Someone Might Have Found a Really Big Hole at the Bottom of Loch Ness. Nessie Confirmed!

A sonar reading may have revealed a previously unknown trench at the bottom of Loch Ness. The trench is conceivably big enough to hide a monster in, which is the only worthwhile unit of measurement as far as I’m concerned.

Ye Olde Big Trench was uncovered by Keith Stewart who, it’s worth mentioning, is also the skipper of a Lock Ness tourist sightseeing boat. Stewart told The Telegraph,

I wasn’t really a believer of the monster beforehand. But two weeks ago, I got a sonar image of what looked like a long object with a hump lying at the bottom. It wasn’t there when I scanned the loch bed later. That intrigued me and then I found this dark shape about half way between the Clansman Hotel and Drumnadrochit which transpired to be a crevice or trench. I measured it with our state of the art 3D equipment at 889 feet. I have gone back several times over the abyss and I have verified my measurements. It is only about a few hundred yards offshore whereas previous sonar searches have traditionally been down the middle of the loch. Searches of the monster have also been in those areas as well as Urquhart Bay so maybe the local legends of underwater caves connecting Loch Ness to other lochs and perhaps even the waters of the east and west coast are true […] It is possible that an underwater earthquake has opened this up in recent times.

If the readings on the crevice (dubbed “Keith’s Abyss” by Stewart’s colleagues) are accurate, they’ll reflect a new deepest point for the loch, which was previously thought to have a maximum depth of 754 feet.

Gary Campbell, president of Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, told The Telegraph:

We thought the loch was 810 feet deep and just had a 20 foot diameter hole at the bottom. Now we’ve discovered a whole trench that makes the loch nearly 900 feet deep which is twice the depth of the North Sea. There could be more trenches which make it deeper.

However, Adrian Shine, a naturalist with the Loch Ness Project, says it’s highly possible these new findings are incorrect:

I would be cautious [about Mr Stewart’s findings] because there is an anomaly which occurs with sonar readings taken close to the side walls called lobe echos, which can give misleading results about the depth. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated your sonar equipment is, you can still get this anomaly.

I’m trying to remain healthily cynical about this discovery, but the truth is, it’s way more fun to believe. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies, etc., etc., plus I don’t begrudge the Inverness tourist industry doing what it can to, in this case literally, keep business afloat. Hooray for big holes!

(via Gizmodo)

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