Saturday was an exciting day for Professor Kettle’s Loch Ness project as the team were able to test the latest enhancements to their hydrophonic detection array and early results were encouraging. We hope to have a copy of the sounds they discovered available here very shortly and we expect a considerable improvement on the previous recordings (listen here).
Professor Kettle explained about some of the problems his team faces: “Nessie is an unknown cryptid and for that reason we don’t yet know which range of acoustic frequencies she may emit, either through diving or by communication with other creatures. Therefore we have to scan through a broad range and that’s both difficult and time consuming.”
The depth of Loch Ness is another challenge. “The cable connecting our arrays is over a kilometer long so we need multiple signal amplifiers in addition to the hydrophones themselves. The tremendous weight causes us many problems and we often suffer equipment breakage”.
Despite the challenges the team is convinced it is getting the results the world wants. Dr. Pott said, “we are hearing things never heard before and as we analyse what we’ve got I’m pretty sure it will greatly assist identification of the Loch Ness Monster”.