The Obsessive Life of the Fisherman Who Discovered the Loch Ness Monster (2020) | Hacker News Reader

The Obsessive Life of the Fisherman Who Discovered the Loch Ness Monster (2020)

narratively.com

29 pointssamclemens16 comments

> There were porpoises in the loch in 1914. They had entered from the Moray Firth along the River Ness and were a rare spectacle

I never knew Loch Ness was connected to the ocean at large, and this helps keep a bit of the mystery alive. I had read that detailed sonar and biomass surveys of Loch Ness concluded there could be no large monster there, because there's not enough food to feed something the size of a whale and anything the size of a whale would have been seen by sonar. But the monster could have a lifecycle like salmon, where it is born in freshwater, goes out to the ocean, and eventually returns to freshwater only to reproduce and then die. Porpoises are kinda like mini-whales (they're air-breathing mammals with voracious appetites which can weigh over 200kg), and a school of porpoises wouldn't travel to Loch Ness unless there was a lot of good eatin' there.

Normally, the lake is a bit sparse from what I read. suckerfish and arctic char mostly. Maybe some other introduced salmonids, eels. One article suggests sturgeon.

However, the migratory salmon and salmonids probably are there once or twice a year in good numbers.

A giant creature migrating to and from the ocean, one round trip per year would probably be noticed cruising through downtown Inverness. Or more likely climbing over the Dochfour Weir. There is simply no getting past the weir without being exposed.

Ahh, so if the monster exists then it must, like the porpoises, only rarely travel to Loch Ness from the ocean, so that few sightings per century can be expected.

I thought all alien craft sightings were BS until four separate Navy pilots came forward to say they all saw that white tic tac in 2004. And three of the four pilots have done television interviews, most recently this 60 Minutes one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygB4EZ7ggig

If not for the link between Loch Ness and the ocean I'd think the existence of the monster could probably be ruled out as attention seeking liars. But now that we know porpoises sometimes make the rare trip from the ocean, we can't 100% rule out the monster never does. Does Dochfour Weir have 24/7 thermal and sonar monitoring and recording? Would Dochfour Weir capture on video and count every single porpoise that passes through at 3am, 365 days per year?

You may mistake my post for suggesting Nessie doesn't exist. All I am getting at is, if there's a large animal the size of a whale migrating down to the loch, over a few hundred migrations since the weir was built, someone probably would have seen it. Therefore, the migrations, if they happen, most likely are a rarer event.

On the flip side, the existence of porpoises, while interesting, does not prove the existence of Nessie. It simply makes more room for the possibility.

More like mini dolphins. 90Kg is a respectable weight for a common porpoise. A range of 30-70 Kg is more common

Porpoises are tiny for a cetacean and secretive, don't jump and are not easy to spot in the sea. All you see is a blunt triangle. Would never be confused with a plesiosaur

Wikipedia says,

  Porpoises range in size from the vaquita, at 1.4 metres
  (4 feet 7 inches) in length and 54 kilograms (119 pounds)
  in weight, to the Dall's porpoise, at 2.3 m (7 ft 7 in)
  and 220 kg (490 lb).

Doesn't say what is most common, though, so if 30-70 kg is more common, I'll take your word for it.

Dall's porpoise is from the North Pacific. Harbour porpoise is the only porpoise that could enter in the Loch Ness. The Californian porpoise was even smaller.

I’d like to know how one “discovers” a non-existent animal.

That's how every single claim of discovery has to start.

It can take millennia. Just ask the Vikings / Pliny the Elder / Aristotle about how long it took to find the kraken. It seems we just wait for them to wash up on beaches, and then the land lubbers start believing its real.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_giant_squid_specimens_...

Is it really fair to equate giant squids with the Kraken? The Kraken is supposed to be the size of an island and capable of devouring massive ships. That sounds orders of magnitude bigger than a giant squid to me. Pliny the Elder and Aristotle seem to be describing giant squids. The Nordic legends seem to be describing a mythical animal that may have been inspired by giant squids but certainly is not the same thing.

It seems like it would be similar to say the the Roc has been "found" because we have documented very large eagles. Until we have an eagle that can carry away a fully grown elephant, it's not a Roc.

I thought the Kraken just broke the ships into pieces with it's super-tentacles

I would imagine that between the people who saw the 'kraken' in small viking ships, and the people who wrote the history of these sightings that some embellishments were made.

Grainy photographs and elaborate tales are very important.

> A humble Scotsman saw something strange in the water—and daringly set out to catch it—only to have lecherous out-of-towners steal his fame and upend his quest.

I... couldn't quite understand the lecherous part...

The photo of 1933 looks clearly manipulated even if they repeat several times "trust me, obscure authority figure said that is not".

Well; Is easy to spot a curve in the object that continues in the ocean disguised as waves. It lies too high and the contact between the object and the water is unusually regular and quiet.

Looks like a stuffed animal with four clamps used to fix it to a wood piece (that would explain why is floating so high).

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