Along with boat wakes and disturbances caused by wind on the top of the water, Gary Campbell has his worked cut out when deciding what should be included in the register that includes all those reported and recorded since 565AD.
However, for one reason or another – including clear weather and advances in photography – an increasing number of people have set their sights on what may be the elusive Nessie.
Here are just a few of the most recent sighting that have been accepted for entry on the official register.
Creature’s head
Natalie Hodgson and her family, on holiday from Yorkshire, took a picture of the head of an unknown creature in the water at 10.30pm on June 1st.
The image was captured by Natalie’s daughter and taken from the Highland Lodges holiday park where they were staying.
The creature remained for a few minutes and was caught in the moonlight before disappearing.
Caught on video
Eoin O'Faodhagain, from Co Donegal, took a 10-minute video from the Loch Ness webcam at 12.07 hours on April 30th.
The creature moved from right to left and there were no boats visible on the water when he first noticed. As it swam towards Urquhart bay, two cruisers came down the middle of the loch from the north and the creature sank briefly then came up again.
It seemed to be lower in the water than when it first appeared. As the cruisers got closer to the object, it sank completely and never came back up.
Hippopotamus colour
A large, dark shape was spotted on 26th March by Dakota Frandsen, on holiday from Idaho, in the United States.
It was roughly 40 feet in length, moving about in the water close to the Urquhart Castle jetty between 3 and 3.30pm. The shape seemed to purposely avoid the boat traffic in the area.
Dakota also reported that, as a black speedboat came by, it seemed to attract the shape's attention which led it to briefly surface.
The "skin" of the object was grey in colour, almost like that of a hippopotamus, and then the shape start swimming towards the shore opposite the castle before it finally disappeared. Other, similar shapes seemed to also appear but quickly vanished.
There have been a number of other sightings in recent times and, of course, many over the years.
Sightings from the past
Here is a collection of some Loch Ness Monster sightings from the past:
20 May - Nine members of staff and guests at the Loch Ness Lodge, a bed and breakfast at Brackla on the north shore, saw an object move across the water away from them at 9.55am. The sighting lasted almost 15 minutes and the object created a wake as it moved. Pictures were taken with a smartphone but the distance of approximately 1.2km from the viewers to the object meant that even the binoculars they had could not focus on the object. It then disappeared into the loch.
7 September - Peter Thain of Northumberland, England, reported seeing a large creature just below the surface on Apple's map app.
25 Oct - Ken Ross and his wife, both of Inverness, were travelling down to Fort William when they spotted something in the water near Inverfarigaig. He said, “From the pictures, it looks very like a boat wake but there wasn’t a boat to be seen for miles. The cause of the wake appeared to be travelling at fair speed before the wake ceased. This was witnessed by myself and my wife.” A photo was taken.
24 August - Marcus Atkinson, a local boat skipper with 18 years’ experience on the loch, captured an image of a 1.5m wide creature approximately 23m below the surface on his boat’s sonar system. The contact took place in Urquhart Bay.
20 November - Richard Preston of Yorkshire, England took pictures of mysterious humps near Aldourie Castle, where he was working as a landscape architect.
6 June - Douglas MacDougall spotted a hump in the water near the Clansman Hotel.
22 May - Gordon Holmes from Yorkshire, England, was undertaking his new expedition (Net Nessie 2008) when he recorded an unexplained sonar contact, 60 feet below the loch’s surface. During his project he recorded a further two contacts.
26 May - Gordon Holmes of Shipley, England, took a video of an unknown creature at 9.50pm from a layby at the north end of the loch. He described the creature as 4-6ft long and swimming at around 6mph.
28 January - Mrs Murphy from Inverness was driving south at 11.30am on the A82 near the youth hostel at Alltsigh. She stopped when she saw a black cone-shaped creature circling round in a whirlpool-like motion about one quarter of the way across the loch. She said that she had never seen anything like it before. The sighting lasted 4 minutes and the weather conditions were clear with no wind.
15 October - Robbie Girvan, owner of the Loch Ness Caravan Park at Invermoriston, took five photos of what he described as a 4ft high head and neck at 6pm when he was walking his dogs by the loch shore. He reported seeing a long neck protruding from the water and had time to go to the house, get his camera, and return to take photos. Previously a non-believer, he said that the “dark green and silvery” creature could only have been Nessie.
11 April - Two holidaymakers were walking along Dores beach at around 10am when they noticed something in the water which remained there for around 5 minutes, moving very slowly from left to right. The unknown entity was around 200 to 300 feet away from the holidaymakers and no more than 2 or 3 ft out of the water.
1 June - The captain of a local cruise boat reported seeing a fast moving v-shaped wake on the surface of the loch at 2.10pm. The water was very calm at the time and the wake was said to be about 1000 ft long with the creature at the head of it travelling at about 35mph.
13 April - A local man and his daughter spotted something moving at the head of a wake across Urquhart Bay. They had a clear view on a calm surface for about 5-10 seconds of the object, which was about 200 metres out from Urquhart Castle
5 May - James Gray from Invermoriston took five photos showing a head and neck coming out of the water near Invermoriston Bay. The creature was about 30m from his boat and quickly disappeared below the surface of the water.
13 July – Holidaymakers Melissa Bavister and Chris Rivett took a photo of a large double-humped object in the middle of the loch.
The Loch Ness Monster remains a mystery. But they can’t all be wrong, can they? Why not visit us soon. Who knows, you may make the next history Nessie sighting!