 The Classic Nessie 'Photo'
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July 28, 2003 — The Loch Ness monster does not exist, according to a team of scientists who have taken a sonar and satellite survey of the loch.
The team, commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corp. to scour the loch for Nessie, began its search convinced it would find evidence of Scotland's legendary monster, according to the BBC's Web site.
The team was searching for what it believed was a plesiosaur, an ancient marine reptile that went extinct with the dinosaurs. Sightings of the creature led to speculation that it might be a plesiosaur.
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 Check out your zipcode for dino activity!
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Recently, a Scottish man found the fossil vertebrae of a plesiosaur on the shores of the loch.
Using 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology to make sure that none of the loch was missed, the BBC team surveyed the waters, looking for telltale signs of the air in Nessie's lungs to distort the sonar signals. But it found nothing.
"We went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one, we have covered everything in this loch and we saw no signs of any large living animal in the loch," said Ian Florence, one of the experts commissioned by the BBC.
His colleague Hugh MacKay told the BBC: "We got some good clear data of the loch, steep sided, flat bottomed — nothing unusual I'm afraid."
"There was an anticipation that we would come up with a large sonar anomaly that could have been a monster, but it wasn't to be."Stories of the Loch Ness monster, so enthusiastically promoted by the Scottish tourist industry, date back to the seventh century, when a water beast is said to have appeared before Saint Columba, the founder of Christianity in Scotland.
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