I was working at the Academy of Applied Sciences when Dr. Rines contacted me about joining him in Scotland. His mission: To obtain underwater photos of the large animal he believed occupied Loch Ness. Using a strobe light invented by our colleague, Dr. Harold Edgerton, our team set up an underwater camera and lights rigged to our boat's sonar, so that contact with a large moving object would trigger the strobe camera to snap pictures once every fifty-five seconds. With our camera loaded with rolls of high-resolution photographic film I'd created for NASA, we set out to find the monster.

ON AUGUST 8, 1972, OUR SONAR DETECTED A LARGE UNDERWATER ANIMATE OBJECT. WE CHANGED COURSE, PASSING OVER THE OBJECT, WHICH WAS MOVING VERY FAST. WITHIN SECONDS, IT WAS GONE.

All was not lost. Our camera managed to capture a photo of an appendage, perhaps a flipper or possibly a fin or pectoral limb. Whatever it is that is down there, it's very large, and resembles no species I had ever come across before.

—DR. CHARLES WYCKOFF, ACADEMY OF APPLIED SCIENCES, AUGUST 1972

Chapter 25

Inverness

Two days passed. I spent most of that time alone in my hotel room, icing my foot and researching eels on my laptop.

What I learned about the creatures was eye-opening.

There were eight known species of conger, with Anguilla anguilla, the European version, considered the largest and most fearsome of the lot. Females could reach ten feet and weigh more than 250 pounds. Unlike common eels, the Anguilla could use its pectoral fins to venture on land. Their muscular bodies were enveloped in sheets of slime and their broad heads had protruding lower jaws and long needlelike teeth which, as I could attest, made for a devastating bite. Shy unless provoked, the Anguilla preferred deep water, burrowing in the muddy bottom, which would make them undetectable to sonar. Living in darkness, it would venture on land almost exclusively at night.

But it was their migration pattern that sent my mind reeling.

Anguilla eels that inhabited Loch Ness were notoriously slow to mature, taking fifteen years or more before they were old enough to spawn. When ready, the adult females abandoned the Loch, traveling up the River Ness under cover of darkness for the North Sea. Upon leaving Britain's coast, the eels followed scent trails, swimming thousands of miles west against the currents to reach the deeper waters of the mid-Atlantic. This amazing journey triggered some dramatic physiological changes in the animals' bodies. Upon descending to depths beyond 10,000 feet, the serpents suddenly stopped feeding and began losing their teeth. Their guts quickly degenerated, and their gonads became greatly enlarged. Upon finally reaching their ancient breeding site, the adults would spawn, then die almost immediately, each female leaving behind some 8 million eggs. The eggs that were fertilized developed into clear-colored larvae, called elvers. Over time, the young then rode the Gulf Stream thousands of miles east back to Europe, continuing the conger eels' bizarre circle of life.