One of the latest installments in the ever-growing saga of the Loch Ness Monster is photos taken in 2018  recently shared which show something in the water of Loch Ness. The thing in question is difficult to identify but appears to be moving as it has a wake behind it, and the eye-witness describes it as “moving right to left at a steady speed … [i]t was spinning and rolling at times.”

The eye-witness in question, Chie Kelly, says she did not make the photos public for fear of ridicule. A fear that many people have justified by ridiculing her. Or accusing her of faking the photos. All very predictable. See, there are a number of things that happen when Nessie make it into the press each year, and here I’ll break this down:

The Nessie Community turns on itself 

There is so much infighting within the online Nessie communities at times like this. I think it’s a shame because there sits a group of people with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Loch Ness, who if they worked together, could answer the mystery of what exactly this photos shows. Perhaps they don’t want to?

People want to solve the mystery but don’t know how 

The golden rule for solving ghost and monster mysteries is to keep it simple. Although it can be tempting to let your imagination run wild, the simplest solutions are almost always the correct answer, so start with those. Lay out what you already know and more often than not, the knowledge gaps fill themselves in.

Instead, when Nessie makes the news, people rush in with wild theories about what’s in a photo – theories that often have very little evidential basis to them. I’ve seen it suggested that this could be a deflating inflatable raft or an otter sitting on a ray. These suggestions may not be as farfetched as the idea that a dinosaur survives in the Loch, but they’re still pretty wild…

People over-rely on the photo/s 

The photos are a part of the mystery as they do not clearly show what’s in the water. This does not stop people from zooming in on the photo – to the point that the photo quality is distorted, in the hope that they’ll find a pixel that tells them the answer. In reality, any further detail that emerges from zooming in on a photo to the point that it is pixelated is likely to come from the pareidolia effect.

People moan how this sort of thing is the downfall of humanity 

People thinking there’s a Loch Ness Monster is everything that’s wrong with society, according to some. Now, I am a skeptic who investigates ghosts and monster mysteries and I’ve been doing this for decades. I understand how sometimes it can be difficult to understand how someone can believe something that, to you, is clearly not true. However, people who are offended by belief in a monster might need to gain some perspective. I mean… have you seen the world lately?

People who benefit from Nessie publicity forget they have something to gain

Some people have made a name for themselves through association with the Loch Ness Monster story. Sometimes, they promote these stories and then act affronted when people question the alleged evidence being presented. For example, Steve Feltham, who has led a decades-long vigil for Nessie from his van on Dores Beach, convinced Chie Kelly to go to the press with these photos. Was this an altruistic act from a monster investigator, or an attempt to keep the limelight on the Loch Ness story?

So, what’s the deal? 

The woman who took these 2018 photos says “We never saw a head or neck. After a couple of minutes, it just disappeared and we never saw it again.” I personally think it is most likely that they saw a large sturgeon in the Loch. The photos were taken in August 2018 and Sturgeon migrate into fresh water in late Summer and early Autumn to mate, before heading back out to coastal waters. Sturgeon can grow very large – the Atlantic and European sturgeon, which are native to the UK, can grow up to 5 meters in length. (Source)

Most importantly though, we have to acknowledge the fact that we’ll probably not know for sure what the photo shows but something being currently unexplained does not mean it is unexplainable. It’s okay to not know, but it’s not okay to fill in those knowledge gaps with whatever version of reality suits you the most.