A video clip captured by a 4k drone that claims to show the Loch Ness Monster has been debunked by experts.
Wild camper Richard Mavor filmed what appears to be a strange creature beneath the waters of the loch close to the shoreline.
The 54-year-old pilot was filming footage for his Youtube channel, Richard Outdoors, when he accidentally caught the mysterious shape in the loch in August.
The footage quickly hit the headlines and has even been covered by news outlets in Australia and the US.
However, experts have since set out to test whether they believe what he has captured could actually be Nessie.
Nessie hunter Steve Feltham, who has been living on the shore and watching the loch for nearly 30 years in a bid to solve the mystery, said when he first viewed the incredible footage he felt a feeling of "deflation".
He said: "There appears to be no natural movement in the object, and an unlikely degree of illumination, I have spent many hours as a passenger in a microlite flying low over the loch trying to spot a silhouette in the dark waters, and things just do not show up that clearly, it looks almost like the object is illuminated."
His suspicions are backed up by the YouTube channel ParaBreakdown which has analysed the video and claims a 'toy plesiosaurus' has been digitally added to the footage.
Steve, who is recognised by Guinness World Records for the longest continuous monster-hunting vigil on the loch, added: "Now the video has been proven beyond any doubt to be a simple hoax.
"Mavors had actually used a small section of the drone footage elsewhere in his holiday video, but the clip he duplicated did not have the Nessie image superimposed onto it, whereas the drone sequence did."
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This means there were now two versions of the same clip, one with 'Nessie' and one without.
Steve said: "It's utter nonsense, a schoolboy mistake in the world of hoaxing, never show the investigators your ‘before and after’ workings.
"Someone quickly found the online image of a plesiosaur that he had used to create the Nessie shape, which he simply superimposed onto his drone footage.
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"When a researcher asked to see the original footage he had unfortunately deleted it already, more red flags.
"Lie upon lie upon lie.
"The mystery around what he has done has been completely solved, it's a poorly executed deliberate hoax and now all that is left is for him to own up."
Author and fellow expert Roland Watson, who runs the Loch Ness Mystery blog, agreed the image is a fake.
He said: "Various people have looked at this and it is beyond reasonable doubt it is CGI using a picture of a plesiosaur.
"Sadly this does not help the cause of solving the real mystery behind thousands of sightings over centuries."
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Steve summed up his feelings on the whole affair by stating that it was important to expose these fakes so that when the right evidence came along it would be proven genuine, he said: "On this occasion, I have been impressed at the speed and thoroughness of the Nessie hunting community to pull together and solve the question of what he had done.
"It shows me that there are a lot of people out there who really do care about the integrity of this mystery, and will not let someone cash in on it with a cheap fake."
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