http://thelochnessgiantsalamander.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-beast-with-two-backs-gray-photo.html
http://thelochnessgiantsalamander.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-beast-with-two-backs-part-ii.html
The Loch Ness Giant Salamander Blog By Steve Plambeck
I came across this blog the other day and I thought it was most interesting. I think that the author might have hit upon something and I am going to let him have his own say for the most part. I have but a couple of addiitions to make, and my comment on the blog appended at the end here. The first is that at the time the Loch Ness Monster was beginning to come into the news in 1933, local old-timers at Loch Ness were speaking of something which they called "A salamander" being the monster, and there was a report at one time that "the salamander" had been trapped in the locks of the Caledonian canal. The nextm of interest is that the creature(s) in the Gray photo have been compared to a Japanese giant salamander (Andrias) virtually from the start and then afterwards with some regularity.
Salamander gilt carving from Churche's Mansion, Nantwich,
Cheshire, 1577 (Photo by Espresso Addict, Wikipedia)
Around Sunday noon on the date of November 12, 1933, while strolling home from
church, a local resident named Hugh Gray spotted something rise in the Loch,
thrashing its tail and making a considerable splashing about 100 yards out from
the spot where the river Foyers enters Loch Ness. Gray's sighting was only one
of many over the centuries, but what distinguishes it from all that came before
was that he was carrying a camera, and used it to take the first known
photograph of the animal. He took five pictures in total, unsure if any would
turn out amidst all the splashing and spray. One photo did turn out, and along
with Gray's story it was submitted to The Daily Record and Mail. The Daily
Record had the fortuitous presence of mind to submit the negative to several
experts, including Kodak, all of whom agreed there was no sign of any
tampering. Of course it would have been highly difficult in those pre-Photo
Shop days for Hugh Gray, a local aluminum company worker, to have engaged in
trick photography, but it is all the better for us that the provenance of the
original photograph and negative was being firmly established at this early
point, re-enforced in subsequent years by the findings of those researchers who
visited Gray. Interviewed over the years by the likes of Constance Whyte, Ted
Holiday, and Tim Dinsdale, Gray never waivered in the details of his story, and
must be considered a highly reliable and even reluctant witness.
The
Daily Record published the Gray Photo in December of 1933. It was quickly
picked up and repeated in The Daily Sketch, The Daily Telegraph, and newspapers
across the world. In modern terms, the story "went viral", and the modern,
press-driven era of "The Loch Ness Monster" and its nickname "Nessie" had
begun
HEADS
OR TAILS?
The various versions of the picture as published by
the press of the day can be found all over the Internet, and generally look no
better than this:
And it was from
reproductions like these, made from the original negative first being converted
to
half-tones, and then
having had their contrast considerably tweeked upwards to darken and "solidify"
the images for newsprint publication -- processes which inevitably subtract all
fine detail -- that Loch Ness investigators have had to work for the past eight
decades. Back in the early nineties when I originally became interested in
seeing if I could work out the morphology of the Loch Ness animal for myself, I
put one of my first computers to work scanning images of the various photos from
books, another process which in itself can lead to further lost detail and the
introduction of visual artifacts that weren't part of the original photo. One
result was the reproduction of the Gray Photo from the Mackal book, found at the
very top of this article. The fact is that if you tweek and photo-shop any
photo enough, you might start seeing Labrador Retrievers in anything, including
the Mona Lisa. (That Gray photographed a dog is a ludicrous and lamentable idea
that itself went viral in the early days of popular Internet usage, and some
renditions of the Gray photo floating around appear further retouched to
deliberately bolster that ridiculous notion.)
Looking at these newsprint
and book reproductions leaves little wonder why Mackal wrote "
There is no
apparent basis for determining which is front or back, and any such decisions
must depend largely on what preconceptions one may have." And yet there is
enticing detail in even these images. Coupled with Gray's testimony there can
be no doubt we are looking at an animate, living object. The part on the left
is the clearest element of the image, and caught in the act of undulating as
Hugh Gray described the tail to be doing. There's not one but two pointed,
fin-like structures arising from the top of this tail, if it's the tail, at the
point it meets the main body, but then these fins appear to diverge into
different directions -- which seemingly makes no sense. This particular mystery
is most evident in the higher contrast versions:
But if this is the
tail, then where is the neck and head? If one is working from the preconception
that there
has to be a long neck, then perhaps this
is the neck, and perhaps those dorsal fins, if relaxed and
hanging, would account for the occasional reports of a mane? Following an
assumption this is the head and neck, then the head is small indeed, absolutely
miniscule in proportion to the overall size of the animal; it appears completely
undifferentiated from the "neck" here, although there may be a couple minute
features visible that could be eye slits or even little stalks (except that they
only appear at the highest contrast and when the image is taken from a book; on
this small scale they may only be artifacts of the printing
process).
Also, if this is the neck, then the tail (which must be quite
developed to serve as Nessie's means of reputed rapid propulsion) must be at the
right hand end of the object, but there's no sign of it; could it be flexed down
at an acute angle and fully below the waterline? Conversely, if this element in
the image detail above is actually the tail, then it's the neck bent acutely
below the waterline at the right end of the object; that might make some sense
if Nessie is floating on the surface dangling its neck below the waterline like
a fishing line intent on snagging prey. But if that were the case, all the
splashing and tail thrashing Gray reported seems counterproductive to sneaking
up on fish.
Other intriguing details in the total picture are the two
white dots along the waterline where one might expect appendages to be. F.W.
Holiday studied the Gray Photo intensely, was one of the interviewers of Hugh
Gray, and visited the spot from which the picture was taken. In
The Great
Orm of Loch Ness (W.W. Norton and Co., 1968) he states his conviction these
are indeed the parapodia of the Loch Ness animal.
And here is pretty much
where further analysis of the Gray Photo was stalled. There wasn't enough
detail in any of these newsprint photos and their circulating reproductions to
answer these questions. Unfortunately whatever became of the original negative
is unknown. After nearly 80 years of study, not much more could be
said.
A BOMBSHELL
In 2011, Loch Ness
researcher and author Roland Watson wrote the definitive analysis of the Hugh
Gray Photo in his article
The
Hugh Gray Photograph Revisited. It is published at his
blog, and it is mandatory
reading for anyone interested in the Loch Ness animal, and the Hugh Gray photo
in particular. To quote Mr. Watson:
"It is best in these cases to get the most
original image and as luck would have it another print came into the hands of
Maurice Burton in the 1960s which were made from glass lantern slides in 1933
for E. Heron-Allen. Importantly, these contact positives were made from the
original negative and represent the best untouched picture of what Hugh Gray saw
that day."
Watson obtained this all-important picture, made from the
original negative, from the Fortean Picture Library. The full image used in Mr.
Watson's analysis may be viewed in his blog article mentioned and linked to
above. In commenting on Watson's analysis, Aleksandar T. Lovchanski furnishes
the information that Steuart Campbell deposited the glass lantern slide print
with the FPL after obtaining it from Burton. Therefore the provenance of the
Heron-Allen version is rather well established, stretching back to the original
negative. It is only regrettable that this more definitive version of the Gray
Photo was overlooked by so many researches for so long.
The Heron-Allen
image contains all the detail lost in the press reproductions and their
overwhelming contrast adjustments, and upon studying it Roland Watson made what
few would contest must be the most important discovery in Loch Ness research in
many years. He found the head! And it is on the right.
Having stared at
the Gray Photo in books, having scanned it, enlarged it, filtered it, sketched
it, and looked at it every way possible for about 40 years, I'm still a bit
thunderstruck by this revelation. But I am convinced that what Watson has
identified as the head is indeed just that: our only known picture of the head
of the unidentified species in Loch Ness.
At first this struck me as
creating more problems than it solved, as like many I took it that Nessie had a
long neck and a small head. While I never subscribed to the Plesiosaur theory,
I assumed that convergent evolution had resulted in an amphibian with an anatomy
that followed the long-necked, fish-chasing body plan of a Plesiosaur. Nature
does not discard proven templates, and it was a design that served many species
of aquatic reptiles quite well for millions of years. But that has not proven
to be the case in Loch Ness. The Gray Photo is hard evidence that Nessie has a
short neck, and a relatively large and fish-like head.
So swallowing my
pride (and abandoning a pet theory of my own, which I might detail in a later
post for nostalgia's sake) I set about having my own closer look at the
Heron-Allen image. After all, if I'd been overlooking the head for 40+ years,
the important question became:
what else had I (and everyone else)
missed? If the details of the poor, over-contrasted press releases of the Gray
Photo had been so enticing, how much more might we learn from the Heron-Allen
version? It needs to be taken apart and put back together, a project I decided
to tackle soon after learning of Watson's find.
The first and most
important contribution I spotted is the reason for the title of this
post.
A BEAST WITH TWO
BACKS
There are not one, but
two specimens of the Loch
Ness animal captured in Hugh Gray's photo. (For the best look at the
Heron-Allen image I again link you to an article by Roland Watson,
The
Forensics of the Loch Ness Monster. You may click on his image there
for a full-sized zoom on the Heron-Allen image.)
There are two backs (or
dorsal lines) to follow if you trace your finger across the image from left to
right, with the clearest example of this being between the two bright water
sprays. You may note that the back of the topmost or further animal becomes the
top of the head Watson discovered. This animal, the one furthest away, is also
about one head's length ahead of the nearer animal, and the head of the nearer
animal is hidden in the spray.
If you are using an LCD monitor such as on
a laptop, start with the screen almost vertical and then slowly tilt it back
while viewing the Heron-Allen image -- that's how I first spotted the second
dorsal line. Below is a smaller version of the image onto which I've drawn an
overlay for comparison with the original. I use hyphenated lines in the two
places where spray obscures the dorsal line of the front-most animal, where the
head of the front-most animal is hidden behind spray, and where the anterior
appendage disappears below the waterline:
Let's examine,
from left to right, what is visible here but has not been previously noted or
explained by the high contrast press releases of the Gray Photo.
First is
the tail. Unlike Mackal, whom we quoted to begin this article, we now
do
have a basis for identifying the leftmost part as the tail, because the head has
been identified by Watson on the right. The caudal fin
s (not fin) were
actually more evident in the high contrast prints. If you capture the image and
increase the contrast yourself, you can turn the Heron-Allen image into an exact
replica of the press version minus the scratches (another bit of proof we're
dealing with the original photo here.) Turning up the contrast does increase
some detail on the left side of the picture, like the caudal fins in my earlier
close-up, while simultaneously ruining details such as the head on the right
hand side. But now that we've identified two separate backs, the reason for the
mystery in my earlier look at the fins becomes evident: there are two apexes to
the "fin" because it's actually two fins belonging to two separate tails, one
behind and slightly ahead of the other. What may even be the tip of the second
tail is visible protruding just left of the caudal fin of the front-most
animal.
Working our way right, the next element of interest is the
posterior appendage. We now know it to be the posterior one, because we know
which end is which. In the original press publications of the photo both
appendages appeared as mere white dots, but here we have quite a bit more to
look at.
There actually appears to be a motion-blurred after-image of a
flipper-shaped posterior appendage in the spray, making it look for all the
world that this fountain of water was cast up by the rear appendage of the
front-most animal. What may be the edge of the appendage itself, slapping the
water, appears at the waterline. Alas this is not a great view of the appendage
itself, but it's almost incontrovertible from this that Nessie
has
posterior appendages -- or at least this one does.
Moving further right
along the waterline we come to the anterior appendage. Second only to the head,
this may be the detail most improved in the Heron-Allen image. Instead of just
a white dot, we have the upper joint of a limb meeting the body at approximately
a 90 degree angle, then flexing downwards and sweeping back at a second joint
point just before dipping below the waterline. We cannot say if the termination
point of the appendage is a flipper, a webbed foot, or another form because the
end is below the waterline. The few witnesses that have reported appendages in
their sightings over the years have varied in their descriptions of flippers,
webbed feet, and even hoof-like forms.
Accounts have also varied as to
whether Nessie has both front and back appendages, but in this photo there is
clearly a back appendage of some kind tossing up water. Oddly though, whereas
the anterior limb joins the body clearly above the waterline, the joint of the
posterior appendage does not appear at all. This is a mystery. The animal (the
front one) might be twisting a bit on its longitudinal axis -- there is
considerable flexing in the body from the curvature in the waterline, a feature
also less evident in poorer quality images. The animal be turning its head
towards the animal beside it. Perhaps in the process of twisting its front half
to the left, the attachment point for the right front limb is lifted higher than
the attachment point for the posterior counterpart, which is hidden just below
the waterline at that moment.
It may be worth mentioning at this point
that aquatic amphibians, being neonatal and only completing partial
metamorphosis do not always have equally developed front and back limbs, or at
least do not always have equally developed appendages until the latter stages of
growth. In aquatic urodeles the second pair of limbs may be fully developed,
partially developed, or totally absent in members of the same species (Mackal,
1976).
It must also be mentioned that, while the left-most spray of water
appears to be created by the posterior appendage slapping the water, the same
cannot be said for the right-most flash of spray; that must be coming from the
left anterior appendage of the
second or furthest animal, tossed
towards us and over the head of the nearer animal. That the two beasts are
alternating front and rear water slaps like this is in itself quite
interesting; water must be flying continuously; Hugh Gray reported considerable
splashing, which must be taken to mean ongoing splashing, not just one instance
of spray.
We end our tour of the Heron-Allen image at the right hand end,
with Nessie apparently looking right back at us. In making this discovery
Roland Watson points out that even if the eye is not an eye, even if the mouth
is not the mouth, the body of the animal clearly ends here in a blunt, conical
shape
above the waterline, and it casts a definite shadow of its own on
the water. Again I recommend
his
article on this, but for my part I'm fully convinced the Gray Photo is
showing us the head of Nessie.
And I'm equally certain we have been
looking at a photo of
two of the animals all along. But is this mating
behavior? Social behavior? Some salamanders engage in a courtship dances when
preparing to mate that consist of rubbing sides, splashing with their limbs, and
thrashing their tails side to side. Such behavior is strikingly similar to what
Hugh Gray witnessed and photographed. This is obviously one area where we'd
like to know much more.
GRAY'S ACCOUNT VS. HIS PHOTO
At this
point I can imagine skeptics protesting the likelihood anyone could be so lucky
as to photograph a
pair of Loch Ness Monsters at one go, as it's so
notoriously difficult to get photo evidence for even a
single such
animal. Yet real animals often travel in pairs and small groups. Even the most
solitary creatures have to pair up on occasion if the species is to continue.
In fact the many reported sightings of multiple and varying humps are most
easily accounted for by multiple animals. If genuine, the P.A. MacNab photo
taken in 1955 is most likely a picture of two animals as well (otherwise we're
faced with a specimen over 50 feet long, which would be much less probable than
two animals of 20 or 30 feet each.)
The strongest evidence that the
creatures swim in small groups comes from the University of Birmingham
expeditions (1968-1969) and their sonar experiments headed up by Professor D.G.
Tucker. On multiple occasions, the Birmingham researchers tracked large animate
objects they estimated to be 20 feet long moving between the bottom of the Loch
and mid-water, but never any higher. Contacts included at least one pair, and
on one occasion a group or pod of what they estimated to be at least as many as
five animals moving together for an extended period. They also clocked the
diving speeds of the animals to be too great to be accounted for by
fish.
The hardest thing about accepting the Gray photo as two animals was
that Gray himself never said anything about seeing more than one. He did
however say that he never had an unobscured view due to the considerable
disturbance the animal was making in the water (Nicholas Witchell,
The Loch
Ness Story, Penguin Books, 1975). Now Gray estimated the animal to be 100
yards away, and his own height from the bluff on the shoreline to be 30 feet.
Some accounts quote Gray as giving the distance as 200 yards; but he also said
it "rose out of the water not so very far from where I was"; based on his
wording I feel more inclined to trust the 100 yard quotes. Researchers visiting
the site since then have also stated the elevation to actually be 40 feet, with
F.W. Holiday even calling it 50. I think 40 is the safer estimate for us to
consider. So going with 100 yards out and 40 feet above the waterline, this
makes Gray's elevation relative to the animals a mere 8 degrees, with his view
nearly broadsides; the photo supports both those conclusions. Under these
circumstances the silhouette of the nearer animal would almost completely mask
or hide that of the second. It would have indeed been difficult for Gray to
tell it was two parallel animals.
We have the luxury of staring at an
enlarged, static photo for as long as we like, whereas Hugh Gray only had a few
minutes, and was dealing with his camera and probably looking through the view
finder while snapping his five attempted photos. Then there's all the thrashing
and spray to obscure what he was watching. Still, he says the "object of
considerable dimensions" moved about a great deal for "a few minutes", and
minutes are not seconds. So if it's a pair, they must have stayed in close
tandem for the minutes Gray watched them moving, for if they had separated by
any distance he'd have noted it was two independent objects. Unless we apply an
even simpler explanation: the second animal could have been on the surface at
the start, been caught in the photo, but then submerged. Then Gray, setting
aside his camera, continued to watch the single remaining animal for the final
minutes before it too submerged.
Let's look at the Heron-Allen image
geometrically. As stated above, Gray's line of sight was only 8 degrees above
the water level. In the diagram below I've placed two floating objects of equal
size and shape next to each other, here viewed in cross-section. Since we
already have the angle, the actual height of the objects doesn't matter at this
point, but Gray estimated the animal's height to be 3 feet above water, and so I
have indicated the same. The question is, would the camera be able to capture
any noticeable separation of the two dorsal lines, and if so, how much? We can
see here that the back or top of the nearer object would appear one foot below
the top of the further object. The actual number of feet doesn't matter, as
it's the ratio of the visible part of one animal to the visible part of the
other animal we're trying to measure, and in this case the ratio is a clear
3:1. That is, Gray's camera would capture an image, from the top down,
consisting of 1/4 rear animal, and 3/4's front animal. See the insert in the
lower right corner of the diagram, where I've rotated the whole view slightly to
make this more obvious:
This turns out to be
extremely consistent with the amount of the further animal that is visible above
the back of the closer animal in the actual Gray Photo. It's exactly what we'd
expect in the photo, given the distance, the height of the observer, and
assuming the two animals are of nearly equal size. (Personally I think the
nearest animal is the slightly larger of the two. The distance between the
apexes of the caudal fins is a bit larger than that between the front ends of
the animals, which makes the rear one slightly shorter than the other. But
given that these are moving animals with sinusoidally flexing bodies, thrashing
tails, and turning heads, it's impossible to be exact about which one may be
longest.)
That
there have been two animals present all along has an added benefit to us, as it
answers not one but two of the unexplained problems previously related to the
Gray Photo. One of the first criticisms of the picture has always been that the
body looked too "baloonish" or buoyant, and that a real animal wouldn't float
that high in the water. It only appeared this way because in the high contrast
press images, two bodies had been lumped together vertically. As soon as the
second dorsal line is recognized and drawn in for the closest animal, and the
viewer becomes aware of looking downwards at side-by-side animals, then Nessie's
proportions get a lot sleeker.
Secondly, the parapodia Holiday recognized
are no longer too low on the body to be accepted as appendages, because the
height of the body above the waterline was never what it seemed. The appendages
are right where they belong, and always have been.
THE MORPHOLOGY REVEALED
Having taken the
entire picture apart element by element earlier, it seems only fair to put it
back together in the end. The overlay I drew for the Heron-Allen image makes for
a good starting point:
One must
guess at the features below the waterline. I have ventured to assume the tail
is vertically symmetrical, thus adding a ventral fin. A laterally flexing,
keeled tail makes for a powerful swimming appendage, which seems necessary to
account for the great speed (as much as 10 knots) that's been reported for the
animals. Also, or perhaps I should say inevitably, that's the normal tail
configuration for aquatic salamanders.
The exact size and
shape of the appendages must remain conjectural. I've gone with webbed feet
here, but more flipper-like appendages are certainly possible; the posterior one
could be a true flipper even if the front limb is more of a webbed foot. Also
the true girth is conjectural as well, with the body being perhaps a bit thicker
than I've shown here.
Having recreated the front-most of the two animals,
we now give a copy of that image an open mouth to yield an otherwise identical
second animal, and lastly we place them together side by side with the further
animal one head's length ahead of the other. The final result is my recreation
of the Gray Photo as we would see the animals if we could take away the water
and fountains of spray:
As a bit
of a reality check, I made one more rendition with the glare and water sprays
manually airbrushed over the final reconstruction, to compare side by side with
the original photo. Not a perfect match, but sufficient I hope to demonstrate
that, once the water is removed and precious few blanks filled in, we have two
of the same animal present in the original Gray Photo:
Morphologically, the animal captured in the Hugh
Gray Photo doesn't look very much like a fish in my opinion, but instead bears
an exceedingly similar form to many aquatic salamanders. But those of similar
form and similar
size are unknown outside the fossil record. Within the
fossil record though, they are quite well known. When it comes to living forms,
the Chinese Giant Salamander,
Andrias
davidianus, is recognized as the largest amphibian in the modern world,
reaching a length of six feet. The Loch Ness Giant Salamander seems to have
that beaten by a factor of at least three, if not four or five.
This
brings us to the taxonomy of the unidentified species in Loch Ness, and the
related issue of how it came to populate the Loch in the first place. I'll
address both these items in a subsequent post article.
 |
| Dale D's remarks on the scale and the siz of the salamanders. The photographer estimated the thickness of what is here presumed to be two animals together to be about two feet. That would make the individual animals about eight feet long apiece and that is probably a ent estimate of their size. |
 |
| Scale Comparison: South American Giant Otter at top and diver compared to Japanese/Chinese giant salamander below. Such giant salamanders are also possibly present in the lakes associated with the Siberian Lake Monster reports recently discussed, and responsible for the "Lizardlike" and "Alligator" reports from that area. The Giant Otter fits some early descriptions of the Loch Ness Monster if the size is reduced, and the Giant otter reports are intermittent but superimposed over the ongoing "Salamander" reports. When Rupert Gould wrote his book on the Loch Ness Monster in the 1930s, talk of the "Salamander" was still strong enough that he couched his theory in terms of 'A Gigantic Long-Necked Newt' |
Celtic countries of the British Isles. In more modern times, reports of the Salamanders (or Wurrums, etc) are more usually located in the areas with a Celtic heritage, although this is not necessarily
always the case.
If not a classic head-neck, then what ...?
Congrats on another well thought out and researched article.I'm still not entirely convinced though. I lean toward an amphibious creature of some type myself, but to say that we 'know' anything based on this photo (and Roland's daughter spotting the 'head') is not quite right - it's still an assumption isnt it? - dru
Floating too high above the waterline was one of the "knocks" against the picture for a long time. But that was taking the entire vertical part as one animal. The second dorsal line I overlayed on the photo shaves 25% off the height above water of each animal, which I think slims things down considerably, leaving a larger *percentage* below the water. In my own sketch though I may be guilty over over-slenderizing, and drawing the hind regions too high up for the waterline in the actual photo.
-JohnP
I prefer to think the animals were doing something other than trying to kill each other -- maybe that's just the romantic in me. Actually male salamanders do skirmish with each other when vying for mating privileges with a nearby female, as is true of so many species of all kinds, but at least with salamanders I'm not aware of these being more than shoving matches, not contests to the death.
http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2012/01/classic-sightings-robert-badger.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hellbender.jpg
If all you saw was the head, you'd think that was a picture of a frog.
If Duncan MacDonald did run into a 20+ foot version of that animal on his dive in 1880, who could blame him for never diving in Loch Ness again!?
Do you thing we seeing part of the body(s) under the waterline, or is that a reflection of the part above the water?
And how can the creature float with so much of its body above the water? It looks almost bird-like to me.
Thanks, Isaac.
As to floating too high, are you referring to my sketch or the photo itself? If the photo, see my reply to Dru 4 posts back. If the sketch, then see my reply to the next comment.
Clearly, the claimed dorsal and spray areas show transparency that cannot be ignored or explained
away. Beyond that, the alleged spray looks nothing like actual spray would or should. However, the thing that is most incredulous is the drawings you came up with show the supposed creatures swimming ON TOP OF OR ABOVE THE SURFACE OF THE LOCH!! How is this possible? Your statement that shaving a portion of the dorsal area puts the creatures further below the surface doesn't hold water either. The fact is that as postulated the alleged animal is still above the surface, no matter how you attempt to circumvent that truth.
I'm a longtime believer, but I've always subscribed to the notion that you prove monsters out of photographs which don't contain them, as opposed to finding ways to explain monsters INTO photographs in which they simply don't exist.
If you can have ANY photo of Nessie at all, then you can certainly have a photo of two, unless you believe it's been a single, solitary, non-reproducing immortal animal all this time, which truly would be a fringe position to take.
That it could be a dog (in my opinion) shouldn't even require debunking, but as luck would have it Roland Watson has gone to the trouble of doing just that in a fine bit of (rational) analysis in his blog article here: http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2011/06/hugh-gray-photograph-revisited_26.html
Now you seem to have fallen into the same trap as everybody else: Just because an unknown animal is reported at Loch Ness does not mean ALL if the reports are of the SAME species of animal We are not talking about the presence of any species which is confined ONLY to Loch Ness and we are not talking about anything which necessarily lives there REGULARLY: we are only talking about different reports which eminate out of the one geographical area during the recent period over the last several decades. My feeling is that there are land animals which are going into the water together with one or two species native to the British isles but very rare, plus an occasional vistor from the sea (or two or three-it does not matter how many if they are all only there randomly) Because of that it is a fundamentally flawed argument to say all of the "Loch Ness Monster" reports describe the same thing: the giant salamanders might well be seen sometimes but also might be something very different from the larger creatures reported in the 20, 30 or 40 foot long range. Two things anout Mackals book I suppose you'll be mentioning: he thinks the long-necked reports could be the giant salamander tail-end-up. In several cases this is clearly impossible And he also speaks of all of the longer "string of buoy" sightings as being due to a standing wave effect. I very definitely agree with him as to this last conclusion.
I will be wanting to reprint part of your blog on my blog if possible, and I shall be giving you full credit with a link which goes back to this blog.
Best Wishes, Dale D.