An ocean robot developed and operated by the U.K.’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has made a chance encounter of a Nessie kind during engineering trials in Scotland’s famous Loch Ness.

During a test mission, the advanced underwater vehicle, designed for discovering the secrets of the global ocean, accidentally found an underwater camera system, thought to be one of the first attempts to catch the Loch Ness monster on film.

It is believed that the camera, discovered around 180-m deep in the loch, had been placed in the water in 1970 by Professor Roy Mackal of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau and the University of Chicago.

Remarkably, despite having been submerged in the 23-mi.-long loch for 55 years, the camera was still in good condition, and the film was able to be developed by an NOC engineer. But the loch’s famous inhabitant did not make an appearance.

Adrian Shine, who set up The Loch Ness Project in the mid-1970s to investigate Loch Ness and its world-famous inhabitant, helped to identify the camera and said it was one of six deployed by Mackal, with three of them lost in a gale that same year.

NOC has been trialing its underwater robotics, including running multi-day, 24-hr. endurance tests, in Loch Ness for nearly a decade. At 230-m deep, Loch Ness is an ideal location to test these robotics, their sensors and systems, before they’re deployed in the deep ocean.

The film, camera and its housing have now been handed to The Loch Ness Centre, in Drumnadrochit, near to where it was found, to allow it to be put on display as a part of the loch’s rich Nessie-hunting history.

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