An international team of scientists plans to dredge Scotland’s Loch Ness next month — seeking not the mythical monster, as so many have done before, but rather its DNA footprint.

The project’s leader, evolutionary genetics professor Neil Gemmell of New Zealand’s Otago University, doubts that the Loch Ness monster actually exists. He been quite candid that he’s using the legend as a hook to attract interest in a study of the lake’s biodiversity, writes Avi Selk at mercurynews.com.

[uam_ad id=”54865″]

“You can’t help but wonder, when so many swear black and blue that they saw these things, that there might be a biological basis for them,” Gemmell said in a video earlier this year, as he prepared for the expedition.

According to the plan on his website, he’ll be joined by researchers from Scotland, Europe and the United States, representing several universities between them, and rely on what Reuters calls a “well established tool for monitoring marine life,” known as environmental DNA.

The team plans to sail the entire loch, collecting water samples at various depths, which should be full of DNA fragments from whatever lives there. They’ll do the same thing at two nearby lakes, as control groups, and then analyze the DNA to see what sort of oddities really live in Loch Ness.

To read the full article, click here.

[uam_ad id=”54875″]