#LochNessMonster is a #Catfish

An – apparently – little wels catfish.

After 25 years searching, that’s the conclusion of one serious searcher. Wels catfish were introduced to the UK from the continent for sport fishing in the late 1800s. There’s apparently no proof the catfish were specifically stocked in Loch Ness, but it’s not a far-fetched notion. “What a lot of people have reported seeing would fit in with the description of the catfish with its long curved back.”

The news got picked up by so many outlets that a Google search can barely find anything else, but I did find http://www.lochnessinvestigation.com/catfish.html

A specimen can (rarely) grow 13 feet long, weigh 880 pounds, and survive for over one hundred years. That’s quite a monster, even if it is a catfish.

Quote came from foxnews.com.

It’s almost sad to see a famous monster laid to rest, but in most ways its been laid to rest several times. A sonar search in 2003 found nothing very big – not catfish nor monster.

Before I had a chance to post, I ran across this:

One of the Elasmosaurs

“The newly discovered Elasmosaur has been officially classified as a plesiosaur, and Patrick Druckenmiller, a marine fossil expert from the University Of Alaska Museum Of The North, instructs people to ‘picture the mythical Loch Ness monster’ in order to get a pretty good idea of what the marine creature looked like….

“The unfortunate wording was slightly changed and/or repeated at several other sites… [with] a number of inaccuracies that did not come from Druckenmiller and many clues in phrasing that show the reporter does not know enough to be writing such a story. Druckenmiller states that reporters often mischaracterize quotes, ‘I feel lucky if 70% of truth actually makes it into mainstream media, even when aided with a carefully scripted press release. It’s a fact of life that I’ve come (reluctantly) to accept as inevitable’.”

Don’t expect Nessie to disappear entirely from pop culture.