The second official Nessie sighting of the year has been made after a tourist claimed to have captured what he believes is the Loch Ness Monster on sonar - lurking more than 400 feet below the surface.
Tom Ingram couldn't believe his eyes when he spotted something "big" appearing on the boat's sonar.
Part of the tour, passengers are allowed to watch the screens but 36-year-old IT Infrastructure Engineer for South Western Railway assumed at first it was simply the crew having a bit of fun with the group until he realised it was indeed real.
The sighting, which occurred on Monday (April 4), has now been accepted by the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register as the second of the year.
The moving object was around 125 metres (410 feet) down and about 30 feet long and screen grabbed by Mr Ingram.
Tom said: "We decided to take one of the regular cruises from Fort Augustus to get some scenic photos of the loch whilst we are here. At around the half way point, just off Invermoriston, we were alerted to a strange shape forming on the sonar.
"At first, we thought it was part of the cruise - something for the tourists - but it quickly became apparent that what we were looking at was in real time and big!.
"I'd class myself as 'open minded' (about the existence of Nessie), of course we are aware of the myth, but to actually see something big on the sonar like that, took us both by surprise.
"At first, we were excited and then puzzled as to what we had seen. It certainly adds to the mystery!"
Mr Ingram said it had always been on his "bucket list" to visit Loch Ness, but had never been before.
Incredibly Mr Ingram's brush with Nessie was in the same place as a famous similar sonar contact two years ago that made headlines around the world.
In 2020 startling images of a large creature inhabiting the depths of Loch Ness were also captured on sonar off Invermoriston by skipper Ronald Mackenzie aboard his Spirit of Loch Ness tourist boat.
They were said to be the "most compelling" evidence of the existence of a Loch Ness Monster.
It left experts astounded by the clarity of the image of an object, estimated then to be 32 feet long, hovering 62 feet above the bottom and over 500 feet down.
Leading sonar expert Craig Wallace described the sonar images as "very curious" "large, clear and distinct contacts, all strangely near to the loch bed" and "100 percent genuine".
Nessie expert Steve Feltham, who has set a world record for the longest vigil of looking for the Loch Ness Monster - now 30 years long - said:"The sonar image - together with the previous ones - are now the best evidence of something big and deep down in the loch.
"Mr Ingram's image proves there is something large down there and his image is 100 percent genuine.
"That tourist boat has been regularly picking up contacts in that area for the last two years. So some large creature has moved into that territory.
"This is another step towards finding out what Nessie is. I'm still inclined to think she is a large fish of some sort, my best guess is a Wels catfish."
Mr Feltham said the size of the latest contact was difficult to determine but was "very big".
Mr Ingram's sighting also follows that by documentary makers near the former home of notorious oculist Aleister Crowley.
Boleskine House was also once the residence of and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
It was recorded by Jamie Huntley, 35, a documentary maker visiting from Tyne and Wear, who reported that at 11.18 am on March 30 he saw something unexplained with his colleague Warren Speed, 54.
They were near Boleskine House, which overlooks the mysterious loch, ans is best-known as the one time home of Crowley, who was said to have performed occultist rituals at the property, when he lived there between 1899 and 1913.
It was also claimed he threw a sacrificial sheep into the loch every Sunday for his "pet" Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.
Musician Page bought Boleskine House in the 1970s because of the Crowley connection, before later selling it in 1992.
Mr Huntley said: "The object/creature was reflecting the water so looked wet, almost like a whale skin crossed with a fish skin it was dark in colour darker than the water surrounding it, there were dark grey's, black, browns in colour, it almost looked like how a whale hump might look breaking the surface minus the fin, there was a definite movement but didn't see too much of the movement before trees obscured it, it was a very big size at least 15 foot long, maybe bigger, around the middle of the loch.
"I can't explain what I have seen - I was a sceptic about Nessie before all this."
According to Google there are 200,000 searches each month for the Loch Ness Monster.
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