The previous article on "Cadborosaurus" appeared on this blog in April and it included a pretty good summany and general overview on reports in the category:
http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2012/04/some-more-notes-on-cadborosaurus.html
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| "An American Sea Serpent" in the 1800s-much like Caddy in the early reports. There is a strong tendancy to think of Caddy as still being in these proportions, compare to the long-necked and long-tailed drawing next following |
1934 – Sea Serpent Found Near Pender Island
Historical Archives. A giant sea serpent was spotted off Pender Island in 1934. Named “Amy”, the Cadborosaurus was seen by Cyril B. Andrews and 11 companions. The serpent reared 12 feet of her body out of the water – only 10 feet from Andrews’ boat. It then proceeded to swallow a wounded duck that Andrews was trying to retrieve.
View Newspaper Article
The most recent sightings of this creature have taken place at Qualicum Beach and Victoria respectively in November and December of 2006. [Source]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadborosaurus_willsi
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| These Sketches by Wilfred Gibson are some of the better ones for showuing the Plesiosaurian form and how the neck works, the way the neck goes from side to side like a boom is described both on the Eastern coast of the USA and at Lock Ness, and there is the suggestion that when the creature swallows a duck, you can make out the shape of the bird sliding down the thin skin of its throat. These are strong indicators the witness was not making it up. |
Cadborosaurus willsi
(from Wikipedia)“Cadborosaurus willsi”, nicknamed Caddy, is an alleged sea serpent reported to be living on the Pacific Coast of North America. Its name is derived from Cadboro Bay in Victoria, British Columbia, and the Greek root word “saurus” meaning lizard or reptile. Reports describe it as being similar in form and behavior to various popularly named lake monsters such as “Ogopogo” of Okanagan Lake in British Columbia and to the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland.
There have been more than 300 claimed sightings during the past 200 years, including Deep Cove in Saanich Inlet, and Island View Beach, both like Cadboro Bay also on the Saanich Peninsula, also British Columbia, and also at San Francisco Bay, California.
Cadborosaurus willsi is said by witnesses to resemble a serpent with vertical coils or humps in tandem behind the horse-like head and long neck, with a pair of small elevating front flippers, and a pair of large webbed hind flippers fused to form a large fan-like tail region that provides powerful forward propulsion.
In 1992 Ed Bousfield, retired Research Associate at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, and Paul LeBlond, professor at the Department of Oceanography, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), announced some startling pieces of evidence – three photos, taken in 1937 on the flensing platform of a whaling station at Naden Harbour in the Queen Charlotte Islands, that depict a large serpentine carcass. Retrieved from the stomach of a sperm whale Physeter macrocephalus, the carcass is about 3 m long, long-bodied, and appears to have a camel-like head and a fluked tail. It obviously struck the whalers as unusual, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of setting it up on crates or photographing it. Suggestions that it is an elephant seal or baleen whale don’t seem realistic in view of certain of its features.
Related Links
http://www.bcscc.ca/cadborosaurus.htmhttp://www.qsl.net/w5www/caddy.html
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| The most common Caddy sighting is actually a standing wave pattern. Here you can see through the water on the two end humps, proving they are made of water (they are not empty loops, there is a sheen on them |
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| Artwork by Pristichampsus (Tim Morris) amended by DD to show the "Mane" and "Jagged spines on the back" The "Mane" is meant to exaggerate the vertical height of the creature visually and thus make t look larger to its rivals: ordinarily the creature without the "Mane" has a more elongated appearance |
Caddy [George Eberhart, Mysterious Creatures, 2002]
Sea Monster of the coast of British Columbia, Canada.Etymology: Name popularized if not coined October 11, 1933, byVictoria (B.C.) Daily Times editor Archie H. Wills after repeated sightings in Cadboro Bay, British Columbia. Short form of Cadborosaurus, coined at the same time.
Variant names: Amy, Cadborosaurus, Edizgiganteus (after Ediz Hook Light, Washington), Haietluk, Klamahsosaurus (on Texada Island), Penda (after Pender Island).
Scientific name: Cadborosaurus willsi, proposed by Edward L. Bousfield and Paul H. LeBlond in 1995. [Name not accepted by the scientific community and considered invalid generally]
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| Sea Serpent (Haietluk) by Native artist Butch-paired fins on one side equated to limbs on the other side This is essentially a "one-way" depiction of a Sisiutl |
Physical description: Serpentine body that forms many humps or loops. Length, 16–100 feet. Diameter, 2 feet 6 inches–8 feet. Light brown to black. Small head resembles a sheep, horse, giraffe, or camel. Eyes in the front of the head. Small ears or horns. Pointed tongue. Two rows (upper and lower) of fishlike (Spiky) teeth. Mane or fur on back of neck sometimes reported. Neck is 3–12 feet long, about as thick as an arm or a man's waist. One pair of front flippers seen, rear ones sometimes indicated. Back some- times appears serrated, sometimes smooth. Flat tail sometimes fluked or formed from back flippers. Behavior: Does not appear to undulate when it swims. Fast swimming speed, clocked at 40 knots. Breathes in short pants. Makes whalelike grunts and hisses. Feeds on herring, salmon, and ducks. Distribution:British Columbia seacoast, especially around Cadboro Bay and the Strait of Georgia.
Significant sightings: A crew member of the ship Columbia under American fur trader Capt. Robert Gray was the first to report a Caddy sighting in 1791. Osmond Fergusson watched a 25-foot animal with a long neck near the Queen Charlotte Is- lands, British Columbia, on June 26, 1897. In September 1905 or 1906, Philip H. Welch saw a brown animal with a 6- to 8-foot neck from a distance of 100 yards away in Johnstone Strait. It had two bumps on its head that were 5 inches high and rounded on top. F. W. Kemp and his wife and son watched an 80-foot maned animal while they were sitting on the Chatham Island beach, British Columbia, on August 10, 1932. On September 23, 1933, Dorothea Hooper and a neighbor observed a serpentine animal with a serrated back [oarfish?]cavorting in Cadboro Bay about 400 yards distant. It created a commotion in the water as it swam out to sea. Maj. W. H. Langley and his wife were sailing in Haro Strait on October 1, 1933, when they heard a loud grunt off Chatham Island. They saw the back of a huge, dark-green creature with serrated markings on the top and sides. Charles F. Eagles sketched a 60-foot animal that he saw in Oak Bay on October 14, 1933. It had crocodile-like spines on its neck. On December 3, 1933, Justice of the Peace G. F. Parkyn of Bedwell Harbour was one of twelve people watching from Pender Island as an animal with a large, horselike head and neck gulped down a duck that had just been shot by Cyril Andrews. In 1936, E. J. Stephenson and his wife and son watched a yellow-and-bluish, 90-foot-long, 3-foot-thick animal crawling over a reef into a lagoon on Saturna Island. A Canadian naval officer was fishing in an open boat off Esquimalt Harbour in November 1950 when a 30-foot Caddy appeared and created a heavy wash. It swam with an undulating motion using large flippers on either side. It snapped its teeth together once before it dived after twenty-five seconds. On February 12, 1953, R. D. Cockburn, C. P. Crawford, and Ron Loach saw an animal with three humps off Qualicum Beach for five minutes. Two other men got into a boat and rowed within 20 feet, but it submerged and reappeared 100 yards away. Its head was dog- shaped and had two horns. In late November 1959, David Miller and Al- fred Webb came within 30 feet of an animal with a 10-foot neck sticking straight up out of the water off Discovery Island. It had coarse brown fur, red eyes, and small ears. Mechanical engineer Jim M. Thompson was fishing off Spanish Banks, Vancouver, in January 1984 when an 18- to 22-foot serpentine animal surfaced about 100 feet away. It had a giraffelike head with small stubby horns and floppy ears. In May 1992, music professor John Celona saw a multihumped animal about 25 feet long while sailing. Students Damian Grant and Ryan Green were swimming across Telegraph Bay in May 1994 when they saw a 20-foot animal with two humps.
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| "Caddycarcass" taken from the belly of a whale- More likely yet another basking shark skeleton as in the other "Caddy" carcasses illustrated above it. |
. A 10- to 12-foot carcass of apparently a young Caddy was removed from the stomach of a sperm whale, photographed, and displayed for a while at Naden Harbour whaling station in 1937. The photo shows it stretched out on packing cases. It was about 10 feet long, with a camel-like head, traces of flippers, and a paddling tail. The carcass was allegedly shipped off to the Field Museum in Chicago, but there is no record of its arrival. A 16-inch-long juvenile Caddy was caught in a net by William Hagelund in 1968 off De Courcy Island, but it was thrown back. It had spiny teeth, a saw-toothed ridge of plates along its backbone, and a bilobate tail. A soft, yellow fuzz covered its undersides.
Possible explanations: (1) The Northern sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) can appear serpentine in the water but only grows to about 10 feet 6 inches long. (2) The Northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) is found in British Columbian waters in the nonbreeding season, but it only measures up to 16 feet long and does not have an elongated neck. (3) A surviving basilosaurid type of archaic whale, suggested by Roy Mackal and Karl Shuker. Some basilosaurids were serpentine, grew up to 80 feet long, and lived in the Late Eocene, about 42 million years ago. They had a tail fluke, but it’s unknown whether it was used primarily for propulsion or steering. They are mainly known from the eastern United States and Egypt but may have been worldwide in distribution. (4) An evolved plesiosaur, suggested by Edward Bousfield and Paul LeBlond. This group of long-necked marine reptiles swam with paddlelike limbs and had a body length that varied from 6 to 46 feet. Plesiosaur fossils are found continuously from the Middle Triassic, 238 million years ago, to the Late Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. (5) A decaying Basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) might account for the 1937 Naden Harbour carcass. These sharks take on a remarkably plesiosaur-like appearance due to the differential decomposition rates of their gill slits and lower tail fluke. A 30- foot carcass found in November 1934 by Hugo Sandstrom on Henry Island turned out to be a Basking shark. (6) Some kind of decapod (crayfish or lobster) has been suggested by Aaron Bauer and Anthony Russell as an explanation for Hagelund’s juvenile Caddy capture in 1968. [More recently Naish et al have shown this to be most likely a pipefish]
Sources: “Yachtsmen Tell of Huge Sea Serpent off Victoria,” Victoria (B.C.) Daily Times, October 5, 1933, p. 1; “The Loch Ness Monster Paralleled in Canada,” Illustrated London News 184 (January 6, 1934): 8; “A Canadian ‘Monster,’” Illustrated London News 185 (December 15, 1934): 1011; Ray Gardner, “Caddy, King of the Coast,” Maclean’s Magazine 63 (June 15, 1950): 24, 42–43; D. Mattison, “An 1897 Sea Serpent Sighting in the Queen Charlotte Islands,” B.C. Historical News 17, no. 2 (1964): 15; Paul H. LeBlond and John Sibert, Observations of Large Unidentified Marine Animals in British Columbia and Adjacent Waters (Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia, Institute of Oceanography, June 1973); William A. Hagelund, Whalers No More: A History of Whaling on the West Coast (Madeira Park, B.C., Canada: Harbour, 1987); Frederic C. Howay, ed., Voyages of the “Columbia” to the Northwest Coast, 1787–1790 and 1790–1793 (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1990), p. 249; Penny Park, “Beast from the Deep Puzzles Zoologists,” New Scientist 137 (January 23, 1993): 16; Jessica Maxwell, “Seeing Serpents,” Pacific Northwest 27 (April 1993): 30–34; Mike Dash, “The Dragons of Vancouver,” Fortean Times, no. 70 (August-September 1993): 46–48; Edward L. Bousfield and Paul H. LeBlond, “An Account of Cadborosaurus willsi, New Genus, New Species, a Large Aquatic Reptile from the Pacific Coast of North America,” Amphipacifica 1, suppl. 1 (1995): 3–25; Paul H. LeBlond and Edward L. Bousfield, Cadborosaurus: Survivor from the Deep (Victoria, B.C., Canada: Horsdal and Schubart, 1995); Aaron M. Bauer and Anthony P. Russell, “A Living Plesiosaur? A Critical Assessment of the Description of Cadborosaurus willsi,” Cryptozoology 12 (1996): 1–18; Darren Naish, “Another Caddy Carcass?” Cryptozoology Review 2, no. 1 (Summer 1997): 26–29; Paul H. LeBlond, “Caddy: An Update,” Crypto Dracontology Special, no. 1 (November 2001): 55-59
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| Alaskan Sea Monster film |
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| McCormick Composite drawing of "Caddy" Witness Sketches |
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