Hunt Resumes To Net Nessie[Original headline: Swedish hunter arrives with giant Nessie trap]
A Swedish explorer specialising in hunting unusual species will arrive at Loch Ness today to resume his attempt to trap the elusive monster.
Jan Sundberg plans to install a creel seven metres long and five metres in circumference to catch Nessie, a move which earlier this year prompted Scottish Natural Heritage to draw up a voluntary code to prevent environmental damage caused by monster hunters.
Mr Sundberg and his Global Underwater Research Team (GUST) planned to begin Operation CleanSweep last month but delayed his visit because the Caledonian Canal was closed for repairs and restrictions were in place on towpaths due to the foot-and-mouth crisis.
The explorer and his four-strong team will outline details of their plans tomorrow but he told The Scotsman they will use multi-beam sonar equipment and an acoustic underwater camera to create a 3-D image of the loch’s depths.
"The sonar has previously only been used in the sea by scientists mapping the ocean and looking for volcanoes and earthquake sites. This is the first time it will have been used in freshwater. If there is a family of monsters or animals down there this sonar will find them.
"We are very excited about this, but its a long shot that we will get something in the trap. It’s a big lake and a small trap.
"But you never know, we could get something . If we do we have an agreement with a scientist at a British university who will take DNA samples from the creature. It will then be released back into the loch.
"No harm will be done, you will still have it. We will not take it back to Sweden even though we would like to." Mr Sundberg reportedly saw aliens at Foyers on the lochside in the 1970s. There are indeed aliens in Loch Ness - a species of freshwater shrimp more common in North America which was introduced in the 1980s, possibly imported on the equipment of Nessie hunters from across the Atlantic.
It is one of the effects of monster hunting which environmentalists want to curb. A network of bodies, The Loch Ness Environmental Panel, has Mr Sundberg to make his Nessie trap big enough to allow seals and otters to escape.
The public obsession with Nessie started with a sighting in 1933 by the late Donaldina Mackay. Since then thousands of people have claimed to have seen a monster and many have come in search of the beast.
• Story originally published by •
The Scotsman, Edinburgh | John Ross - April 23 2001
