The Traveling Ridleys: Sunday Journal

By Melissa

There is a 50-minute boat tour of Loch Ness out of the cute little town of Fort Augustus.  We were already heading there to walk around so decided to take the tour as a kind of “why not, we’re here” thing.  It was super good.  It was beautiful, but everything here is so stunningly beautiful that you become saturated with it.  Beauty definitely does not need to be sought out.  Sunny, now that’s a coup.  Some of the nicest weather of our entire highlands tour was on that boat.  The proper word to describe the experience though was fascinating. 

A local expert on the loch narrated as we cruised and, unfortunately, I tuned him out at first.  It was a pretty big boat, and he was kind of hard to hear.  But I caught a few interesting facts and decided to make more of an effort.  I learned that the Loch Ness Monster or “Nessie” is very real and is not a single creature but many that lurk 75 meters below the surface.  They know they exist; they can spot them on the boat’s sonar.  They spotted several on our brief cruise.  Here’s the thing, the water it literally black.  Lock Ness is shaped like a giant bathtub into which all the sediment from the surrounding mountains drains.  It is so thick sunlight can’t penetrate it, so it always stays very cold (40 degrees Fahrenheit) and very dark.  In that way, it mimics the conditions on the ocean floor, which is much much deeper, miles deeper.  What survives in both places is largely a mystery and there are likely to be many species unknown to man.

You would think that identifing species a mere 75 meters down would be much more doable than surveying the ocean floor, but they haven’t been able to do it and it’s not for lack of trying.  Since the 1930s, they have tried everything from the practical to the absurd, submarines to dynamite, but the sub couldn’t see a thing in the black silt water and, well, dynamite didn’t fare any better. 

The most promising lead came in 2018 when scientists from a university in New Zealand collected DNA samples.  They found that the loch was teeming with DNA of the Giant European Eel whose habitat is the adjacent North Sea.  These suckers can get big, five plus meters, and who knows how big in the unique deep of the loch.  However, there are other interesting species thriving as well.  The Arctic Char is a saltwater fish that, it is believed, 12,000 years ago when the movement of glaciers created the loch and it transformed from salt water to fresh water, inexplicably adapted and survived.  This saltwater fish still lives in the loch and, as our guide informed us, “is a creature that just shouldn’t be here.”  Perhaps most fascinating is what the researchers didn’t find.  They collected some 280 DNA samples for which there is no known match. 

Coincidentally, the following weekend scientists from all over the world gathered to, once again, monster hunt.  This attempt marked the largest search ever.  Our guide, convinced of the existence of these sea creatures, hoped that they would come up empty. He loves the mystery and I guess I agree.  These mystical creatures, the things of legend, once found, would become just another species.  As a former sceptic, I now say, just because humans can’t find something doesn’t mean it’s not there.