I have been waiting for a chance when I had enough tme to write about my own experience with the Loch Ness Monster. As the man in the back of the hall said excitedly, "Tonight's the night!!"

I was living in Boston when the Search for the Loch Ness Monster suddenly seemed to get real. What had happened was that the hints that there might actually be something worth investigating going on in Loch Ness began to intrigue scientists. The point here is that even people with a devotion to a rational approach to problems can become interested in things that are considered sensational - but only if the topics meet a certain level of sensibleness.

What had happened was that some people had done some very interesting mental exercises as well as some on-site investigation and their results were causing at least some poeple, the more open-minded, to rethinnk old opinions.

One group began with the assumption that the Loch Ness monster seen by St. Columba in the 13 or 13th century was unlikely to be the one being sighted in this century. Therefore, there must be a breeding population. Population biologists theorized the number of Nessies that would be needed to provide the genetic variability and the security to last for more than a millenium. Having done that, there were two things that came to mind. Was there enough biomass in the loch to support the school of Nessies? and why haven't we found their bones. These large animals dying there presumably over thousands of years should have built up a layer of bones but none have been found.

The survey of the biomass showed that there was enough to support the Nessies but there was no clearly satisfying answer to that. THe bottom of the loch is a steep "V" underwater valley and the bottom had not been explored. Maybe searching the bottom for bones would lead to a definitive result.

Somewhere around this time, a researcher using automatic equipment took an underwater photo of looked to be a fin of a Plesiorsorus-type animal. Photo interpreters tried to get every bit of information out of that photo. They looked at things such as the light level reflected from the possible fin. They tried to extrapolate the distance from the lens since they knew the power of the light source. Knowing the distance, they could begin to make estimates of the size of the mystery object. They knew the size of the lens so they could tell the angle of its opening. Given that, they could calculate what it takes to fill the camera field at the distance the light told them the fin was from the lens.

Of course, all of this was inexact reasoning but it was a disciplined kind of thinking.

The late Harold Edgerton is one of the finest examples of the kind of scientist who could harness together his wonder and his couriousity to his scientific training. When he was in college working a summer job as a telephone lineman in the American midwest, he saw what happened during lightning flashes at night. He saw that it froze action for that instant. Years later, he took that curious observation and used it to develop the strobe light.

He also developed a variety of other technologies based on his understanding of basic scientific principles. For instance, the sidescan sonar we used for the search of the Hunley was a DOc Edgerton device and it is a standard oceonographic tool today as are airport landing lights, strobe photography and much more. What all these things had in common were that they were tools for investigating the world. Strobe photography, which he developed, told us of things that went on in a falling drop of milk or a bullet going through an apple that no one knew before. His photogrpahy taught engineers a great deal about the behaviour of materials.

Anyway, DOc Edgerton became intereted in the possibilitiy that there was a Loch Ness monster or at least something unexplained going on at Loch Ness and he got involved in the search. This didn't mean that he believed in a monster, just that the hints that something was going on there made it worthwhile investigating. The resulting study found nothing but here a curious, well-trained scientist investigating what had been an off-the-wall claim because evidence had reached a level where it intrigued him. A good scientist is by definition curious but he can not spend his time, energy and resources on will o the wisp ideas.

I like the story of the Loch Ness monster even if it led nowhere because it does give an idea of how an open-minded scientist approaches the world. People who say that scientists are close-minded people who close themselves off to observation maybe just has not met the right kind of scientists.

Sourdough