Caddy Has a Kissin' Cousin
Victoria (British Columbia) Times-Colonist
Tuesday, 7 July 1998, p. A3
By Patrick Murphy
Times Colonist staff

Caddy's gone to ground, but the Victoria man who specializes in tracking the elusive sea monster says Caddy is a kissing cousin of Ogopogo.  It will be a year Wednesday since Cadborosaurus was last seen in coastal waters, but this could just be a cycle when the numbers of the monster are on the decline, said Ed Bousfield, a research associate with the Royal Ontario Museum.   "El Nino affects the food," he said, "but I think the bigger factor is the noise pollution in the straits.  "There is so much marine traffic there now, it is driving it away."

Bousfield presented a scientific paper on his link between Caddy and the mysterious monster of the Okanagan to a recent symposium of cryptozoologists in Kelowna. They are scientists who study creatures that have not been nailed down by scientists.  Bousfield has submitted his paper to two scientific journals for peer review and possible publication.  Caddy was a regular visitor around Vancouver Island in the past four years, with more than 20 documented sightings but no photographs.

Bousfield has been reviled by the scientific community that calls Caddy a myth, but he replies that 300 years of sightings from natives to the present day, along with photos of a dead Caddy in 1937, prove there is something out there that is unknown.   "There have been 300  sightings in the last century alone," he said. "It has also been seen in nine different lakes in B.C. The connection with Ogopogo is that where you find these sightings, you find sea-run salmon. "If there are not as many sightings now it could be that it is going into a low-ebb cycle the same as the salmon are."

In his paper, Bousfield said the areas where Ogopogo has been seen were all linked to the Pacific, but are now cut off by dams.  He said 10,000 years ago Caddy probably followed salmon up streams into lakes in the Columbia and Fraser drainage basins and became landlocked.  The similarity of the two creatures with a snakelike body, humps or coils, horselike head, flippers and split tail indicates they are related, he said.   Glacial and post-glacial evidence suggests that Okanagan's Ogopogo is probably a freshwater form or variant of the reptilian species *Cadborosaurus willsi*."   Bousfield said there is no resemblance to whales, seals or otters and Caddy and Ogopogo are separate reptile species.   "The problems is all our information is from amateurs. We need the scientists to get involved."

This article is courtesy of  The World of The Strange

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