Return of the Loch Ness Monster?

Sam, 9, snaps year’s 8th sighting

MONSTER fever is sweeping Loch Ness again after a boy of nine took a photo of a mysterious “fin” in the water.

Eager Sam Knight snapped the amazing picture during a cruise on the loch.

It shows a dark triangle shape breaking the surface in an area known as a top Nessie haunt.

And experts, who at first were divided over whether it was a wave or an animal, have credited it as an official sighting of the monster at the centre of the 1,500-year-old Highlands legend.

The sighting is the eighth this year, the highest annual total so far this century.

Sam was so keen to go monster-spotting during a family holiday in the area he even brought ropes in the hope of tying Nessie to the boat and a kit to take genetic samples.

During the cruise he took hundreds of pictures of the loch – and it was as the family studied them later the incredible “fin” shot emerged.

Mum Dr Jo Knight, a genetics expert at Lancaster University, said: “Sam is very excited. It appears to be a very dark shape somewhere in Urquhart Bay. It is part of the mystery.”

Dr Knight said she and Sam do not think Nessie is a longnecked dinosaur, but possibly a giant eel or sturgeon.

Nessie records keeper Gary Campbell said 2107 had been a “vintage” year for sightings, with newlyweds Rebecca and Paul Stewart also spotting a large fin just last month.

The most famous picture of the monster, the 1934 Surgeon’s Photograph, was later exposed as a hoax.