The Monster

This would have been quite an enjoyable site day had it not the potential for things to go wrong at some point. As it turned out everything went to plan and everything worked the way it was supposed to.
I had to survey a section of loch bed. Loch Ness is very deep and if you visualise the steep hillside which flank its edges continuing downward below the surface on the same gradient you start to get a feel for the profile. The device I had hired in for the job -an echo sounder - which pings and simultaneously talks to my GPS kit measures to 75 metres depth. Beyond this depth the client has no interest. Thus the outward limit from shore of the survey was dictated by when the return ping cut out. There was an odd moment when beyond this depth (possibly 100 metres) the pings started again registering 7, 8, 9 10.5 , 11, 8  metres. Looking over the side the water looked deep and inky black. I checked the transducer in case it had picked up some weeds; totally clean and decided to restart it. Upon restart there was no ping until we re-entered sub 75m depth. There was obviously something big enough directly under the boat for a minute or so to send back an echo.
I also had a boat and operators on hire. Thanks to R and S for their patience and allowing me to gather so much data. They cursed the clown who raced past in a big power boat and put our boat in an alarming (to me) fit of rocking back and fore and side to side.