RUMOURS Scotland's fabled Loch Ness monster is dead were dismissed by Nessie fans today.

Suspicions that the monster, said to have lurked in the deep waters of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands, was extinct were raised as credible sightings last year waned to just one.

Gary Campbell, president of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, told the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper that the single sighting, made just off the Clansman Hotel by Loch Ness, Scotland on June 6 2009, was judged by him to have been a credible report.

"That's why were so relieved to have heard about this sighting.

"In June, when it was reported, nobody had seen anything for a year. If it hadn't been for that one, we would have been really, really worried.

"Ten years ago we had a lot of good sightings, but in the last two or three years, they have tailed off."

Campbell hopes new witnesses might come forward to prove the Nessie death theory wrong.



