Cadborosaurus: Sea serpent

Interest in this mystery is not fading, and it has recently been revived thanks to an article that two marine researchers presented at the prestigious joint annual meeting of the American and Canadian Societies of Zoology in Vancouver.

The article states that "the evidence strongly supports" the reality of a "very large marine cryptid" in coastal British Columbia as a "separate vertebrate species", probably related not only to Ogopoi, but also to other "known aquatic cryptids from deep northern lakes, such as Loch Ness."


The authors of the article are Dr. Paul K. Leblond, former chairman of the Department of Oceanography at the University of British Columbia, and Dr. Edward L. Bousfield, former chief zoologist and senior researcher at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa, now called the Canadian Museum of Nature.


They base their conclusions on published records of observations, sketches and photographs of samples over the past 100 years.


The creature, known as Cadborosaurus or Caddy after Cadborough Bay off the coast of Victoria, where it was often seen, has been part of the mythology of the province for many years. Dr. Leblond and Dr. Bausfield are the first researchers to scientifically substantiate its existence.


Their work concludes that the Caddy reaches 40-50 feet in length in adulthood, 10-15 feet in youth, has flippers, lives at great depths, but goes out into shallow water for mating, and "embodies the main characteristics of both Reptilia and Mammalia, but does not lend itself to a clear classification within the existing subcategories of neither one of them."


Dr. Bousfield, who was born in Penticton on the southern tip of Okanagan Lake, says the young feed on salmon, and before the first of 17 dams was built on the Columbia River 60 years ago, probably followed salmon upriver. The Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean from an 80-mile-long lake.

There are black-and-white photographs from 1937 showing a long creature that fishermen pulled out of the stomach of a whale near the Queen Charlotte Islands. At that time, experts sent tissue samples to the Provincial Museum of British Columbia for testing.


Sightings have been reported on other lakes in British Columbia, including Harrison Lake, located about 100 miles above Vancouver, and Dr. Bousfield says they point to a similar migration upriver.


He suggested that at least one young individual climbed up the Columbia River more than 60 years ago, and then could not go back down because of an obstacle in the form of a hydroelectric power plant.


This creature has long been real enough to deserve official protection under regulation 168-90 of the British Columbia Environmental Protection Act. Official description:

"The animal lives in Okanagan Lake, its length exceeds three meters, and the offspring of this animal also lives in the lake."

What does a cadborosaurus look like?

Named after numerous sightings in Cudborough Bay in Victoria, descriptions of Cuddy vary widely. In general, adults are 40 or 50 feet long, and juveniles are 10-15 feet long. They have slender, scaly, elongated bodies, like a large lizard or a giant eel. In fact, cryptozoologists classify the sea serpent as a reptile and believe that it may be a relic of the dinosaur era - possibly a plesiosaur. Its head is similar to that of a camel or sheep, and it almost always has fins or flippers. However, the number of fins, their location and descriptions vary. Some eyewitnesses point out that the hind fins seem to lead to a fan-shaped diverging tail.