The Researcher

The encounter 

“...So I went up to Scotland on the train with a kit bag, hired a boat...no engine, just a pair of oars. And I rode off into the islands. And it was wonderful. It's a very sunny afternoon, I remember it. Now the null driftwood on the shores of these islands untouched by grazing with the granny pines, know, these gnarled and convoluted pine trees, Scots pines. And I remember going out to the furthest island and I camped there. I had a tent, a rather cheap tent, which had its shortcomings later. 

It's a very beautiful loch, much more so than Loch Ness actually. But the mountains close in towards the head of it and there's no road. And there were in my time, there abandoned croft houses staring blankly. 

 And there's something about deserted human habitation that is rather eerie. It sets you a little on edge, perhaps.  

...I'd passed a promenade, and from behind it, I thought, cruised a classic hump. I stopped rowing. It stopped. I thought this is the moment of truth...And then it stopped looking like a hump but took the aspect of a huge, partially submerged head and ripples broke away from the front of it. A stealthy sort of movement in this eerie calm in the dusk. Another moment of truth. But young men are immortal and so I thought this is why I'm here. And I moved in a little more. And it was a rock, two inches tall and about six feet long.”

The project 

“…And I built another little machine, little boat as well with a glass dome in the plexiglass dome in the bow called Pequod, which was Captain Ahab's whaling ship. And you lay down in a sort of coffin looking down through this dome. And there was a helmsman with a two horsepower Yamaha engine at the back and you were shielded and you could see down a hell of a long way.  It was very good. 

So we surveyed the water plants, possible food sources, possible skeletal remains, bones, lots of bones, all sheep and deer, I'm afraid... There wasn't any reptile DNA. Remember, this was Loch Ness and nearly fifty years later. There wasn't any mammal DNA except ours. And there was an awful lot of that. Shows there were too many of us.  

To have cryptids, shall we say, unknown animals, we need lost worlds...There's more water in Loch Ness than in the whole of England and Wales put together. There's a lot of it. But it is not the deepest, the most profound. Loch Morar's over a thousand feet deep. ...So that is its own sort of a lost world.”  

Belief 

“But if people report seeing a big animal in a lake anywhere, it is not ridiculous to go and look for the big animal.  Of course, if you find the big animal, when it's there, maybe it's not interesting anymore. But if you go there and you can't find the big animal, in a way, that's more interesting. 

If you say you have seen a bus, I am likely to believe you and most people would believe you. If you say you've seen a bus full of little green men that have just landed in a spacecraft and moved aboard it then we might begin to wonder. We might begin to wonder about you, we might begin to wonder about perception. Was it dusk? Was it dark? Was it raining? Was it misty? How far away was it? Are you sure? Which is the least useful question of all.   

We try and keep our myths, but we modify them into something more believable as we go along. Most of us do.”