Laura Coventry speaks with naturalist and Loch Ness Monster expert Adrian Shine, 90 years after the first sighting.
AS he looked across the North Sea towards the horizon on a holiday in East Anglia, an eight-year-old Adrian Shine was amazed by what he spotted.
“We saw a row of humps across our line of vision, and away they went into the distance,” he says.
“My father was the first to say, ‘Is that a sea serpent?’” Adrian recounts.
“The next day we learned that they were, in fact, water birds flying just above the surface of the water in a straight line.
“I asked my father what a sea serpent was, in the way that a child does, expecting dogma from adults.
“But there wasn’t – it was most unsatisfactory,” he adds. “He didn’t really know what a sea serpent was, and that’s where the curiosity began.”
This incident inspired Adrian to pursue his interest in natural history, and to investigate the mysteries lurking beneath the surface of UK waters, including Loch Ness.
Adrian knows more than most about this famous and mysterious creature, which is affectionately known as “Nessie.”
After bringing together four decades of research into an award-winning exhibition at the former Loch Ness Exhibition Centre, he is now regarded as a Loch Ness expert.
Adrian has also published some scientific papers and articles on Loch Ness, and was a consultant on the newly revamped Loch Ness Centre.
Today, it attracts around 250,000 visitors every year.
Ninety years have passed since the first publicised report of the Loch Ness Monster in 1933.
However, as naturalist Adrian reveals, there may have been other “Nessie” stories pre-1933.
“It could be argued that the start of the Nessie sensation began in 1933,” he says, “but there were some dark tales of things in the loch before that.
“In 1868, a strange carcass was washed up on the north shore,” he explains. ““It was about six feet long and was identified as a beaked whale.
“But it couldn’t have been a beaked whale as they are twice the length – at birth,” he explained.
As a young adult in the 1970s, Adrian conducted a series of investigations and studies, prompted by a book by Tim Dinsdale, who gave up his aeronautical engineering career to go in search of the Loch Ness Monster.
