49.200 --> 0:24:53.800 where his beard was later somehow accidentally set on fire. 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:58.160 One daughter was thrown off a horse, while the other 0:24:58.600 --> 0:25:03.280 was stricken with abdominal pains, and his son was involved 0:25:03.280 --> 0:25:08.480 in a motorbike crash. Soon after, perhaps partially due to 0:25:08.560 --> 0:25:13.600 shields hoax photographs, interest and the Lochness Monster began to 0:25:13.680 --> 0:25:18.600 wane once again. Then, in the mid nineteen nineties, the 0:25:18.680 --> 0:25:23.879 apparent monster's existence was struck another giant blow when a 0:25:23.920 --> 0:25:35.199 man called Maurice Chambers died. Maurice Chambers had been a 0:25:35.240 --> 0:25:39.200 good friend of Marmaduke weather Or, actor and big game 0:25:39.280 --> 0:25:43.119 hunter hired by The Daily Mail back in nineteen thirty 0:25:43.160 --> 0:25:47.760 four to hunt NeSSI. He'd even accompanied weather All on 0:25:47.840 --> 0:25:51.359 that trip, where the hunter not only failed to find 0:25:51.400 --> 0:25:56.520 the monster but presented fake footprints of the creature. After 0:25:56.600 --> 0:26:01.640 Maurice Chambers's death, his personal papers came to light. They 0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:06.240 contained a stunning revelation about the most famous Nessy image 0:26:06.280 --> 0:26:11.280 of all, the so called Surgeon's photograph from nineteen thirty four. 0:26:12.560 --> 0:26:17.720 As it transpired. According to Maurice Chambers's papers, Marmaduke whether 0:26:17.800 --> 0:26:21.399 All had been badly hurt by the ridicule and humiliation 0:26:21.640 --> 0:26:24.320 he suffered at the hands of the Daily Mail in 0:26:24.400 --> 0:26:27.119 the wake of his flimsy efforts to convince the world 0:26:27.440 --> 0:26:32.840 he'd found evidence of the Lochness Monster, and he wanted revenge. 0:26:33.119 --> 0:26:37.120 At some point in nineteen thirty three, Marmaduke whether All 0:26:37.520 --> 0:26:41.760 persuaded his step son, Christian Spurling, who happened to be 0:26:41.800 --> 0:26:45.800 a sculptor, to help him construct a believable model of 0:26:45.840 --> 0:26:50.919 the monster. More than happy to play along, Spurling first 0:26:51.000 --> 0:26:55.520 bought a toy submarine, then, after fashioning a long necked 0:26:55.560 --> 0:26:58.480 beast out of putty, he placed it on top of 0:26:58.520 --> 0:27:02.520 the sub so that its head neck protruded thirty centimeters 0:27:02.560 --> 0:27:06.080 above the water. Whether All then placed the model in 0:27:06.119 --> 0:27:10.119 a quiet cove and photographed it from a convincing distance. 0:27:11.080 --> 0:27:14.280 For the last step in the ruse. Whether All then 0:27:14.400 --> 0:27:17.719 passed the fake photos to a surgeon friend of his, 0:27:18.440 --> 0:27:22.960 Robert Kenneth Wilson. Knowing that Wilson's status as a physician 0:27:23.320 --> 0:27:28.320 would lend credibility to the story. A keen, practical joker himself, 0:27:28.600 --> 0:27:33.640 Wilson agreed to act as the hoaxes. Respectable but anonymous frontman. 0:27:34.600 --> 0:27:38.280 The rest was history, and all the men had been 0:27:38.320 --> 0:27:42.320 prepared to take their secret to the grave. Were it 0:27:42.400 --> 0:27:46.440 not for the discovery of Chambers's papers, the truth about 0:27:46.480 --> 0:27:58.119 the pictures might have forever remained unknown. A few years 0:27:58.200 --> 0:28:01.400 after the truth about the Surgeons photo came to light, 0:28:02.000 --> 0:28:06.520 twenty first century science would deliver a seemingly final, crushing 0:28:06.560 --> 0:28:11.280 blow to the existence of NeSSI. The rapidly evolving techniques 0:28:11.440 --> 0:28:15.720 of DNA analysis now means that unknown creatures can be 0:28:15.800 --> 0:28:20.080 identified by more than just blood and bones. In the 0:28:20.119 --> 0:28:24.680 early two thousands, Brian Sykes, a professor of human genetics 0:28:24.720 --> 0:28:28.520 at Oxford University, found a way to extract and analyze 0:28:28.640 --> 0:28:33.200 DNA from hair samples, which he applied to alleged Bigfoot 0:28:33.240 --> 0:28:38.000 and Yetty hair collected across North America and Asia. The 0:28:38.120 --> 0:28:43.040 DNA evidence showed only wild and domestic animals, already well 0:28:43.080 --> 0:28:46.680 known and local to the sites where the hair samples 0:28:46.720 --> 0:28:52.840 had been found. In twenty nineteen, genetics professor Neil Gemmel 0:28:53.040 --> 0:28:57.320 from New Zealand's University of Otago announced the results of 0:28:57.360 --> 0:29:01.600 genetically profiling two hundred and fifty one water samples taken 0:29:01.680 --> 0:29:06.760 from the Edges Centre and very depths of Lochness. His 0:29:06.880 --> 0:29:11.480 team's analysis of this so called environmental DNA showed all 0:29:11.520 --> 0:29:15.000 the fish and other freshwater species that you'd expect to 0:29:15.040 --> 0:29:19.000 find there, along with the DNA from familiar land based 0:29:19.040 --> 0:29:23.240 animals that lived around the loch. There was no evidence 0:29:23.320 --> 0:29:28.200 of an unknown species or a giant sturgeon, the most 0:29:28.240 --> 0:29:33.640 often quoted likely cause of Lockness Monster reports. But what 0:29:33.720 --> 0:29:39.600 the team did find was eel DNA in abundance. To date, 0:29:40.080 --> 0:29:43.480 the largest eel ever found measured no more than ten 0:29:43.560 --> 0:29:48.880 feet long. But in Professor Gemmill's conclusions, he stated, we 0:29:49.000 --> 0:29:54.000 can't discount the possibility that there maybe giant eels in Lochness, 0:29:54.680 --> 0:29:59.360 adding as a geneticist, I think about mutations and natural 0:29:59.440 --> 0:30:05.520 variation a lot, and it seems not impossible that something 0:30:05.600 --> 0:30:12.560 could grow to an unusual size. Tantalizingly, Gemmel made one 0:30:12.680 --> 0:30:17.800 final remark, given the vast volume of water in Lochness 0:30:18.400 --> 0:30:23.720 and that environmental DNA signals in water dissipate quickly, there 0:30:23.760 --> 0:30:27.680 remains the possibility there is something present that we did 0:30:27.720 --> 0:30:34.480 not detect. Nonetheless, sightings that the Lockness Monster continue as 0:30:34.520 --> 0:30:39.280 recently as June seventeenth, twenty twenty three, a French pharmacist 0:30:39.320 --> 0:30:45.720 from Leon, holidaying by Lockness, photographed what looked like a mysterious, long, 0:30:45.840 --> 0:30:51.000 shadowy shape moving through the water. What continues to cause 0:30:51.000 --> 0:30:59.680 such sightings remains unexplained. This episode was written by Diane 0:30:59.720 --> 0:31:06.120 Hope and produced by Richard mc lain smith. Unexplained is 0:31:06.120 --> 0:31:10.479 an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard mc lean smith. 0:31:11.160 --> 0:31:14.400 All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are 0:31:14.440 --> 0:31:18.800 also produced by me Richard mc lean smith. Unexplained. The 0:31:18.800 --> 0:31:22.520 book and audiobook, with stories never before featured on the show, 0:31:22.960 --> 0:31:26.280 is now available to buy world wide. You can purchase 0:31:26.320 --> 0:31:31.400 from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please 0:31:31.440 --> 0:31:35.040 subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, 0:31:35.320 --> 0:31:37.640 and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts 0:31:37.720 --> 0:31:40.840