The REAL Monster That Inspires The Legend Of Loch Ness River Monsters

We know almost nothing about these animals, so the only way I'll be able to tell if they're capable of inspiring the legend is to catch one. But this is going to be a monumental challenge. Here these monsters live at the bottom of a 2,000 foot deep fjord. Trying to get some perspective on this I picture them as a handful of rice grains randomly scattered on the bottom of a swimming pool and have to fight the urge to give up now. This will be the first time I've ever tried to fish at such staggering depths and I don't have much time to learn a whole new methodology. It's the end of autumn. As soon as winter closes in, shark fishing in this fjord will be impossible. We try to hit the borderline between the rock and the clay. It seems like they're cruising around along these edges here searching for food. The logistics of working at these depths involve a great deal of precision, effort and care. Get caught in this rope and you'll be on a one-way trip to the bottom of the fjord. We're going to be using somewhere between 800 and 1,000 meters of ankle line here. Right, so that's a good half a mile of ankle line. I'll be using the longest lines I've ever fished with, so thick nylon monofilament is out. It would create too much drag in the current and the reel would have to be enormous. Instead I'm using woven braid. It's very fine and very strong but it does have a fatal flaw. We use these long monotraces for protection of the braid and the skin is like very rough sandpaper. So if the skin touches that then it just goes? Immediately. I get to work baiting the lines while Frederick checks our position with first mate Willem, but there's already a problem. We've actually drifted out of position, the anchor has dragged, so we're going through the whole process again. It's taken an hour of maneuvering but half a mile of anchor line now has to come in before the boat's repositioned and it's thrown out again. We've baited up the lines and what we're going to do now is just check that we're not drifting and then we'll just put them all down. If we're lucky we'll stay here, we won't have to re-anchor. My lines are descending into a vast hidden landscape like a submerged Grand Canyon but Frederick's sonar can't reveal any sharks prowling down there. They're too deep and their bodies are too dense to be distinguished from the bottom of the abyss in which they're hunting. So we've got all the lines out now, it's just a question of waiting. If a shark does take the bait the only clue will be a movement of the rod top that doesn't fit with the movement of the boat but there's no predicting when one might strike. After two hours we bring all the lines up to check the baits. Between the four rods that's almost a mile and a half of line carrying 20 pounds of metal weights reeled in by hand. My whole arm is burning. Right that's why we have to check the baits periodically because they just get chewed by smaller fish. There's a possibility a shark could take that but I mean that's not a very effective appetizing bait so that's why I spend 25 minutes bringing them up to have a look. All the hooks have to be rebaited and the lines reset 2,000 feet below. With every line finally tuned the wait begins again. That's interesting. Oh wait a minute, see that? Is there movement? Yeah that's sort of pulling. The harness should stop the rod being wrenched from my hands by a heavyweight giant. And it feels like it weighs a ton. Not really in the other one. The other lines have to come up before I can bring in the beast on the end of mine. If they don't the fish could become tangled and trapped beneath the boat. That is a very big skate. That is a Norwegian skate. It's a Norwegian skate. This bizarre creature of a fjord floor was first described here in Trondheim. It's an extremely rare sight at the surface. The fantastical imagination of the Nordic map makers now seems quite tame compared with the reality of what's down there. It's a very impressive looking animal, very strange looking animal, but very rare as well. Apparently Fredrik's saying only four of these caught on rod and line before. So we've got to remember we've got to take a tissue sample. These things don't come to the light very often at all. Fredrik works with a scientist at Tromsø University who collects all the data from his catches of sharks and skates. It's the right colour for the fish that I want. The skin underneath certainly has got that rough feel but it's completely the wrong shape. Skates are flattened sharks and this is a very strange looking skate but it's still not the fish I'm looking for. We have to tag it and measure it as quickly as possible. 125 across. 125 across. Four foot across by nearly six foot nose to tail. Sharks and skates are among the few fish that can survive being brought up from such depths. They haven't evolved the gas-filled swim bladders of other fish that can rupture on the way up. That thing is a bit like an alien, a real weird looking thing, living in a weird environment. Some people spend their lives waiting for such a chance encounter with a monster both here and at Loch Ness. The big Greenland shark still eludes me. That thing is actually rarer. Where's the shark? Hours melt into days and I begin to lose myself in the eerie whistling of the lines. After fishing 400 rod hours and reeling in 50 miles of line is my luck about to change. Was it a good nod or? Oh yeah, oh yeah. You feel some real weight now? Yes. Yes. That is not the lead. That's a fish. It's my last chance but is it the monster I've come so far to find? It could be another 50 yards, it could be another 100. I've never had to haul any fish up such an extraordinary distance, way higher than the Empire State Building. There's a pulsing, there's a very very sort of slow pulsing. It's rolling, it's rolling. That's what you feel. If this is a Greenland shark and its rough skin touches the braid the line will sever and I'll lose my last chance. It's very important the other lines come in to make sure that we don't get tangled. I think it's getting near the boat, it's probably aware of the boat now. Leader, leader, leader's in sight. Okay. There it is, there it is. The Greenland shark. It's just too big to bring on board, we'd only injure it trying. We'll have to tie it alongside. It's a monstrous thing to find this far inland and to bring up from such a depth as well but we're just trying to get the tail rope on it now by the standards of what normally lives inland. This is, this is huge, this is monstrous. Willem's reckoning possibly 400 pounds. Despite their enormous size they're a mystery to science. We know virtually nothing about how they live, breed or hunt. Small dorsal fin, that's not your normal erect shark dorsal fin. If this was actually at the surface you wouldn't see that characteristic triangle cutting the surface, it'd be just more of a smooth hump. But if I want to get a closer look and if the fish can't come to me in the boat, I have to go to the fish. I've no choice but to get into the freezing water with the world's largest predatory shark after the great white. This water even through the dry suit and about five layers of undergarments is cold, it's cold and this thing lives in it all the time. I'm not up here, nearly half a mile down. Dark brown in colour. If this came up and did break the surface you wouldn't actually think it was a shark, you wouldn't know what it was. It has got this sort of upturned boat hull appearance. What a beast this is. It's believed they'll eat almost anything they come across down in the abyssal depths. No one yet knows what potential threat they pose to humans. I think it's probably getting close to the time when we should actually set the hook out and let it go back to the depths. As I clamber out of the freezing fjord, Frederick tags the shark in case it ever surfaces again. Good, hook's out, tail rope to go. It's gone already and it just seems very unreal now that it was here. A lot of people even living around here have no idea that creatures like that are almost right under their noses. But could this mysterious giant be the creature behind the legend of Loch Ness? I've considered the contenders from whales and dolphins to seals and sturgeon and even plesiosaurs. But one by one I've had to dismiss them all. But in Iceland, the home of the Vikings' monster myths, I came across a real contender. It also means the one. That ultimately led me to the one, the Greenland shark in this abyssal fjord in Norway. But what I'm realising now is just how special that encounter was, to see that creature rise from the depths on the end of my line. I've seen this thing myself, I know it exists. And I believe it could have inspired some of the monster stories that the Vikings passed between generations and across the lands they conquered. From experience I've learned that many legends hold a grain of truth. And I'm now wondering whether not just the myth, but the animal itself ever surfaced in Loch Ness. My journey has led me to a remarkable, immense predator that is so secretive that we know almost nothing about it. But what we do know is that it lives in exactly the right part of the world, where it hunts in almost unimaginably deep, dark and cold water. But on rare occasions, it's also known to rise up near the surface. And if you were one of the very few people to witness this creature in the flesh, you'd have no doubt that you'd seen a monster. Perhaps even the ultimate river monster, the legend of legends. But who would believe you? My rod is buckling under the strain. This is no lake trout. My prayers have been answered.