NOC: Underwater Vehicle Finds Loch Ness Monster Camera Trap

An ocean robot developed and operated by the UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has made a chance encounter of a Nessie kind during engineering trials in Scotland’s famous Loch Ness.

During a test mission, the advanced underwater vehicle, designed for discovering the secrets of the ocean, accidentally found an underwater camera system—thought to be one of the first attempts to catch the Loch Ness monster on film.

It is believed that the camera, discovered around 180m deep in the loch, had been placed in the water in 1970, by Professor Roy Mackal, of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau and the University of Chicago.

Despite having been submerged in the 23-mile-long loch for 55 years, the camera was still in good condition and the film able to be developed by a NOC engineer, but the loch’s famous inhabitant does not appear to have made an appearance.

Adrian Shine, who set up The Loch Ness Project in the mid-1970s to investigate Loch Ness and its world-famous inhabitant, helped to identify the camera and says it was one of six deployed by Professor Mackal, with three of them lost in a gale that same year.

“It was an ingenious camera trap consisting of a