Loch Ness ‘monster’ caught on video?
by David Catchpoole
After Andy Fox, sxc.hu
Note: The above photo is a fake; a composite of Loch Ness and a plesiosaur illustration
put together by CMI staff.
Click
here to view larger.
(If anyone ever does succeed in taking a genuine photo showing a plesiosaur-like
‘monster’ with such clarity, it would cause an absolute sensation!)
To view the actual video footage captured by Gordon Holmes referred to in this article,
visit the websites identified in Ref. 1 or
Ref. 2
A 55-year-old laboratory technician visiting Loch Ness has reportedly captured on
video ‘the finest footage ever taken of the elusive mythical creature reputed
to swim beneath the waters of Scotland’s most mysterious lake.’1,2
Gordon Holmes, from Yorkshire, UK, recalls the moment he sighted and videoed the
creature:
‘I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45
feet (15 metres) long, moving fairly fast in the water,’ he said. ‘My
initial thought is it could be a very big eel, they have serpent-like features and
they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years.’
Marine biologist Adrian Shine of the Loch Ness 2000 centre said of the video: ‘I
see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep
an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage
I have seen.’
There have been more than 4,000 purported ‘Loch Ness Monster’ sightings
since the 1930s. Shine said that this video is particularly useful because Holmes
panned back in order to include the background shore in some of the footage. Not
only does that mean that the video was less likely to be a fake, it also provided
a scale and geographical reference point, thus allowing an assessment of the creature’s
size and speed.
However, the cloudiness of the lake’s water is such that it’s not clear
whether the creature caught on video has
the plesiosaur-like features so often mentioned in reported sightings of large unexplained
animals in various lakes in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
It’s happened before
Most evolutionists are quick to dismiss any such references to plesiosaurs, as they
insist such creatures vanished 65 million years ago, along with the dinosaurs.
However, contrast this with the Bible’s thousands-of-years timeframe for the
true history of Earth. There’s really no basis for dismissing the possibility
that plesiosaurs are not yet extinct.
After all, evolutionists had said the coelacanth, too, had been extinct for 65 million
years, on the basis of their long-age interpretation of the ‘fossil record’.
Yet the coelacanth is now known to be alive and well, with
fishermen in African and Asian waters periodically hauling live specimens to the
surface.
US researchers only recently began ‘the huge task of scanning every murky
inch of Loch Ness’s rocky bottom’, reportedly hoping ‘to prove
once and for all’ if the ‘Loch Ness monster’ really exists
The fact that the coelacanth and many other so-called
living fossils are alive today is beautifully in line with the creationist
interpretation of the ‘fossil record’. That is, it’s mostly a
legacy of the global Flood of just a few thousand years ago (Genesis 6–9), reflecting the order of burial in that
event. Contrast that with the evolutionists’ claim that it is a ‘record’
of the order of evolution (’appearance’) and extinction (’disappearance’)
over hundreds of millions of years. Surely any rational person can see the creationist
interpretation makes much more sense.
Just as it would have been wrong to say that the coelacanth was extinct
because none had been found, similarly how can anyone claim that the plesiosaur
is extinct just because none have been found? The world’s oceans are vast.
Even today, after decades of oceanic surveys and research using the latest technology,
previously unknown creatures
of the deep are periodically brought to the surface in fishermen’s
nets, or swim past the camera lenses of deep-water research probes, much to the
surprise and delight of marine biologists.
In the Scottish loch itself, US researchers only recently began ‘the huge
task of scanning every murky inch of Loch Ness’s rocky bottom’, reportedly
hoping ‘to prove once and for all’ if the ‘Loch Ness monster’
really exists.3
As yet, there’s no sign of any ‘monster’ but the researchers have
already made one very unexpected discovery, which highlights just how little we
know about life in the deep waters (up to about 230 m (750 ft)) of the Loch.
‘Miraculous’ amphibian
At a depth of nearly 100 m (the reported figure was 324 ft) the sonar video fitted
to a remotely operated underwater vehicle captured an image of ‘a Bufo bufo
toad happily hopping along the loch’s ancient4 bed’.
Bufo bufo, widely known as the common toad, normally lives in shallow ponds—yet
here it was, seemingly thriving 100 metres down. Scientists worldwide are said to
be amazed at the discovery of an air-breathing insect-eating creature at such a
depth.
Aberdeen University Professor John Watson commented, ‘This toad find was most
unexpected—and we are now trying to establish how it can survive down there.’
‘This has given some of our team hope that the larger animals of Loch Ness may also
still be alive and hibernating.’—Robert Rines, Leader of the US research team
currently surveying Loch Ness.
Leader of the US research team, Robert Rines, said: ‘It was inexplicably and
miraculously alive and active. The existence of this very much alive toad at this
depth has excited and bewildered the scientific community. This has given some of
our team hope that the larger animals of Loch Ness may also still be alive and hibernating.’
Larger animals? Such as an ‘elusive giant reptile’ perhaps? Indeed,
the article in the Daily Mail reported that ‘the scientists believe
that finding a toad at such depths means large reptiles could easily exist even
deeper.’
Or perhaps even shallower, given the many ‘sightings’ of unidentified
creatures/objects breaking the lake’s surface from time to time, the latest
being the one captured on Gordon Holmes’s video footage.
Less likely than aliens?
Interestingly, British bookmakers William Hill are currently (mid-2007) offering
odds of 250–1 that proof of the Loch Ness monster’s existence will be
found.5 Yet
they recently slashed their odds for the discovery of extraterrestrial life down
to 100–1 following the reported discovery of a potentially inhabitable extrasolar
planet.6 In other
words, they’re saying that discovering ‘Nessie’ is less
likely than discovering alien life! Surely that is a measure of the extent to which
evolutionary presuppositions have become mainstream in Britain (and elsewhere in
the West), displacing what until recently had generally been a more biblically-centred
worldview. (See Gary Bates’s
article which explains why people who know and trust the Bible are able to resist
popular notions about life on other planets.)
If, with the collection of more conclusive evidence over time, it turns out that
a large aquatic reptile previously thought to have been extinct for millions of
years is in fact still alive and well in the waters of Loch Ness, it will doubtless
surprise many evolutionists. But it ought be no surprise for creationists. It will
simply have become one more in a long list of (so-called) ‘living fossils’.
Recommended Resources
References
- CNN.com, Fabled monster caught on video, <www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/
05/31/britain.lochness.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories>,
acc. 5 June 2007. [Video footage can be viewed at that website.]
Return to Text.
- FOXNews.com,
Tourist says he’s shot video of Loch Ness Monster, acc. 5 July 2007. [Video
footage can be viewed at that website.] Return to Text.
- Simpson, A., The Loch Ness toad—scientists stunned as ‘miraculous’
amphibian is found 324 ft down, Daily Mail (UK), Thursday 3 May 2007, p. 37.
Return to Text.
- Of course, we would say that to describe the loch’s
bed as ‘ancient’ is misleading, carrying with it today’s connotations
of millions of years, whereas, in common with much of the rest of the world’s
topography, the loch’s present shape is likely to be very much as it was at
the end of the Flood, around 4,500 years ago. (No part of the earth, or anywhere
in the universe for that matter, can be any more ‘ancient’ than the
date of Creation—around 6,000 years ago. Return to Text.
-
Bookmaker offers Loch Ness reward, ABC News Online, 5 June 2007.
Return to Text.
-
British bookies scared of aliens, ABC News Online, 26 April 2007.
Return to Text.
Published: 20 July 2007 (GMT+10)
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