Remember Boaty McBoatface? The autonomous underwater vehicles that a UK-based company allowed the Internet to name via an online poll, hence its ridiculous name? Well, it’s now involved in a story about the Loch Ness monster.
Reality is caving in. The unrealities are consuming everything we once intrinsically understood as real.
Boaty McBoatface recently stumbled upon an underwater camera in Scotland’s Loch Ness, uncovering a relic of Nessie-hunting lore. The camera is believed to have been deployed 55 years ago as part of an effort to snap a pic of the elusive and totally fake Loch Ness monster.
The camera, which was lost to time and the lake’s murky waters, was discovered when *sigh* Boaty McBoatface’s propeller got tangled in the camera’s mooring.
Meme Boat ‘Boaty McBoatface’ Finds Camera Set Up To Capture Loch Ness Monster 55 Years Ago
The camera was part of a project spearheaded by Roy Mackal, a researcher from the University of Chicago, who hoped to snap a picture of the legendary creature using an “ingenuous” clockwork Instamatic camera with a built-in flash, according to Sam Smith.
No, not that one. The other Sam Smith. The one who is famously an engineer with the United Kingdom’s National Oceanography Center, specifically in its marine autonomous and robotic systems group. Yes, that Sam Smith.
The housing managed to keep the camera dry and intact for over five decades, even though it was over 400 feet underwater. Scientists and Nessie hunters were able to identify the camera as one of six that were dropped into the loch in the 1960s. The camera didn’t catch Nessie, but it is pretty cool, nonetheless.
“While this wasn’t a find we expected to make, but we’re happy that this piece of Nessie hunting history can be shared and perhaps at least the mystery of who left it in the loch can be solved,” said Sam Smith, the engineer with the United Kingdom’s National Oceanography Center and not the one who sang the theme to Spectre.
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