Steve Feltham, who gave up his girlfriend, house and job in southwest England in 1991 to spend his life looking for the Loch Ness monster, believes he has solved the mystery behind its many sightings, the Times newspaper reported on Thursday.
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Wels catfish are not native to the United Kingdom but have been introduced to the area for sport fishing, and they can get massive – 13 feet long and up to 880 pounds.
Feltham told Sky News he had no regrets about spending almost 25 years hunting for the Loch Ness Monster, saying “I’m in my utopia living here on the shores of the loch”. “What a lot of people have reported seeing would fit in with the description of the catfish with its long curved back”.
Legends of a primitive monster in the loch date back to the sixth century A.D., when a legend of the Irish monk St. Columba relates that he banished a “water beast” to the depths of the River Ness, which flows from the northern end of the loch.
Instead, he claims Nessie is in fact a Wels catfish – a giant fish that can grow as long as 13ft and up to 62 stone.
“We still have this world-class mystery and for the next several decades I hope to carry on trying to find the answer”, he said. “We are looking for the last one or two now”, he said. It has been introduced to Western Europe and is now found from the United Kingdom all the way east to Kazakhstan and south to Greece.
Their long life span would explain the sightings since the 1930s as the animals reached maturity. It was revealed 60 years later to be a hoax that used a sea monster model attached to a toy submarine. The scaleless fish can live for at least 30 years. They have also been observed lunging out of the water to grab pigeons on land. The larger ones also eat frogs, mice, rats, and aquatic birds like ducks.
Mr Feltham has become such a feature of the loch that he is even a member of the local community council. “It ticks most of the boxes with sightings – but it doesn’t tick them all”.
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The 52-year-old man pretty much left everything he had to solve this mystery. “Never, not for one second”.
