Lake Monster sightings 2019.

Lake Monster sightings are on the increase. A recent upsurge in the reports of Lake Monster, sea serpents and other aquatic cryptids has been seen in the news.

Nessie has been seen again after a long period of absence, a sea Monster was spotted off the coast of the Isle of Wight and a huge creature resembling the Loch Ness Monster has been spotted in the Bristol Channel.

Let’s begin with the three reports I mentioned in the intro.

The first being the superstar that is Nessie she has been     ‘spotted twice in five days’

A committed Nessie hunter from Ireland says he saw the monster on an official webcam. Just days earlier, a woman from Manchester said she noticed it while driving with her partner.

Irish Nessie enthusiast Eoin O' Faodhagain, used a webcam to capture a dark shadow at the south side of Loch Ness near the Clansman Hotel.

Describing the sighting he said "It's a great feeling you get when you have photographed something out of the ordinary in Loch Ness.

Talking about the video he said

"Nessie is the dark shape on the surface of Loch Ness on the opposite side of the loch.

"I had been watching the webcam for about 20 minutes on the afternoon of the 27th when I noticed a dark object appear briefly, seconds then it was gone.

"I replayed the live cam and stopped it to take the photo, without zooming in. There was no other boat traffic on the loch at that time and the loch was calm.

"I knew immediately I had spotted Nessie, and not a boat. Boats do not disappear from screen there was no further appearance of an object in that area after 20 minutes of watching."

The second witness Lisa Brennan, 30, and her partner, Danny, 37, were driving near to Urquhart Castle when they had their sighting of the famous lake monster. The woman managed to grab a quick picture showing a L-shaped black object on the water which could be taken as the head and neck of Nessie.

Lisa said: "We were driving around the loch and as we got to Urquhart Bay, just before the castle, I spotted a dark object around 3ft tall above the water surface. By the time I had got the camera ready on my phone the object had lowered into the water so I only managed to get as much as I did on the photo as it then disappeared into the water.”

The second beast was seen in The Solent the strait that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland of England. a photograph was snapped showing a moving object swimming in the middle of the stretch of water.

Three humps bobbing up and down in the water were spotted as Jo Wilde, from Newport, Isle of Wight, was heading to Cornwall. She took the picture from the deck of Wightlink's Fishbourne to Portsmouth ferry.

Jo's husband Trevor, from Newport, said: 'It was right in the middle of the Solent, which we find rather strange. 'It had a really shiny texture to it.

'I don't think there are any sandbanks near where the ferry goes for rocks to be able to poke out of the water.

'We've looked at the picture a lot and still it really confuses us. Whatever it was seemed to be gently moving along side of the boat.

'I'm a skeptical man myself, but could it have been the Loch Ness monster.'

Well I don’t think it was Nessie but it could be similar type of creature these animals are spotted across the world, I looked at what they could be in the video linked above.

Then we have the sighting in the Bristol Channel, Jacky Sheppard was enjoying a meal at The Little Harp pub in Clevedon, Somerset with her husband when she saw the 'serpent' shape in the water.

Jacky said the beast was "motoring along the sea from the direction of the Pier towards the Marine Lake".

The onlooker explained that the table next to her also saw what they thought was Nessie

Jacky drew a cartoon of the sea creature insisting she saw a living creature. There have been those that say what Jacky saw nothing more than drift wood or if it were a living creature it could have been a large seal.

This dismisses the sighting all too easily, there has over the many centuries been good witness testimony, if we only looked at Nessie we see a long history.

The first reported sighting of the Nessie is said to have been made in 565AD by the Irish missionary St Columba when he came across a giant beast in the River Ness. The stories have continued until today and the report I mentioned at the start of the video.

Some have proposed more mundane answers like 'Nessie expert' Steve Feltham, who spent 24 years watching the Loch, he thinks that it is a giant Wels Catfish, native to waters near the Baltic and Caspian seas in Europe.

This to me does not explain the descriptions given for these creatures by witnesses, but let’s not stray off topic. Why have sightings started to increase?

It could be down to climate change and its effect on upwellings.

Winds blowing over the ocean surface push water away. Water then rises up from beneath the surface to replace the water that was pushed away. This process is known as “upwelling.”

Upwelling occurs in the open ocean and along coastlines. The opposite process, called “downwelling,” also happens when wind causes surface water to build up along a coastline and this surface water eventually sinks toward the bottom.

Water that rises to the surface as a result of upwelling is typically colder and is rich in nutrients. These nutrients “fertilize” surface waters, meaning that these surface waters often have high biological productivity.

Upwelling systems could be likened to hidden forests: they have a dense abundance of ocean plants that supply massive amounts of food for fishery production. These ocean plants are also responsible for producing a huge part of the oxygen we breathe via photosynthesis. More than 60% of the oxygen we breathe being made by ocean plants.

These hidden forests are at huge risk from ocean “dead” or “oxygen minimum” zones – huge areas where oxygen is very low or non-existent. Microbial processes in these areas release a lot of Greenhouse and Nitrogen gases (key players in climate change), making the ocean more anemic and less productive. This is an event that can be likened to the deforestation of the Amazon.

This upwelling process is under threat from the increase in sea temperature. The ocean is warming much faster than previously thought, this heating of the oceans causes more extreme weather there has been a measured increase in the number and severity of Hurricanes.

As a hurricane moves across the ocean, it causes a strong upwelling this can push animals from deeper waters towards shore.

We have seen this with a fish that is said to have inspired the tales of sea serpents “the oarfish”

 Oarfish, only eat plankton but they can reach up to 56 feet long (17 meters). They live at depths of around 3,300 feet, (1,000 meters) so they aren’t seen very often, they inhabit in tropical waters around the world waters which have been hit by increased hurricane activity.

What if like the oarfish and the many other species that have been pushed up from the deep, the creatures that these witnesses have spotted have also been forced to shallow or coastal waters by upwellings?

The animals we are seeing washed up on our beaches are seldom seen and could be classified as sea monsters by those unfamiliar with creatures.

What do you think, are these witnesses seeing  living animals, what type of animal could it be, and is climate change a possible answer to the increase in sightings?

Let me know in the comments below.