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That is good to know about the otters…I have heard the otter theory before, but never had any hard data on numbers, sizes, etc. And I do believe that it is possible to mistake such things…it all does go back to the credibility of the witness to an extent and how hard the witness is trying to “see” what is really there…somebody who wants to see Nessie really bad, and travels there may very easily be pulled in by otters, odd waves, shadows, etc.

I just do not believe that all of the reports fall into that category.

Thanks again, one and all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am happy to see that even those engaging in this conversation from the more skeptical side are at least willing to entertain the thought that perhaps something is out there that cannot be explained away and those on the proponent side are not denying that witnesses can be wrong. I have seen a lot of plausible proponent arguments here as well as solid skeptical arguments and I can happily say that no rampant debunking has been going on on this thread as far as I can see. Proponents have admitted to the possibility of mundane explanations in some cases and those that support skeptical, mundane arguments admit that some reports defy these. It seems to me that there is a sort of common ground here and that is a good starting point for both camps to work together towards intelligently solving this mystery. This is good, wholesome, useful discussion.

I have made a pretty big transition from a hard core scoftic to an open minded skeptic in recent years. I know all of the debunking theories, and yet, well, I just cannot agree on all of them any more than I can agree on all proponent arguments. I was trained and studied under pretty traditional ideas of biology and zoology and yet, I don’t see anything in this field that defies anything that I’ve learned despite the disdain that some of my colleagues could possibly show. I feel there are some viable scientific questions that need to be answered with these cryptids and I was not always getting the answers with strictly skeptical arguments, so I have softened my stance with cryptids considerably. I am no longer trying to be right or disprove anything, rather I want real investigation into what is there, whether that means these lake monsters exist or not. A good hypothesis is a good hypothesis and I will recognize any as such, reasonably free from any desire for it to be right or wrong. I feel this approach and finding our common ground may lead some of the answers we are looking for. Let’s look at what is there, not what we may want to be there or not want to be there.

This thread has been a great chance for different ideas to get out and I love this site for these sorts of discussions. Fascinating stuff.

There are otters in Loch Ness and if what I’ve been reading is correct, those suckers can get big, length-wise (I talked about this in one of my more long-winded posts, so it’d be easy to miss). I’d imagine that a good chunk of the length is in the tail, but still…

I’d also like to thank everyone for the great conversation!

Yep, the long post was me. Here’s my edited-down post:

Although I don’t fully agree with you, I do find your points interesting. Especially the possibility that my opinion of you seems to have been influenced by your opinion of Mr. Radford. Also, I had thought that you meant “declared” in the “said” sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

They did do a follow up on the “Loch Ness pictures” expedition. In 1976, a member of the original expeditons discovered that the line they secured the camera arrays to actually allowed the arrays to move around and touch/roll along the lake bottom. When they had taken the “head” and “neck” pictures, the main array was found to be covered in silt, implying that it did the rolling on the bottom or that the backup unit kicked up some silt.

Operation Deepscan later found and recovered a tree stump in the area that was in the “head” picture. It’s not hard to imagine that the “neck” picture taken nearby was of the rest of the tree. A later picture-taking expedition used anchored camera and had no luck getting any pictures of Nessie. But, as you correctly noted, every expedition there finds something interesting, so doing another wouldn’t be a complete “waste.”

As for the fin picture, the original looked like this. The enhancement by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories looked like this. Wikipedia also notes that size estimation errors were made and that the fins-if they really are fins-are much smaller than originally thought.

The 1962 Cambridge University expedition did a six-sweep scan designed so that it’d be impossible for Nessie to go anywhere in the lake and not be detected. They only got one echo before a “pole-like object” was seen in the area (which could point to a gas-lifted log) and two echoes during one of the night sweeps (which could be shoals of fish or that sonar thing I mentioned earlier). The BBC’s 2003 investigation, another full scan of the loch, found nothing and I’d imagine would satisfy requests for a scan using modern equipment.

In fact this is one of the few places where I have encountered other people who not only like talking about this stuff, but actually know quite a lot about the things I have been studying by myself since I was a kid.

I get excited coming here every other day or so to hash out these topics and talk intelligently with other like minded people about cryptozoology (my wife humors me, but she can only take it for so long…).

And I think, like DWA, I have often gotten frustrated with the debunkers and scoftics because many of them claim to be taking a “scientific” approach when they are only doing the same thing as the pro-dinosaur / plesiosaur crowd and skewing information to fit their own diabolical ends…
(oh and by the way, I am not discounting 100% the possibility of living plesiosaurs or kronosaurs out there…just saying that it is a long shot at best…at least not the way they were in the dinosaur days).

So, when I meet up with those kinds of people, I get fired up and go after their faulty logic. Like I always say, speak your opinion, but don’t speak it like it is the TRUTH. One theory is as good as another until we capture a critter, drain the loch, or get a bonafide account with 100 witnesses at close quarters for the better part of an hour with photos and film.

NEXT.

Anyone who would reject a truly mundane explanation “out of hand” is not a crypto, but a True Believer. (Which rhymes with “screw loose.” Trust me.)

I’ve said it before and will say it again: conga-dancing lines of otters migrating in from the sea to fool tourists, and bears running on their hind legs. and eight-foot-tall vagrants running 40 mph, and people hallucinating over and over and over again, different people all over a continent, hallucinating the exact same thing, are not “mundane explanations.” They’re, well, scwewy applications of mundane phenomena.

Could mundane explanations account for some sightings? Yes. A majority of them? You’re pulling my leg. ALL of them? Please.

Isn’t it easier to just see if what people say they are seeing is there? (Yes.)

What cryptos - and true skeptics - don’t like to see is scwewy applications of mundane phenomena used as a tapdance around real inquiry.

That’s all.

Loren, sorry did misread your intent…I do love these long banters…I think a lot of good comes out of them once the initial thrashings get their say…:)(and some times initial thrashings are necessary to turn a corner and start talking about real issues)–thanks for the restatement.

jerrywayne…the “Romanticized notions” are carried on many times by the MEDIA (which I am becoming more hostile toward with every passing day, and not just on the crypto-front), and the outer fringes of crypto.

I would love nothing better than to see an elasmosaur (or dare I say it…do, do…a kronosaur) slicing through the waves…BUT…as an amateur crypto, and someone who has studied this stuff for decades I know that elasmosaurs and kronosaurs do not fit the overall patterns of what is being seen either…I am not arguing the long neck, but there are toooo many problems with elasmosaurs and plesiosaurs to make them viable as a real candidate.

However, whenever you mention Loch Ness, the average person on the street who knows very little about Ness other than what they have heard in the media is going to think plesiosaur (most people probably have only heard elasmosaur in passing…sheesh), and every time some water critter rears its head in some lake, the media immediately latches onto the plesiosaur motif like a leech.

As for the mundane explanations–yes they are there, BUT mundane does not always cover the territory either. The whole thing on lines of otters swimming is case in point. I can go for the otter-line-swimming theory in a few cases, but as far as I know, there are not large populations of otters in Ness (and someone here correct me if I am wrong, but otters just do not get mentioned prominently in the Inverness bestiary) such as this would be a common mis-dentification. And otters certainly would only be hypothetically a candidate in a small number of accounts.

My (and I would guess other cryptos around here) biggest gripe about the mundane explanations is that debunkers will point to a specific example where a mundane explanation is likely and then extrapolate that to the body of accounts as a whole. It is that sort of faulty logical argumentation that is pseudo-science.

Sorry, not meaning to tirade on you, jerrywayne, just the argument.

Finally, Loren what is the record for most posts on a specific topic…are we closing in??? (No I am not intending you to count postings on the thousands of articles here, just thinking we have a goal to shoot for:):):)

I think that dismissing mundane explanations out of hand in favor of the most romanticized notions possible (lake phenomena as prehistoric whales, for instance) opens cyrptozoology up to the charges of psuedoscience, of a less than rational agenda, and of being more concerned with “monster hunting” than finding unknown animals.