There is growing speculation that, if there ever were large cryptids living in Loch Ness in Scotland, they may finally have died out. There has been a real dearth of sightings in recent years - something that, among other things, has Loch-area businessmen very nervous. Here's a link to a very good article on the Gralien Report:

http://gralienreport.com/cryptozoology/the-great-debate-over-nessies-death/

Frankly, I don't know that there ever was anything unusual in Loch Ness - certainly not plesiosaurs. The evidence doesn't point to a active breeding population of any animal (at least as they exist in this reality). Now, if we take off the gloves and start to speculate about periodic extra-dimensional visitors...

S

Sturgeons are an interesting possibility for Nessie, but what about eels? Many Nessie sighting supposedly could fit eels. I am inclined to the EDH as the next Fortean Mystery Monger, but we haven't gotten much in the way of lake monster sightings that pan out. True swamp monster, Bigfoot, mothman and jersey devil sightings tend to occur in flaps like UFO's (and are some times associated with UFO flaps).

Nessie always seemed to be fake to me, but there might be something uncanny about Loch Ness, medieval Bishops were rowed out in boats to perform an annual exorcism. Haven't researched what they might have seen back then, but I don't think it bore any resemblance to the Nessie the businessmen love as much as the Roswell tourist bureau love their grays.

Rereading the St. Columba account, that only described a water monster. It could be any form. Nessie in modern times has not been shown attacking people. The sightings outside of the water fit the paranormal cryptid explanation. If we had an air breathing creature like a plesiosuar would hunt fish and we would see one eventually, even if only one remained and it had a lifespan surpassing sturgeons.

I think the out of the water sightings have a different explanation than the sightings in the water. A skeptic might say the out of water sightings were hoaxes, but I have no issues with otherworldly forays into our material realm.

I'll see if I can find anything else in one of my old crypto books on medieval sightings of that lake monster. Can't do it tonight, busy partaking of Saint Arnold Winter Stout, and most of my books are still in storage bins. It takes weeks to get ready to move and often months to unpack books. Do you have a Kindle or other E-book? I might go that route as my book collection is too much for the shelves available.

Somer, you're looking at a guy whose wife is about to throw him out because he's got errant stacks of books all over the house. I've seen Kindles and they look cool but there's something romantic about a real old book that a slab of plastic and silicon can't replicate. That being said, there are a lot of old books that I can't afford to buy so I have to settle for e-book versions. In fact, I've even done some work of taking raw electronic page scans and reviewing and correcting them so that they can be used as e-books.

As for Nessie, I've heard some suggest that Nessie might be an oarfish. From this pic, I can see how the misidentification might be made:



S

An oarfish would work for Nessie sightings that involve serpentine forms in the water without a long neck and head. I do find the land sightings interesting and they could fit into the temporary transmogrification theories of John Keel. He used that to explain swamp monsters, lake monsters, Bigfoot, and MIB's alike. If oarfish, eel and floating dead wood led to lake sightings creating a belief system, then whatever tricksterish force or entities living in Scotland might have generated sightings. People rarely see fairies in Scotland anymore, they aren't part of modern lore as the Victorians made them filmy winged ladies in advertisements. Then Disney came along and finished the job.

If anyone saw elves in Scandinavia, that sighting might be more influenced by modern fantasy from Tolkien to AD&D, which is not the dangerous elves with hollow backs from Scandinavian lore. I can accept Keel's theory that something shapes itself to our belief and creates sightings that people sensitive to the paranormal then see and report, but I also see value in the psychosocial hypothesis, our fiction influences future folklore, just as past folklore influenced our fiction.