Marcus Atkinson's Loch Ness Sonar Image

Loch Ness has been probed by sonar for decades. Robert H. Rines took sonar and underwater cameras into its depths. Operation Deepscan logged three "crescent shaped" contacts off Urquhart Castle, later put down to seals or salmon. By 2011, a tour boat could carry a fish finder.

Marcus Atkinson skippered one. The Inverness Courier described him as 43 years old, with about 18 years on Loch Ness, on pleasure boats and teaching sailing.

24 August 2011. Urquhart Bay, near Drumnadrochit. Atkinson was aboard the Ness Express. "I was dropping customers at Urquhart Castle and then got my boat out of the way of the other tour companies," he said. "I moved out into the water and looked at the sonar and saw this image had appeared."

A long solid echo. About 23 m down. Roughly 1.5 m wide. "The device takes a reading of the depth and what is below the boat every quarter of a second," he explained. The shape kept building. "The object got bigger and bigger, and I thought 'bloody hell' and took a picture with my mobile phone."

Press reports said it seemed to follow the boat for about two minutes. Nothing showed at the surface. "There is nothing that big in the Loch," Atkinson said. "I was in shock, as it looked like a big serpent."

Other experienced skippers could not identify it. He reported it to full time Nessie hunter Steve Feltham at Dores beach. According to Roland Watson, the story first surfaced in September 2011, after the tourist season. The Inverness Courier later entered it in William Hill's Best Nessie Sighting of The Year competition.

14 February 2012. It won. The prize was £1,000 cash and a free £500 bet. Gary Campbell, president of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, called it "conclusive proof there is something in the loch." Atkinson told the Courier: "I think there is truth behind every myth." In April 2012 the image reached the Daily Mail, the Mirror and the Express, then Cryptomundo and Alex Boese's Museum of Hoaxes.

Dr Simon Boxall of the National Oceanography Centre offered another reading. "The image shows a bloom of algae and zooplankton that would exist on what would be a thermocline," he said. "This is a monster made of millions of tiny animals and plants and represents the bulk of life in the Loch." The length on screen, he argued, reflected time, not size. "The picture is built up slowly as the boat moves... So it's not a snapshot."

Not everyone agreed. Watson and others argued that algae need light, and are unlikely at 70 feet and more in the loch's dark, peat stained water. Feltham thought a fish unlikely so deep and called it the best evidence in years. One commenter read the scale as 22 to 23 feet and suggested a line or a small school of fish. Dick Raynor warned that with fish finders "there is always the possibility of accidental misinterpretation." Loren Coleman noted that Cruise Loch Ness ran monster hunting trips, and some locals asked: "Is it a marketing move?" Nobody claimed the image was faked.

The raw sonar data was never released. Reported lengths conflict, from 75 feet to about thirty feet. Still, the picture has its own heading in Wikipedia's Loch Ness Monster article. Later sonar contacts followed, from Rod Michie in 2015 to a Cruise Loch Ness boat in 2020 and the Spirit of Loch Ness in 2024.