He has dedicated more than two decades of his life to the hunt for the elusive Loch Ness monster, spending 60 hours a week on the water.

And now George Edwards believes he has finally fulfilled his ambition of spotting ‘Nessie’; he even photographic evidence to prove it.

Mr Edwards, who has spent 26 years on his quest, managed to capture this image of a dark hump slinking in and out of the lake’s waters from the deck of his boat, Nessie Hunter, before it vanished back into the deep.

He claims the picture is the best-ever taken of the Loch Ness Monster and proves once and for all that the elusive leviathan exists – and is definitely not a sturgeon.

LOCH NESS MONSTER: 80 YEARS OF SIGHTINGS

Famous: Perhaps the most famous picture of Nessie was taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynaecologist, it was published in the Daily Mail on 21 April 1934

The Loch Ness Monster has been a subject of mass intrigue and debate since it came to the world’s attention in 1933.

Scientists have widely written off the idea as a modern-day myth and continued sightings as set ups and wishful thinking.

Yet it has remained a contested phenomenon for almost 80 years.

Perhaps the most famous picture of Nessie was taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynaecologist (pictured left). It was published in the Daily Mail on 21 April 1934.

The picture showed what looked like a long neck and head rising from the water.

However, it turned out to be a toy submarine bought from Woolworths with a head and neck made of wood in an elabourate hoax by big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell in an act of revenge on the newspaper that had ridiculed him over his hapless search for the beast.

The earliest report of a monster in the vicinity of Loch Ness appears in the Life of St Columba by Adomnán, written in the 7th century.

St Columba, an Irish monk, had sent a disciple into the loch to prove there was nothing there. But the monster rose and chased the man snapping at his heels.

But it fled in terror ‘as if pulled back by ropes’ when St Columbamade the sign of the cross and commanded: ‘Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once.’

( via dailymail.co.uk)