When I met you at the conference in September and you told me about the sighting, I had no idea it would be like this. This sighting is amazing since it comes from a respected cryptozoologist as yourself. You would know if it was just a fish or something other.

An amazing sighting.

You completely rule out every other plausible cause for what you think you saw except for Ogopogo. That is not being very open minded to reason. The fact is that until you have absolute proof of something, you cannot rule out any plausible explanation.

This is a highly traveled lake. On a Saturday evening at 8pm there is no way that the water was flat and calm after a full weekend day of boat traffic. The only time you come close to seeing a flat calm lake is in the morning after a calm, not windy evening.

Next, this claim of seeing three or four humps and that it is from a singular creature doesn’t mesh with science or biology of any known animal, past or present. Long vertebrate animals do not ungulate up and down when moving through water. They ungulate from side to side. The only water going vertebrates that do ungulate up and down are dolphins and their kin and beavers. They certainly don’t produce three to four humps while doing so on their own.

The only plausible explanations are that either you saw wakes that looked like something they weren’t or you saw multiple creatures that gave the appearance of a single creature…like fish or beavers, etc.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it has been shown that people have a very difficult time accurately judging size and distance on water. Why? The lack of reference points of known sizes. Many many stories, photos and claims have been debunked due to this. The same principle applies to our ability to judge size and distance in low light.

1. We did not set out to find Ogopogo on a short trip onto the lake. We were hoping to visit a few well-known “hotspots” in order to plan out a later expedition.

2. The film only shows the wake left by the creature. However, I did observe 3-4 humps just above the waves, which were darker than the waves themselves. Dorsal ridge was also clearly visible on the humps as I was focusing on the humps with a pair of binoculars. Dave Woetzel and my son, Andrew, may have briefly observed the head of the creature for a few seconds just above the waves.

3. The film shot by David Woetzel and the subsequent (still) images were remarkably similar to the Fletcher photo of an alleged Ogopogo, taken in 1976 and featured on page 111 of Arlene Gaal’s book, ‘in Search of Ogopogo.’

4. We have absolutely no interest in selling the film to the “highest bidder,” or seeking any further publicity outside the cryptozoological community, although a subsequent frame-by-frame of the Woetzel film may be conducted at a later time.

5. This was not a sturgeon (or two sturgeons), salmon, trout, krill, otters, or waves from a boat, etc. I have fished extensively in rivers, streams, lakes, the sea and all over the world. I have seen sizable fish and sharks of all kinds, not to mention crocodiles, hippos and elephants, etc in Africa. I have even seen monkeys swimming across a river in the Congo. The Lake Okanagan observation was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

6. The disturbance and sizable waves we observed were generated by an animate object directly from underneath the surface in flat clam conditions. The waves were at least 1.5 feet high and dissipated after the animal submerged 10-12 seconds later.

7. We did not advertise this sighting but only reported it to Arlene Gaal and John Kirk (who has seen Ogopogo 11 times in the past).

Cool on the sighting.

As for species and populations, you also have to figure that even though there may be a viable population, large sized Ogopogos are probably few and far between. AND we also don’t know what the size range may be…so depending on how Ogopogos grow, there could be lots of really small specimens…maybe a few inches long? And who knows what the median size may be. That alone could account for size differences in sightings. Once you have a specimen in hand, then you can start figuring out the details, but until you do, you’re really dealing blind trying to come up with facts.

Either way, a sighting is good…now we follow up like all goooood cryptomundians: make sure our witnesses are credible, that stories and facts match up, test whatever data we have with tools at our disposal, and te add it to the list once we’re sure we’re not dealing with hoaxes and misidentifications.

Agreed. That is how science works: get the body or live specimen, get the scientific recognition. And with the animal’s conservation needs outweighing the legend needs, I’m in favor of bagging one.

I live a couple of hundred feet from Okanagan Lake, and I didn’t hear anything about it around here.

You’d think someone would have mentioned something…