New Enhanced Nessie Video
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 6th, 2007
The first two moving gifs are enhancements of the Gordon Holmes Nessie video done by Bill Appleton.
The following photo frame and drawing from that frame are newly posted by Gordon Holmes.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
It`s not an Otter, could it be a mystery ziphiid that entered the Loch from the sea?
Yes I agree it’s not an otter from what I see.
It’s also not ziphiid as mentioned above, a ziphiid if a type of beaked whale. It does have the right nose but the rest of the ziphiids body is too large, fat! To be what’s on film here.
From what I see it looks most like a serpent of some kind. During the video it bobs its head up and turns it slightly. At that moment when its head is out of the water, its head seems to resemble that of a snake.
Though this could be wrong, when you look at the outline picture it seems to get wider towards the back. Which would suggest it consists of a large body and a long neck, like an otter, only the neck is too long!
Though this thickness of the body could just be shadows, and then there could be the possibility that it’s a snake.
I look forward to seeing what other people think of the new enhanced footage.
The solidity of the core and the regularity of the outline (with well-defined, non-jagged edges that move as a unit at a good clip through water for 30 seconds) makes it hard to imagine this could be a congeries of separate animals, like eels or a train of otters.
There seems to be regular flipper action. Hard to dismiss. Intense photo analysis by neutrals is warranted.
Also, a Request For Comment to scientists worldwide should be issued by some Normals’ Asylum, like the Royal Society. Maybe there’s some oddball wave-action pattern that could explain this. Or maybe the swimming-tool toy of some lakeside robotics Mad Scientist made a bid for freedom.
Or maybe …
One Word SQUID!!!!!! Nothing MORE
If anything, the second of the enhancements (which is done at the actual speed, is it not?) serves to reinforce the seal-eel-otter explanation for this — the other enhancement and the two images, make no impression on me whatsoever; I just don’t see that they demonstrate anything… and I readily admit that I do wear contacts.
Just my two cents.
Looking at the second enhancement, again, the head-neck seems to be a trick of light reflecting on the water….
Another penny.
I can definitely see a large mouth open and close.
Looking at the enhancement one more time, said “trick” repeats near the end of the last frame… interesting… but I can’t say it’s conclusive.
Last penny. Promise.
I agree with elsanto in that I think what people are seeing as heads, necks, and flippers is actually the creature’s image distorted by rolling waves. That being said, I don’t think that prevents this footage from possibly being authentic.
To me, this looks like the swimming action of one of the diving, fishing ducks such as a merganser or goosander when they are preening and forcing water over their backs
It certainly does look like something pulling itself along in fits and starts, ducking its head under the water, a small head on a flexible neck.
Cormorant, Diver?
I think that it is common to over estimate the size of anything moving in open water, and such details as a long thin beak could be lost in the resolution.
To me, personally, it just says ‘water bird’
If there are a lot of fits and starts, that would raise the suspicion it was being pulled by a long, thin tow-line. But I think there is only one major hesitation, before it breeches. It would be good to be able to see all the footage.
Further to my previous comment, the RSPB Birds of Britain and Europe says that the Red Throated Diver ‘like other divers, use several strange, ritualized postures whilst calling on breeding pools in summer’
Also that it ‘Dives for fish… ;underwater for long periods, reappears at some distance from point of dive’
Loch Ness is not a small, isolated breeding pool, that’s true, but then the animals haven’t read the books.
It is worth bearing in mind, because they are quite rare birds and I would not expect everyone who saw one to recognise it – and they are VERY low bodied in the water with a flexible neck and a small head, with a slim beak. They are about 60cm long
I see a comet-like structure shooting under the surface often splitting into two comets that veer off at opposite directions. No part of it seems to be breaking the surface. It can be a creature or an novel standing wave structure caused by a big differences in temperature. I don’t resolve animal features like flippers, mouth, etc. If creature, likely it is something long necked. If wave, it is more complex than the false flags at Lake Okanagan.
What is the very long, thin “projection” that appears at the front of the subject at the very end of the sequence? It’s noticeable in either clip.
chabuhi
Two things can be said about the very long thin projection you mention. It shoots at almost zero time. It gives of an “offspring” in the opposite direction. My best thought is, complex standing wave structures giving a “living water” illusion.
Still inconclusive. If the guy who took the video were to confirm that the creature were indeed 45 feet as it was originally reported, then it’s inconlusiveness would be interesting. If what we’re reading is that he meant to say 4 to 5 feet is true, then the shadow is merely curious.
I must say, though, I do love the idea of the BBC giving out thousands of digital cameras to wanna-be nessie hunters. I SURE you’ll get some interesting images there, though I wouldn’t expect any of them to be relevant to cryptozoology.
Still intriguing, though I think that with all the shadows and reflections on the water it’s going to take heavier analysis to say one way or another what’s going on here.
darkshines responds:
June 6th, 2007 at 6:15 am
I can definitely see a large mouth open and close.
You’re kidding right…?
I think the video is genuine and shows a large unknown animal in Loch Ness.
To my eye, there is something distinctly artificial about the movement of the object. Until the original tape is submitted and digital manipulation ruled out by competent, objective analysis, I think the video should be regarded as highly suspect.
I’m sticking with seal!
But I am praying for Nessie! The video is inconclusive in my opinion.
But I love it when new or once thought extinct species are found.
That is DEFINITELY Nessie! Nothing can convince my otherwise. I’m a believer but I am always skeptical of footage because most of them are fake or something else, but this is definitely, in my opinion, Nessie or a baby Elasmasaur.
Glad to see some of you are picking out that “neck” as a play of shadows. Took me forever just to see it like so many others were, but when I did it seemed to just appear and disappear.
Also, it seems to me that the object is moving at a set rate of speed, and that the perceived fits and starts people are seeing are where it’s shadow merges with wave shadows behind it.
Nice stabilizations!
If you’re so certain that this is a baby Elasmosaur, then have I got a show for you! Wait, just let me set up this light bulb and stick my hands in front of it…no, no, don’t look at me, look at the wall behind you. See? It’s a Pterosaur! And look now, a Sauropod!
It would seem as though this film is rapidly turning into a Rorschach test, revealing much more about the viewers than what’s possibly being viewed…
Snake? Someone’s pet anaconda let loose for a summer swim?
Its still a dark line. I really dont think that any amount of “tweeking” will produce the smokeing gun if you will. At this point it still remains the best footage in the past few years of the “Loch Ness Monster” but it does not prove, nor disprove, the existance of said creature. As far as tricks of light reflecting off the water, it would explain the long neck that so many of us see as being there, the flip side is that it still could be a long neck.
My three cents again
I think it’s a living animal but something much less mundane than nessie. The animal doesn’t seem very big. For the sake of argument, let’s say that it is Nessie. 100% genuine. Does it make any difference? It’s too blurry to give us any real data about the animal. It can’t be used to say a new species lives in the lake. Footage like this doesn’t cut the mustard.
What exactly do they do when they “enhance images”?
Even from this footage you really can’t tell what it is except that it is an unidentified creature in loch ness. I don’t think that its is a larger snake, because I have a some what large python (in fact she’s sitting in my lap right now watching me type this) and she doesn’t look like this when she swims. And its definitely not a squid considering there aren’t any freshwater squids. Anyways I’m still not sure what this is. Although I would love to think that it is in fact nessie.
CeZa. Loch Ness is a large, freshwater lake. I’m pretty certain that Cepalopods can’t exist in freshwater. Whatever it is, it isn’t a squid.
I am beginning to think there is no animal here. This is a standing wave and any movement is an illusion or else the movement of the wave. That ‘spike’ towards the last frame? I think that is the give away as you can see it start to develop in the previous frames except that in those frames it is clearly a wave. It is “jumpy” due to technical reasons (frame rate, visual artifacts etc..). Going through frame by frame to me it is just waves. At no single frame can you honestly say, “That’s an animal”, therefore it isn’t. (I sure would love to be proved wrong.)
A torrent of the original film would be nice.
Holmes stated that his original impression of size was between 4ft and 6ft in length.
For some reason, the image on the film reminds me of the “London surgeon’s” second (non-famous) photo.
This film, I believe, is the most important yet from Ness. If it is shown to be an otter or seal or standing wave, etc., it will go far in explaining the origin of a modern day myth. If not, it will rejuvinate the search at loch side for an unclassified animal.
I used to be very excited about this. But the more I look at the gifs the bigger of a doubter I become. No animal here. Lakes, being closed bodies of water, have a peculiar hydrology. Sometimes cold deep water wells up to the warmer surface and creates “hump” phenomena like the Ogopogo false flags at Lake Okanagan. I am not saying that Ogopogo doesn’t exist, btw. Look at the enhancements again. Nothing in them indicates ‘creature’. All we see is a comet structure that sometimes splits into two and often follows the path set by instanteneous spikes. It’s a liquid crystal phenomenon. Not a creature! Sorry.
This footage is cool, but so so…so far…I have been on the water one a jet ski and came across a line of cormorants and at first sighting, I thought I was looking at a long snake thing undulating through the water…and I had to really get close to see what the heck it was…like within twenty feet before they dived…however, it was a thin line that they made…
the difference with otters and diving birds is that they are not going to present a very big target in the water. For this footage, I am not convinced that it is otters or diving birds.
From other viewings of this footage, I do believe there is a wash coming off of it, suggesting a solid object in there, so I am leaning toward the critter perspective—I want to see the whole footage, though, and I would like to hear more from Gordon Holmes about what he actually saw…in terms of details…whether he saw a head rising above the water, etc…and I would seriously like to get some estimates of size.
This is my first posting on this forum, and I must say at the outset that the majority of comments registered here are appalling. Neither the believers nor the self-described skeptics show much objectivity. Instead of this “enhancement” we need more basic information. Firstly, what kind of camera was Gordon Holmes using? What are its optical properties? Digital or analog? Where was he standing when he took the video? These are all vital questions, but the popular press just cuts to the chase with questions like “is it Nessie or not?”
Without any real info I’m going to speculate based on what is more likely: I saw a local TV newscast which showed Holmes with a camcorder, implying that this was the one used to capture the sequence in question. It looked like a Hi-8 consumer model camera, probably Sony. Since Holmes is British his camera probably records in PAL format. Depending on the model the zoom lens is likely in the 10X to 20X magnification range, 20X being a more likely a choice for someone hoping to video something on Loch Ness.
As for where he was standing the most likely place would be a spot along the A82 between Invermoriston and Drumnadrochit, the most popular Nessie-watching road in the area. There’s another spot on the A82 just SW of Abriachan, but the locals say there’s too much boat traffic for a likely Nessie appearance. There’s another good view from the east side on the B852 (secondary road), but you can’t pull over without blocking traffic so a Nessie hunter is likely to get a ticket trying to watch from that side.
All this is important to the question of size. If the visible portion of the object is a meter long or less then a water bird or otter is likely. If it is longer than a meter then identification with a known animal is really problematic.
If Holmes was on the A82 just SW of the castle, then the loch is well over a mile wide in his video. In the first frames we can just barely glimpse the foreshore and the opposite bank is almost lost in the haze. Holmes then zooms in on the object and we see nothing but open water and “Nessie”. If we knew the focal length of the lens at the start and end of the sequence (i.e. some mid-range magnification at the start and maximum magnification at the middle and end), and the spot where Holmes stood, then we could make a very good estimate of the size of the object. All this information is collected as metadata on the tape, so examination of the original is vital. Assuming Holmes stood just off the road then he was about 20-40 meters from the water’s edge. Now keeping in mind that the near shore is just visible in the first few frames when the lens is set to low magnification, the object must be at least 100 meters distant from Holmes. If it just 100 meters away then a known animal like an otter is just possible, but if it is 150 meters or more distant (I’d hazard a guess of 200-250 meters) then we’re looking at something 2, 3 or 4 meters long! This means it’s a genuine cryptid or a hoax.
I have watched the BBC Scotland newscast for May 29 several times now and I think I’ve identified the camcorder Gordon Holmes used. Assuming the camera he’s seen using on the BBC video is the same one used to film the object, it’s a Sony CCD-TRV98 Hi8. This camera has a 20:1 zoom lens. There’s also a digital zoom option, which I hope Holmes was wise enough NOT to use!
Having now viewed the video on YouTube at least a dozen times I’m convinced that the object is too large to be a known animal such as duck, goose, merganser, or otter. (A swimming deer has occasionally been suggested, but since even the largest Scottish deer rarely exceed 200 kg then the visible portion of the object is still too large to support this idea. Also deer are very slow swimmers. The object in the Holmes video is pretty fast.) This leads naturally to three other explanations: a large aquatic animal not known to inhabit Loch Ness, such as a seal or whale (the image does remind me of an elephant seal, but these are Pacific creatures. I’ve never heard of them in the Atlantic), an animal unknown to science, i.e. a true cyptid, or a hoax.
Adrian Shine, a respectable scientist, likes fish, especially sturgeon, as the likely source of most sightings. But I’ve never heard of a sturgeon swimming for any distance with its head out of the water. Sturgeon like to swim near the bottom in the shallows. To see one swimming near the center of the loch where the depth is greater than 100 fathoms and at the surface is odd indeed. Other known animals like seals and whales present a host of problems. The first objection is the rarity of sightings. If Nessie is any kind of large aquatic mammal then it should be seen regularly. The second objection is food; mammals need a lot of food to maintain their metabolisms, especially in cold water. However, Loch Ness is remarkable for its poverty.
This leaves us a choice between cyptid and hoax. As to the nature of an unknown animal its is impossible to be positive, but we can eliminate some candidates: Nessie is not a plesiosaur or any other kind of Mesozoic marine reptile, there are too many arguments against and none for. Nor is Nessie a long-necked seal, firstly because of objections to seals generally as listed above, and secondly in that no such animal exists in the fossil record – there is no known trend in pinniped evolution toward long necks. Roy Mackal suggested a kind of giant newt or salamander, which is appealing for several reasons, but there’s no real evidence for such an animal at all, except some fossils from the Permian.
A hoax is the most likely explanation, but it would have to be an elaborate and expensive stunt. A hoax monster that moves and leaves a wake would either have to be towed, pushed or self propelled. Towing would be hard. The Holmes video shows no sign of any surface craft nearby, not even a wake, nor is there any evident tow cable. This would mean that to be towed the object would have to be pulled by a submerged cable long enough for the towing craft and its wake to be completely out of the shot. This would require a really strong cable and a LOT of horsepower, more power than any but the largest boats on the loch can produce, and even then it’s very unlikely to work. Perhaps the hoax Nessie is being towed by a submarine (there was a Sherlock Holmes movie that used this very ploy). This could work and could be very convincing, but subs don’t come cheap, especially those able to move at speeds such as seen on the Holmes video (interesting coincidence of names, no?).
Pushing a hoax monster is just as hard a towing. One would need a long rigid underwater shaft attached to the bows of a powerful boat — a shaft long enough to keep the tug completely out of the shot. This means acquiring a very powerful boat and then putting her in dry-dock to fit the bows with the tow spar; this would be neither cheap nor discrete, especially since such a modification would likely be a violation of maritime law.
So we’re left with but one conclusion – a self-propelled hoax monster, probably radio controlled. I used to see this guy who had a really cool model u-boat which he sailed in the model boat pond in Central Park, NYC. This thing was nine or ten feet long and could run on the surface or dive. In fact it could dive deeper than the pond. Its only severe limitation was range. It ran on a large bank of internal batteries and could operate about 20 minutes on a charge. The model was originally built for the movie Das Boot. It was really exquisite. If someone could make a model that large 20 years ago, then something even more impressive and fast could be built today, especially with the current advanced battery technology.
You would have to be insane to believe it is any thing but a large fresh water eel.
My theory: a 40 ft long eel, age around 100 years.
An eel that once lived in the ocean but when lochness got closed up a few were trapped.
Options drain the lake.
As I have viewed this footage repeatedly, I at first was excited that it appeared to be the shape of a Plesiosaur, but when reading the actual interview quotes of Holmes that it was only 4-5 meters and not 45 meters as reported as well as seeing the “splitting head” in slow motion (at first I thought it was opening it’s mouth as if to catch a fish) I am now under the impression that this is a string of swimming otters where the lead pair break off near the end which is the splitting head!
Since all kind of theories are present, why has no one tried towing various shapes at the approximate distance quoted, at the calculated speed and tape each tow. Afterward a comparison of their appearances to the tape could be made with a better and more plausible theory than its a snake, an otter, a plane, no its super Nessie…. If we don’t know what it is, we can at least rule out what it is not…
This has to be nessie that split at end doesnt look like a trick its the flipper moving back. If watch closely it does move back from top often. Its either a nessie or its some human like scuba diving because it looks like arms moving to front then to back. look at slight curve in shape of split at end the curve could be like a cup shape to help move in current if look at top same thing happens to the top. I think this will spark new thoughts on this because im sure this has to be nessy or some weird squid that swims like a human and keeps a tentacle stretched out.
that is nessie I’ve looked at it for over 30 minutes and yes that is no duck its way to long to be the way it moves isn’t like a duck or otter and the face doesn’t resemble a otter at all and think about if you saw that face and body jump out of water.
chopping up and down like that with big teeth and big eyes and a long body like that cause thats what the video resembles and I’m better at picking out details then anybody I know and I have been researching this for five years. and just think for a sec, there have been recordings of a large object floating in the water in that area from sailboats and that’s never happened anywhere else so why is it so hard for people to accept that it could be something thats not ordinary and could be much more and think there used to be dinosaurs here on earth and ive watched many documentaries and some of theme could still exist so why couldn’t it be that and it could be a magical creature cause who knows anythings possible like we are all living and dont you think that thats pretty amazing and dont you think that there is much more to this planet then we think?