A bit of detective work, sending off some letters and eventually Peter touched base some months back. The time is also ripe to write this article for another reason - establishing contact with Herman Cockrell's son, Peter. Six years on, this blog finally gets round to the final one - the H.

Eighty three years on, the claims of fraud, misidentification or genuine continue to this day. Rather appropriately, it turns out that there is an anagram of Nessisteras rhombopteryx, pointed out in the Daily Telegraph a few days later: “Monster hoax by Sir Peter S.These have been argued over and analysed with a fine toothcomb as believers and sceptics alike look for evidence to justify their stance on each photo. “This was a rash thing to do,” writes Huxley, “and was to tarnish Peter’s reputation in some scientific circles.”

“A name for a species whose existence is still a matter of controversy among many scientists is preferable to none if its protection is to be assured,” they wrote.

Their reason for doing so was one of conservation. Later that year, Scott and Rines excitedly named the beast in the journal Nature: Nessiteras rhombopteryx. “My own guess is that they might look rather like plesiosaurs,” he wrote. According to Peter Scott’s biographer Elspeth Huxley, it was this second image that convinced Scott that the Loch Ness monster was real. Three years later, in June 1975, a single camera captured what became known as the “Gargoyle shot” that appeared to show a large head with horny protrusions (see here) and another photo of what seemed to be the entire creature ( here). According to Nessie enthusiast Robert Rines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, these two images “suggest quite strongly the presence of two animals.”

When enhanced by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasedena, they looked a little like a flipper (see here). In 1972, two frames showed signs of a spearheaded object. In 1971, the Bureau deployed sonar transducers, time-lapse cameras and strobe flash lighting in Urquhart Bay (which happens to be the spot in which Google has also filmed) in the hope of photographing the monster underwater for the first time.

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