Mysterious Sonar Return in Loch Ness Could be 'Nessie', Says Boat Skipper

The number along the right side of the screen indicate depth in meters; the mysterious object is approximately 115 feet below the surface. (Mike Bell / Deadline News) — The number along the right side of the screen indicate depth in meters; the mysterious object is approximately 115 feet below the surface. *(Mike Bell / Deadline News)*

Boat skipper Mike Bell captured a mysterious sonar return on June 27th while piloting a group of tourists around Loch Ness, according to The Scottish Sun.

One of the tourists drew Bell’s attention to the object just after he’d finished telling them the story of Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle.

Bell said that he circled back to the same spot to take another reading, but the object had vanished, making it unlikely to be a stationary inanimate object.

The image taken by Bell of his sonar screen shows a fish (top of the screen), the bottom of the loch (bottom of the screen), and a mysterious object about 115 feet below the surface (middle of the screen).

Bell estimated the length of the object at 10-25 feet.

“I would like to think this is our creature, Nessie," the 24-year-old said. "It’s my first year being the skipper in the boat [and] in five months I’ve never seen it or had something that big on the sonar. My dad is the more experienced skipper who has been doing this for a few years and has said he’s never seen it that big before on the sonar. It’s my first sighting of Nessie and I think my dad is a wee bit jealous as he has never seen it."

“The standard size on the sonar is usually a sharp prick suggesting a small fish. The large line about 35 meters in the water was about 10-25 feet," he continued. “An object of that size I would think is way too big for the normal species in the loch. It must have been about five or six minutes we spent trying to pick up this creature again.”

But not everyone is convinced that the ‘object’ represents a single organism.

“The fragmented nature of the sonar return would appear to indicate many smaller objects, rather than one big one,” investigator Tobias Wayland said. “I can’t help but wonder if what he really caught was just a school of fish swimming in tight formation.”

Bell’s sighting came less than three weeks after a video was released of an object protruding from the water in Urquhart Bay. This marks the eighth such report of ‘Nessie’ so far in 2019.

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