Loch Ness – home of the Scottish Highlands' beautiful views and mythical monsters – may be a fair bit deeper than we previously realized.
Keith Stewart, a retired fisherman and sightseeing boat operator, used sonar to discover that the loch may actually be 271 meters (889 feet) deep, 41 meters (135 feet) deeper than previously measured (although experts still need to confirm his findings).
By area, Loch Ness is Scotland’s second-largest freshwater lake after Loch Lomond, covering an area of 56 kilometers squared (22 miles squared). However, if you account for its depth too, Loch Ness is by far the largest lake by volume in Scotland, estimated to hold 7.45 cubic kilometers (1.8 cubic miles) of water.
The newly discovered underwater trench “is only about a few hundred yards offshore whereas previous sonar searches have traditionally been down the middle of the loch,” Stewart told The Telegraph. “I measured it with our state of the art 3D equipment at 889 feet. I have gone back several times over the abyss and I have verified my measurements.”
Plesiosaurus: The extinct creature that has inspired many depictions of the Loch Ness Monster. Image credit: Biodiversity Heritage Library/Flickr. CC BY 2.0.
Stewart’s colleagues at Jacobite Cruises have christened the ditch “Keith’s Abyss,” however the media have dubbed it as the Lock Ness Monster’s hideout.
“I wasn't really a believer of the monster beforehand,” Stewart said. “But two weeks ago, I got a sonar image of what looked like a long object with a hump lying at the bottom. It wasn't there when I scanned the loch bed later.“
But we shouldn't get our hopes up on finding the famous mythical creature. Thirteen years ago, a group of scientists making a BBC documentary used “600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology” on the loch and no Nessie was found.
Adrian Shine, leader of the scientific research organization The Loch Ness Project, also told the Telegraph that the finding could spark them to carry out some official research of their own. However, he warned that these sonar techniques can sometimes be misleading.
“I would be cautious [about Mr. Stewart’s findings] because there is an anomaly which occurs with sonar readings taken close to the side walls called lobe echos, which can give misleading results about the depth.
“It doesn’t matter how sophisticated your sonar equipment is, you can still get this anomaly.”
Main image credit: Vaidotas Mišeikis/Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
