A VETERAN Nessie watcher has claimed his ninth sighting after it was “officially” confirmed today, more than three years after he initially spotted it.
Eoin O’Faodhagain from Co Donegal, Republic of Ireland came forward with a suspected dating from May 2017 amid a flurry of new Nessie activity over the past few weeks.
The 55-year-old was inspired to check his footage again after seeing fresh reports of sightings, including a snap said the be the “best ever” taken of the mythical beast.
The video was today recognised by the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, who say the video shows something “unusual compared to the known traffic of the loch.”
The sighting was then retroactively added to the website’s log by the site’s administrator, Gary Campbell.
The footage begins showing calm waters at Urquhart Bay.
After a few moments, a “pole-like figure” emerges in the top right of the screen and begins to make its way across the waves.
It then re-submerges back into the depths and disappears from view.
The footage has now moved the total confirmed sightings in 2017 to 15.
The record of the sighting reads: “Eoin Fagan of Ireland reported a webcam sighting (the report was submitted from his archives in June 2020.)
“He said that the sighting took place at 21.01 pm on May 19 when he spotted something moving down the middle of the loch throwing up a wash, on the Loch Ness Web Cam.
“It looked unusual compared to known traffic on the loch and it was nearly dark, and was only visible just before it went out of camera range on the video.”
Speaking today, Eoin said: “I only sent it to Gary Campbell three weeks ago, and he registered it today for the 2017 listing.
“The reason I did not send it before was, as the sighting took place at 21.01 pm, it was nearly dark, and I had to brighten up the image to see what I was looking at coming down the middle of the loch.
“I actually over brightened the contrast, made a bit of a mess of the clip.
“I explained this to Gary, but he liked it.
“Now I am thinking I should have sent it in the first place, back in 2017.
“I noticed a pole-like black object appear in the middle of the Loch, and move briskly north to south until it ran out of Webcam range.
“It was fairly moving as you can see from the 17 second video and throwing up a lot of wash.
“With this sighting now registered, it brings my sighting list to 9.
“The sighting is not going to break world records, but it is still a sighting.”
Eoin’s footage comes amid new speculation about Nessie.
Just last week, Kalynn Wangle from Oregon, USA bagged the fifth official sighting of the year.
While photos taken in 2018 by Steve Chalice from Southampton, surfaced online and also caused a stir.
Last September, researchers from New Zealand claimed that the Loch Ness Monster could be a large eel, extracting DNA from water samples to test for this.
Research carried out in 2018 revealed that the mythical creature is worth £41 million a year to the Scottish economy.
