CADBOROSAURUS SURFACES OFF BRITISH COLUMBIA

From the Victoria Times-Colonist , August 9, 1997
 

Cadborosaurus, British Columbia's seagoing dinosaur, was seen twice during July by a family in Mill Bay, B.C.

Timothy and Laurice Mock, and their 14-year-old son, Christopher, were cruising up Princess Louisa Inlet in their 24-foot powerboat. "Laurice was scanning the shoreline for bears while Tim was at the wheel, watching for logs. The sea was glassy, and since the sun had not risen above the mountains, the channel was still in shade. Tim noticed a large log up ahead and altered his course accordingly. Suddenly, the 'log' split into three pieces."

"'As we ran past it, it disappeared,' Tim said, 'And all that was left was a swirl in the water, a mini-whirlpool. The log was gone.'"

The second July sighting occurred as the Mocks "were dropping anchor near Homfray Channel, adjacent to Desolation Sound. Once again, the sea was flat calm and the surrounding water was exceptionally deep--in some places up to 700 meters (2,310 feet)."

"'We were dropping anchor, and we were all on the foredeck. We had been poking along in the area for hours with no traffic," said Tim. Son Christopher said, 'What's that at the entrance?' When he looked up, Tim saw an unusual wake going back and forth with a parallel set moving along beside it."

"'It was weird. It (the wake) wasn't diminishing, and it wasn't in the direction it should have been. It was going along the shore rather than towards it.'"

Then Laurice Mock got a close look at the creature with her binoculars. "I got a good look at it," she said, "It had its head close to the water. It was like someone doing the breast stroke, like a snake."

Dr. Ed Bousfield, a retired cryptozoologist with the Royal British Columbia Museum, calls Cadborosaurus "a Mesozoic relic" and believes "the females come to shores of shallow estuaries to bear live young (similar to garter snakes)."

Dr. Bousfield has collected over 200 accounts of Cadborosaurus sightings over the years.
(See the Victoria, B.C. Times-Colonist for August 9, 1997.

Many thanks to Loren Coleman and Brian Chapman for this news article.

"Sea Monster Seen"

From the Victorian Colonist , July 1997

A snorting, 20-foot-long "sea monster'' was spotted by two university students off the shores of a Pacific coastal beach in Victoria, British Columbia, the pair said Friday. Ryan Green, 18, a Simon Fraser University business student, described the rocky-faced creature as a twin-humped, round-bodied monster that swam across Telegraph Bay near suburban Saanich. It was about 49 feet from the rock Green and his friend, Damian Grant, were sitting on. Green said he and the 19-year-old general arts student at the University of Victoria saw the heavy-breathing creature surface twice before it disappeared into the calm waters. "All of a sudden, this head comes up, like a whale with no spray. And then this hump, the size of an inner tube in diameter. And then another hump. It's nothing I've ever seen before,'' said Green. He stressed that the puzzled pair was sober at the time of the sighting. Ed Bousfield, a biology research associate with the Royal British Columbia Museum, said the reptile-like creature is probably a cadborosaurus, one of the last living dinosaurs. I phoned these two chaps and let them do the talking, and their observations absolutely tally with the classical profile of the cadborosaurus,'' Bousfield said. Bousfield, who is writing a book on the deep-sea, predatory cadborosaurus with scientist Paul LeBlond, said about 160 recorded sightings of the swift-swimming monster have been reported. Due to "incredibly bad luck'', there are no such animals in captivity or museums, and a 1937 photograph is the only visible recording of the beast. "We get half a dozen records of sightings up and down the (Pacific) coast every year. All these people say the same thing about the animals, so there's got to be something there.'' He said the cadborosaurus was named in the 1930s after sightings in nearby Cadboro Bay.

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