The Monsters of Loch Ness

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Mackal began his serious research into the Loch Ness Monster phenomenon during the 1960s. While vacationing in London in 1965, he took a trip to the Scottish Highlands and met several members of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, who were monitoring the loch in observation vans in hopes of seeing the creature(s). Fascinated by their work, Mackal began monitoring the waters himself and, after raising money in America, he became the scientific director for the project, a position he held until 1975. During this time, the LNIB conducted sonar probes of the waters near Urquhart Bay and installed underwater strobe cameras with the hopes of providing evidence of the Loch Ness Monster(s). Mackal also designed a “biopsy harpoon,” a dart-like contraption he attached to a submarine in order to collect tissue samples from the alleged creature.The team never had an opportunity to use the biopsy harpoons, and though they did acquire some sonar signals suggestive of large objects in the loch, along with some tantalizing photographs allegedly showing a flipper, they were unable to provide any conclusive evidence that the monster(s) existed. However, Mackal himself was convinced that something lived beneath the waters after recording his own sighting of the creature in 1970, and in his 1976 book The Monsters of Loch Ness, he suggested that a population of large, previously-unknown amphibians were living in the loch.