Team Plans Biggest Hunt for Nessie in Half a Century

The Loch Ness Centre in the Scottish Highlands and the Loch Ness Exploration research team are on the hunt for Nessie—and they're looking for volunteers. Over the last weekend in August, they're planning to hold the biggest search for the legendary Loch Ness Monster in more than 50 years, the CBC reports. The quest for signs of unknown life will involve thermal imaging drones looking for heat spots at night and underwater microphones dropped to a depth of nearly 60 feet. Volunteers will also be scanning the water from the shore, an effort that monster hunters who can't make it to Scotland can take part in through a network of webcams.

The team hopes the combination of technology and many eyes on the water could lead to sightings of an elusive creature or creatures. The last search of this size was led by the now-defunct Loch Ness Investigation Bureau in 1972. Legends of a large creature in the loch go back almost 1,500 years, though the monster-hunting didn't become a phenomenon until 1933, when the manager of the Drumnadrochit Hotel, now the home of the Loch Ness Centre, said he had seen a "water beast," the AP reports. A team that studied DNA samples from the lake in 2019 said they found no evidence to support theories that the sightings could have been of sturgeon, catfish, sharks, or plesiosaurs that had somehow escaped extinction, but they said they couldn't rule out giant eels.

Loch Ness Exploration founder Alan McKenna tells the CBC he leads groups to the edge of the loch to look for Nessie once or twice a month—and skeptics are welcome. He says people have told him he's wasting his time, and he firmly disagrees. "It's not wasted. You're in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, you're looking over this beautiful loch and the beautiful hills around you. I've never had a bad day, even in the pouring rain," he says. (More Loch Ness monster stories.)