Underwater Sonar Robot Discovers A Real Loch Ness Monster (Prop) (discovery.com)

A Norwegian oil company is finally performing a sonar scan on the bottom of Loch Ness, creating a high-resolution map of the Scottish lake that's reputed to contain a mysterious lake monster. "Operation Groundtruth" will be using a marine robot named Munin, and they've already identified a 27-foot-long shipwreck and disproved rumors of a 27-foot-long "Nessie trench" where the cryptid creature could be hiding. The Scottish tourism agency has issued a press release about the robot's discovery of a life-sized model of the Loch Ness monster used in a 1970 film, which had sunk during the filming more than 45 years ago. "The agency's statement said 'Nessie found'," reports Discovery News, "with an asterisk at the bottom reading 'replica model'."

Comments

Ping

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! Call CNN! This could be the MH370!

Nessie

[ledow]

Apart from the obvious all-encompassing bollocks that is Nessie (including destroying quite a nice loch with crap tourism shite):

This kind of calls in question all the viability, and highlights the pointlessness, of all the previous "Nessie searches" that didn't even find a 45-foot prop that we knew roughly where it was.

Re:Nessie

[Alomex]

destroying quite a nice loch with crap tourism shite

Destroying? Not that there's any hyperbole there or anything.

Re:Nessie

[peragrin]

NO but it is as deep as a shallow one, with the max death around 750' and it sits only 50' above ocean level.

There are a few lakes in the world that are deep like that, what they suffer form is the tools needed to explore the depths are too big for the boats that can fit on those lakes.

this has only changed in recent years.

Re:Nessie

[mccalli]

Massively disagree with 'destroying'. I've taken the family to the Nessie museum twice, a few years apart, and both times I was impressed by the attitude there. They go to great pains to show that Nessie isn't any of the things normally attributed to it (not a plesiosaur because the landmass is in the wrong place for the time of the plesiosaurs, not a large whale or similar, not a large mammal at all because of unusually low fish density due to the waters being clogged with peat etc., etc.), and they also show all the fakes and take you through how it was done.

They don't really come out on the side of Nessie existing at all in fact. I think that's an excellent attitude for such a museum to have, and I was impressed both times. The monster is treated as a bit of fun, and nothing else.

Cameras Everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that almost everyone is walking around with a camera these days means that if Nessie is real there should be an increase in new pictures of her roughly equivalent to the increased proportion of camera-hours (the number of hours that people with cameras or mounted video cameras are watching) around Loch Ness. I don't keep up on cryptozoology news, but a quick search didn't indicate any headlines to that effect. So it's likely Nessie doesn't exist (or has died I suppose).

This same logic applies to Big Foot, aliens (the number of amateur astronomers pointing CCDs up at the sky these days is amazing), ghosts, etc. I don't have much hope that logic will change many minds though.

Re:Surely you mean MH17...

[OzPeter]

Cause MH17 and MH370 are actually the same plane.

It's all a conspiracy by CIA and secret reptilian government to discredit Putin and thus prevent him from his crane-leading endeavors.

My god .. the stupidity of that site is unbounded. And I could refute many of their "points" just by looking at the same evidence that they were presenting.

Re:Replica?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Ye cannae have a 'replica model' of something that (probably) does not exist.

Damnit, don't get all "facty" and everything!!

Re:Replica?

[tom229]

Considering that nessie is supposed to be a plesiosaurs, of which we have skeletal evidence, you certainly could create a replica that would satisfy your pedantic definition.