Jul 02 2006

"Once described as a being the spawn of an earwig and a whale, the mystery of Okanagan Lake's Ogopogo is still being debated to this day.

Originally called M-ha-a-i-tk by local First Nations, Ogopogo's home is said to be near Squally Point (also known as Rattlesnake Island).

According to city councillor and local historian Randy Manuel, the natives, out of fear of death by drowning, would sacrifice an animal like a dog when passing Squally Point.

"It's a spot where wind and weather can bring waves up to six or seven feet there. It's a spot where you don't want to get caught in a boat," said Manuel. "It (sacrificing animals) was common practice when they were travelling the length of the lake in canoes."

The local natives weren't the only ones that believed in Ogopogo either.

In 1914 one man found what may have been an Ogopogo carcass.

Author F.M. Buckland of Kelowna described the story of what happened to a group of campers near Greata Ranch in one of his books.

"One of the party who had gone to the lake edge for water was attracted by a strong smell of rotted fish. On investigation he found the badly decomposed body of a strange animal lying at the water's edge ... The body was between five and six feet in length and would weigh about 400 pounds. It had a short, broad, flat tail and a head that stuck out from between shoulders without any sign of a neck. The nose was stubby, sticking out of rounded head with no ears visible. The thick hide was sparsely covered with a silky hair four or five inches in length and of a bluish-grey colour while the teeth resembled those of a dog. It had two ivory-like tusks and claws resembling those of a great bird, on flipper-like arms; claws that showed no signs of wear or use, such as those of a cougar or other land animal."

It is alleged that the shoulder blade, tusks and claws were displayed in private homes by interested parties, but their current whereabouts are unknown.

Attracting more than just interested campers, Ogopogo even has fans in the movie industry.

A movie about Ogopogo is in the planning stages.

Provost Pictures, out of Vancouver, is working on its first film, The Beast of the Bottomless Lake.

"The company was really formed around the idea of making this film," said production director and co-owner of the company Kennedy Goodkey. Goodkey's friend Keith Provost, who grew up in Kelowna, wanted to create a film about Ogopogo.

Provost felt he'd seen Ogopogo in the water as a child and was what Goodkey called a "minutiae of information about Ogopogo."

Tragically, Provost was killed in an accident and the project was put on hold because its emotional impact on those involved was too hard to deal with.

"Last year around this time ... I dusted it off and said 'Let's see if we can't do this now,'" said Goodkey.

Goodkey and his business partner Craig March created a script from memories of Provost's stories and after some research, made what they felt was a relatively accurate script.

The Beast of the Bottomless Lake crew went to Kelowna recently to scout filming locations and are planning on conducting their main casting in the Okanagan.

The movie will be a modern-day Moby Dick as a group of UBC academics go to the Okanagan to prove the existence of Ogopogo, but their individual agendas get in the way.

Goodkey is not completely sure if Ogopogo really exists and he will continue to wait for evidence.

"As long as there's an element of doubt I am one to extend the possibility to hold out my belief," he said. "I have to admit I think there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that doesn't make it look good."

And Goodkey isn't the only one questioning the reality of Ogopogo.

Local fisherman and owner of Lakestream Flies and Supplies Chris Cousins said he believes the lake monster is really just a big fish.

"I believe that people have seen something out there but I don't believe it is a prehistoric monster," said Cousins. "I do believe that what they've seen is a sturgeon or a group of sturgeons."

B.C. Fisheries describes sturgeons as a long and cylindrical fish that can grow up to six metres long and weigh 1,323 pounds. They range in colour from greenish-grey on their backs to light grey on their bellies and they're covered in bony plates instead of scales.

The sturgeon is a bottom feeder and its mouth is on the underside of its body, that way it can swim along the bottom of the lake and suck up prey.

But every once in a while they make an appearance, said Cousins.

"They definitely come to the surface, it's called breaching - it means they roll on the surface ... They jump and leap out of the water at times," he said.

It's thought that sturgeons, which can be found in the Columbia and Fraser rivers, made it to Okanagan Lake through the Columbia River system before it was dammed up in 1953.

In 1958 divers working the Okanagan floating bridge reported seeing the sturgeon, which frightened them.

Since then there have been hundreds of sightings of Ogopogo - most often during the summer months when tourists and locals are hitting the beach and the lake.

Kelowna author Arlene Gaal, who is considered an Ogopogo expert by some, said she has recorded sightings from the 1800s to today.

"I basically have the best records of Ogopogo of anyone in the world," said Gaal adding she has 99.9 per cent of all photos ever taken of the beast as well as about 90 per cent of recorded sightings in her library of information.

In addition to keeping records, Gaal has had her own Ogopogo experiences.

While investigating a sighting in 1978 she felt she saw him for the first time.

"I had no intent of seeing anything but a beautiful mirror-calm lake," she recalled. "I was going back to my car and I suddenly saw a shadow moving in two parts toward the bridge ... Something broke the water and waves rolled off the back of this thing."

Gaal took five sequential shots and took the film back to the Kelowna Daily Courier office where she worked to have it developed. She had captured pictures of something she said was large enough to create a backlash of waves on the shoreline.

Since then Gaal has had more sightings but none as memorable as her first.

In response to the sturgeon theory, Gaal said the Okanagan Mainline Basin Water Board and the fisheries department both have reported no sturgeons in Okanagan Lake.

While Cousins does believe the giant fish is in the lake, he admitted he found it a little disconcerting that he's never seen a picture of someone catching a sturgeon in Okanagan Lake.

While Cousins may be assured there is no lake monster, it will be a mystery to the rest of us."

from here....

http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/portal...81670&more=

A spawn of an earwig and a whale??????



Madness!

i went to BC once,i went to peachland,loved it there,anyways.the lake was cold,but i didn't see anything,is it possible for a "sea-monster" to live there?

AHHHH, kelowna my favourite place to be in the summer time, some of my freinds up there claim to have seen the ogopogo but who knows, i have not! but i did have a dream that i did, while i was standing on a dock it swam around the dock and such, the next day i went to peachland and there was a dock so i could not help myself but go and see if it was there! it was not.

'a great place to be, BC'
- gerrett S

"Lake monsters" do not neccesarily have to be reptiles. In fact, the classical "multi-humped" description of these creatures as well as ocean-going "sea serpents" far more closely resembles a primitive whale, like Basilosaurus than it does any reptilian sea creature, all of which moved their bodies side to side, instead of up and down like mammals.

We also know some Archosaurs are warmblooded, birds, and possibly dinos. So aquatic archosaurs could be warm blooded as well, though the best known aquatic archosaurs, the crocodilians, are not.

There is escalating amounts of evidence that suggests that Ogopogo is actually real...the number of unexplained encounters at the lake are actually increasing. However, I highly doubt that all the cases that I know of involve the infamous creature.

As always, I have to see it to believe it. I want to believe and I think that the subject is fascinating, but until that time I will have to continue with just wanting to believe they're there.

This creature was discussed in another threads...

Absolutely! The best explanation for sea monsters I've ever come across were the basilosaurs. Although I sometimes wonder if certain prehistoric oceanic reptiles showed signs of endothermy. I'll provide an exepr of an essay I had to do for one of the subjects during my final year at uni, discussing endothermy in dinos.

exerp from Endothermy in Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Reptiles: A Critical Review, November 2005, Evolutionary Ecology of Terrestrial Vertebrates.


As well as dinosaurs, pterosaurs have been found with evidence of soft, downy feathers in life(10). A large flying or gliding animal would benefit from endothermy and flight is an energy-demanding adaptation. Most pterosaurs were relatively small, and would have fed on high-protein, high-energy diets such as insects and fish.

Although the oceans would have been considerably warmer, water still has the ability to sap heat out of a body, even close to the surface in warm water. Several marine reptiles such as Ichthyosaurs were completely aquatic, and would probably have frequented different depths. One species in particular, Temnodontosaurus platydon, was described as being able to dive up to 2,000 feet for up to 20 minutes(11). However, providing the oceans were similar to today, temperature would only be constant for the first few hundred feet before hitting the thermocline. From here the temperature drops by about 20oC in 500 feet, which would be quite considerable for a reptile spending its whole life in the oceans. It may have created metabolic heat through muscle movement like that of a tuna or marlin today.


Sources for this section:

10: Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life, Dorling and Kindersley, 2001
11: Morell V. (2005) Beyond Nessie; When Monsters Ruled the Deep, National Geographic 208 6, 78
3: Hubbard, S. F. (2005) Evolutionary Ecology of Terrestrial Vertebrates, lecture notes weeks 1-5
1: Bakker, R. T. (1972) Anatomical and Ecological Evidence of Endothermy in Dinosaurs, Nature 238, 81-85
2: Bakker, R. T. (1986, 5th ed. 1992) The Dinosaur Heresies, Zebra

Last 2 only passing references, most work was deductions derived from the first 3 sources, pieced together for a somewhat logical conclusion. What I forgot to include at the time was the obvious question that if pterosaurs were ectothermic, why would they benefit from downy coverings? To conserve heat? A downy covering would hinder heat uptake as it forms a barrier between the body and the ambient environmental temperature (which is what ectotherms realy on!). Indeed that's why mammals have fur; to stop the loss of heat from an organism into the ambient surroundings. But that's besides the point- the second paragraph is what matters.

I hope this is of interest. Thanks.

RKD

"The sturgeon is a bottom feeder and its mouth is on the underside of its body, that way it can swim along the bottom of the lake and suck up prey.

But every once in a while they make an appearance, said Cousins.

"They definitely come to the surface, it's called breaching - it means they roll on the surface ... They jump and leap out of the water at times," he said. "

OH yeah, I've seen sturgeon on the surface many times in the Snake River, when I lived in Clarkston, Washington. About 10 miles upriver from Clarkston, on the Snake River, is a place called Buffalo Eddy. Late in the evening, you may often see sturgeon breaking water on the surface.
No one's sure why they come to the surface when the day's light fades but it's been known for centuries.
I've driven by Lake Okanogan many times, enroute to my log cabin in the Chilcotin region of British Columbia. I always scan the lake, or stop and inspect it with a pair of binocoulars, but have never seen anything.
The fact that many young women wear very skimpy bikinis and thongs during the summer, when I pass by, has absolutely nothing to do with my getting out the binoculars!

I'm not much of a believer in lake monsters. Lakes are so limited, as opposed to the open ocean (an exception being the Great Lakes). I just don't see how a large creature could escape notice from literally tens of thousands of eyes each day, day in and day out, for centuries. And why is EVERY photo ever taken of these things never worth a damn?
How is it that millions of folks can take a decent photo of ducks or geese on the water, but when it comes to photographing one flippin' Cryptozoowhoozit --- they botch the job?

perhaps we may meet one day in the summer and u cud show me around...nudge*nudge*....

I doubt this will be the case, since the comment you quoted was almost two years old.

Ogopogo is most likely a trapped cetecan, though I hope it's somthing more.