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LOCH NESS, Scotland — Deep in the heart of the Scottish Highlands sits a majestic lake, haunted by an elusive giant creature feared and revered by many. Or so goes the legend of the Loch Ness Monster.
Those who’ve dreamed of catching a peek of the beast — or exposing the hoax — no longer have to travel to Europe in search of old Nessie. Thanks to Google Street View, adventurers can chase the legend from the comfort of their own computer or phone screen, according to the Google Blog.
A Google team spent a week in the Scottish Highlands, capturing breathtaking images of Nessie’s home base. The team mounted a camera on the front of a boat, providing a 360-degree view of the lake’s surface, according to Google’s blog.
The team worked directly with researcher Adrian Shine — head of the Loch Ness & Morar Project — who has logged more than 1,000 Nessie sightings since 1973.
“This is dragon country,” said Shine in a YouTube video released by Google. “It is where things become believable. It’s rather eerie — a threshold to the other world underneath.”
To provide an extensive look under the surface, Google teamed up with Catlin Seaview Survey divers, who took their cameras down into the murky lake — which at its deepest reaches 800 feet — for a rare look into the monster’s lair. While it’s difficult to see much of anything in the dark water, it’s worth a look.
The legend of Loch Ness was born back in 1934, when the infamous “Surgeon’s Photograph” allegedly capturing the emergence of Nessie’s head and neck first surfaced in the Daily Mail. Though the photograph is widely considered an elaborate hoax, it’s still considered the most iconic depiction of the Loch Ness Monster in history. Google revealed the Loch Ness Street View feature just in time for the 81st anniversary of the photograph’s publication.
Real or not, Google reports about 200,000 searches for Loch Ness Monster a month — well above the amount of searches for Buckingham Palace.
