Loch Ness Monster Discovery Channel

Searching for Nessie (continued...)

Important Information Please Read First
All sighting and photographic references on this page are documented and can be verified through various publications.

Project Urquhart

Project Urquhart (named after the castle which stands on the shore of the loch ) was the idea of Nicholas Witchell the BBC news presenter and Loch Ness enthusiast since 1970.
He wondered if he could get the scientific bodies interested in studying loch ness and to his suprise they said yes. The Natural History Museum in London, the Freshwater Biological Association, Simrad the marine electronics company and the Discovery Channel all agreed either to help or sponsor work at the loch, not to search for the monster but to study the loch and its workings as the largest body of fresh water in the British Isles.

The first stage, which took place in 1992 was carried out by the Simrad company using their research ship MV Simrad from Norway. They carried out the first complete hydrographic survey of the loch since 1903 when Sir John Murray plumbed the depths of the loch using nothing more than a long piece of pianowire and a weight.
Simrad travelled nearly 500 miles in the loch using the latest em1000 multi beam swath system which sends out 120 sonar signals at once in a pan beneath the boat taking a total of 7 million soundings.

A new maximum depth was found a couple of miles north of Invermoriston of 786 feet compared with the depth of 754 feet found by John Murray just south of Urquhart Castle and despite rumours that have been around for years no evidence was found of any caves or tunnels in the loch ( or Edwards Deep ). The loch proved to be a very regular steep walled trench.
While cruising the loch Simrad noticed a line of objects, dubbed the footprints, running from Foyers to Fort Augustus at about 60 metres apart. A small remotely operated submersible fitted with a video camera was sent down to look at one of them and it turned out to be a large metal wheel barrow. It is thought that they are calibration targets put down by the Ministry of Defence to test sonar, when sonar was in its early stages of development and they were using the loch for trials.

July 1993 saw the arrival at the loch of the 65ft research ship Calanus and its support boat Seol mara. Calanus carried some of the most sophisticated sampling devices and fish detecting sonar ever seen on an inland freshwater loch before and was to clock up almost 200 hours of intense sampling of the loch.
What they found is that the loch did not quite act like they expected and several unusual features still can not be explained.
The northern end of the loch is more productive than the southern end so it would be expected to hold a denser population of phytoplankton (microscopic vegitation) but the next step in the food chain the zooplankton (microscopic lifeforms) and fish are more abundant in the southern end of the loch.