The mysterious and beautiful Loch Ness

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

The many shots we took while on or around Loch Ness last weekend are now online and available to view on our Flickr pages or here.

Those of you who have Flickr accounts, and are noted on our account as ‘friends and family’ will be able to see every single photo; those of you who have yet to open (free) Flickr accounts, or find ’spicycauldron’ thereon and notify us to add you in as friend or family, will be able to see over ninety per cent of the pics. If you want in to see all our photos, just join Flickr and then find us on there, we’ll add you in ASAP (assuming we know you, of course, as the reason some pics are private is we don’t want everyone in the world to see them!).

We didn’t see Nessie unfortunately but we came away having concluded the creature is likely to be a catfish not dissimilar to the one we used to own, the African Walking Catfish, only much bigger. Catfish tend to be shy, can grow to huge sizes, and occasionally rise to the surface for a quick gulp of air before returning to the very bottom of lakes and pools.

It was explained to us that the Loch does not support life that a predatory animal could feed on below a certain level, but while we were out on the water several sonar blips were detected from our boat below the accepted ‘life zone’ and apparently these are very common. A catfish would make sense; it could easily spend the majority of its time where no other creature chooses to live, at the very bottom, eating whatever falls down there. No physical evidence has ever been found, and, again, this points for us to the catfish as it would fall to the bottom when dead and likely be eaten by its fellows.

Loch Ness is composed of freshwater. Visibility beneath the surface is poor owing to the huge concentrations of peat, making everything murky and brown. Again, this soup seems ideal for catfish. The loch is shaped like a giant bath tub, with no shallows to speak of.

It was a rainy, misty day when we visited Loch Ness but that only added to the atmosphere and enhanced the beautiful scenery. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

You never know, maybe there’s a hint of Nessie in one of our many pics of the loch, and the castle! That said, the creature is normally seen first thing in the morning or last thing before nightfall (again, pointing to catfish behaviour in our view), although the part of the loch we travelled around by boat was the area where sightings are reported.

The loch is unimaginably huge. Nothing could have prepared us for just how impressive it is to view, and the two exhibition centres nearby (one devoted to the ‘monster’ and the other the history and biology of the Loch) told the story of how this vast body of water developed, how it supports life, and what the reports of monsters might be all about, plus when they all started (as far as anyone knows).