In an interview, Gemmell said that he worried that an exhaustive investigation into Loch Ness was silly. But then he talked to his 9-year-old son, who told his friends. They thought the project sounded awesome, and after seeing the children’s fascination, Gemmell realised that taking a serious scientific look at the famous loch could stir up public interest in techniques to track biodiversity.
He then put together a team that looked at the “environmental DNA” in the loch – the genetic material that creatures leave in their surroundings. This “eDNA” lets scientists learn about habitats without disrupting them and harming the animals they’re trying to study.
Analysing DNA in 250 water samples from Loch Ness, Gemmell’s team built a detailed picture of the creatures living in Loch Ness, including tiny bacteria. The results point to the famous monster, commonly known as “Nessie”, as being an eel.
The DNA research found the presence of about 3 000 species in the deep murky waters of the Scottish loch, including pigs, deer, sticklebacks (a type of fish) and humans. However, there was enough eel DNA that Prof. Gemmell said he couldn’t rule out a theory that eels in the loch have grown to an extreme size.
“It is possible there are very large eels, but it depends how big you think ‘large’ is,” Gemmell said at a press conference. “The remaining theory that we cannot refute based on the environmental DNA data obtained is that what people are seeing is a very large eel.”
This, Gemmell said, is because of the sheer volume of eel DNA that they found, adding that the quantity surprised him and his team. As a result, there is no way to pinpoint whether the eel DNA is from a gigantic eel or just many small eels. However, the largest European eel ever caught weighed 5.38kg, which is far from Nessie’s monstrous size. “It doesn’t sound like a monster, does it? But based on the evidence we’ve accumulated, we can’t exclude it as a possibility,” Gemmell said.
This is not the first time an eel has been put forward as an explanation for sightings of the Loch Ness monster, but a number of other theories have been equally prevalent. These include a giant sea creature as well as a Jurassic-era reptile. Gemmell’s research definitively proves that there is no reptilian DNA in the loch, eliminating the dinosaur theory at least.
An official “Sightings Register” at the lake lists more than a thousand Loch Ness monster encounters, ranging from descriptions of a 25-foot-long, four-foot-high creature without limbs, to vague depictions of a “big, long creature”. The mythos surrounding the Loch Ness monster is said to go back to 565 A.D., when an Irish saint was supposed to have saved a man from being attacked by a river monster in the area.
Gemmell believes that his research has not killed off the legend of the Loch Ness monster because “there’s still some level of uncertainty”. “There is still the opportunity for people to believe in monsters,” he said.
“Like every other monster hunt there has been at Loch Ness, we have found no definitive evidence of a monster. More and more studies providing more and more negative evidence cast more and more doubt on the possibility, but we can’t prove a negative.”