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| -Short Attention Span Theater- | ||
| Revealed: plan to hunt Nessie using dolphins | ||
| 2006-01-18 | ||
| Thatcher's gvt in the 70's? I'm not very british-knowledgeable, but that would be a very short decade IIRC. THE Thatcher government concocted a plan in the 1970s to search for the Loch Ness monster using a team of bottle-nosed dolphins. Whitehall mandarins planned to import the highly intelligent mammals from America to establish once and for all whether Nessie existed. The scheme followed years of inter-departmental discussion about the possible tourism benefits if the fabled creature was ever discovered. Last week The Sunday Times revealed how civil servants had obsessed about whether there would be legal protection from poachers and bounty hunters if Nessie were to emerge from the depths. Now declassified government files, released under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that the government was prepared to incur the wrath of animal rights groups in its quest to establish the truth about the monster. A letter written in May 1979 from David Waymouth, a civil servant at the Department of the Environment, to Stewart Walker at the Scottish Home and Health Department states: âThis department is presently considering the issue of a licence to import two bottle-nosed dolphins from America for the purpose of exploring Loch Ness, a scheme which has already resulted in opposition from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. âInquiries have been made with the mammal experts on the Scientific Authority for Animals and their advice is that there are no conservation, or indeed welfare, reasons for refusing a licence. âClearly, however, there are other factors, mainly political, that you might wish to consider before the licence is issued.â
The National Archive of Scotland contains no record of a response to the letter. However, Adrian Shine, a naturalist who has been investigating the Loch Ness mystery for several decades, said he believed the dolphin plan was the brainchild of veteran monster hunter Dr Robert Rines, founder of the American-based Academy of Applied Science who took a now famous underwater photograph, in 1972, which appeared to show a large flipper in the Loch.
The Academy of Applied Science in New Hampshire confirmed that dolphins were being trained with mini cameras and strobe lights that would have been activated if they encountered any large objects. | ||
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #9 Brilliant! [Insert graphic from recent Guinness ad campaign here - I tried and tried, but couldn't find a linkable one]. |
| Posted by: Xbalanke 2006-01-18 17:08 |
| #8 hehe Seafarious :D I just wish people would leave our stealth subs alone , we have only just managed to make it stream-line in water ... the paddles were the issue if anyone is slighly interested |
| Posted by: MacNails 2006-01-18 13:57 |
| #7 Yet more papparazzi stalking innocent cryptids. Don't we have enough problems as it is, with the declining breeding pools and vanishing food sources? Let my people go! |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2006-01-18 11:37 |
#6  Last week, Japanese scientists explaced... placed explosive detonators at the bottom of Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water. Sir Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally. |
| Posted by: Yosemite Sam 2006-01-18 11:29 |
| #5 Let me break in a moment and tell of my own Nessie sighting. Summer 87 I'm messing around on the Urqheart castle ruins with friends. Taking pictures and swordfighting with sticks. When the film was developed we saw in the background a distinct silouette of a neck and beak coming out of the water with a wake trailing behind it. Damn we were excited. Big money, fame, fortune. HOw did we not see it while we were there? We dug through other photos until we found it again. This time with a bit better lighting. This time we could see the boat. You see the beak was the outstretched arms of a waterskier. How many Nessie sitings didn't have the second photo for comparison? Or had the second photo hidden from prying eyes? I'd love to believe in Nessie, or Tahoe Tessie and all the other Dilophosauri out there but I can't. Bigfoot ate them all long ago and that is all there is too it. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-01-18 09:36 |
| #4 Then there is always the danger of cross-speciel breeding. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-01-18 09:32 |
| #3 This was all before the guy admitted his famous photo was a hoax but still its pathetic. The UK government was going to spend money on something every scientist could easily discount. How many Nessies would be required to keep a viable population alive? How long could a single Nessie live? We've ether got an eternally lasting Nessie or they are all over the place underfoot. The beast does not exist. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-01-18 09:30 |
| #2 Plus they're crazy American cowboy dolphins. They might've *started* to look for Nessie and then swam off to call in a airstike on the Firth of Forth, before heading to the Glasgow Starbucks... |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-01-18 09:02 |
| #1 I'm really not sure, but since dolphins are mammals, I would presume they wouldn't mind fresh water, after all there are dolphins in the Amazon river IIRC. But, I agree, this is not very realistical. I much prefer the krazed killer dolphins with neurotoxin-tipped dartguns on their back who went hunting for humans (most of them black people forced to feed on the dead) after the NO levees were blown up by Halliburton. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-01-18 08:18 |