A mythical mystery: Did these tourists really see the Loch Ness monster?

A couple visiting Scotland claim to have spotted what they believe to be the Loch Ness monster, also known as Nessie, on a recent trip, local media reported.

While touring the famous Loch Ness water in Scotland's Highlands, a stunned husband and wife Etienne and Elaine Camel snapped a photo of a "huge dark shape." The pair reported that the shape was likely the ominous Loch Ness monster, a mythical creature claimed to reside in the Scottish water. 

Despite numerous reports that the Loch Ness monster is a hoax, Etienne, a pharmacist, remains confident he caught glimpse of the creature. 

"It was quite strange," he told The Telegraph. "I am a man of science so I never believed that the Loch Ness monster is a prehistoric animal. But when I was taking a picture I saw this long, long shadow. I called my wife over and we saw the shadow move. I thought maybe it was a cloud, but there was none, or a boat, but none was near or reefs."

The sighting was reportedly added to the official Loch Ness sighting register, the second one in 2023.

The Loch Ness monster could be a giant eel 

Scotland's fabled Loch Ness monster could possibly be a giant eel, scientists said in 2019 after an intensive analysis of traces of DNA in the Loch's icy waters. 

The results ruled out the presence of large animals such as dinosaurs, they said, but there was a lot of eel DNA in the Loch, Professor Neil Gemmell, a geneticist from New Zealand's University of Otago, told reporters.

"Eels are very plentiful in the loch system - every single sampling site that we went to pretty much had eels and the sheer volume of it was a bit of a surprise," Gemmell said. 

"We can't exclude the possibility that there's a giant eel in Loch Ness but we don't know whether these samples we've collected are from a giant beast or just an ordinary one - so there's still this element of 'we just don't know.'"

Reuters contributed to this report.