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Subject: New Okanagan sighting
From: Cherokee posted Fri, Jul 17 2009, 2:47am 
Gets a little confusing, because the man that had the sighting says it was a sturgeon, "What else could it be"? But he also said, along with the other witness, that it was 30 feet long.


Noted on the BCSCC list] ----- Mysterious sighting on Okanagan
Lake
By J.P. Squire
Monday, July 13, 2009 Was it Ogopogo, a large snake-like
creature or a sturgeon?
Wendy Sanderson and Gordon Krug agree on one thing: they saw the
most amazing creature in Okanagan Lake – whether or not it
was Ogopogo.
Sanderson, 41, who has lived in Kelowna since she was four, and
Krug, an Edmonton welding teacher, were both at the Okanagan
Centre boat dock at 10:30 a.m. Thursday because family members
were taking a scuba diving course.
"There wasn`t a single boat on the lake. It was
completely calm, absolutely perfect, just the most pristine
conditions for this viewing we had," said Sanderson.
"I`m not saying I saw Ogopogo. I`m saying
that I saw a big-ass snake-like creature in the lake. It scared
the bejeezus out of me. It is creeping me out."
Now, she`s concerned about allowing her 13-year-old son,
Kurtis, to scuba dive as deep as 30 metres near the Bennett
Bridge in a couple of weeks.
"It was so huge; I would have said over 30 feet.
I`m thinking, a good three feet out of the water. It
formed two to three humps at the same time as it was swimming or
slithering from the east to the west across the middle of the
lake. For three minutes, we watched it and then it was gone. It
was the most amazing thing we ever saw."
A 22-year-old man fishing off the dock was so surprised he
dropped his fishing rod.
"The welding teacher was pacing up and down the dock,
screaming at everybody that would listen. He wanted everybody to
experience it. I just watched. I had my cell phone on the beach,
but I didn`t even run for it to take a picture. I just
wanted to watch," said Sanderson.
The creature she saw was too large for any snake ever documented
by scientists, she said.
"A lot of people are saying: 'Wendy, what if that
was a group of sturgeons?` There`s no way they
could have been that synchronized while swimming. I`ve
been looking up sturgeon and those are fish. They can`t
form perfect humps out of the water to be able to pull off what
we saw. There`s no way."
"Our giant sturgeon?" responded Krug with a laugh
when asked about the sighting.
"About a mile out from us was distinctively what you would
say Ogopogo is. There`s three humps, right? The more we
watched it and watched it and watched it, you could see how
mistakes have been made over hundreds of years," Krug
said.
"It appeared to be a giant sturgeon. As it went in and out
of the water, there were three humps. I`m convinced it was
a sturgeon," he said, despite the lack of any evidence of
sturgeon in Okanagan Lake.
"What else could it be? Whatever it was, it was definitely
there. There was something in the water that was definitely cool,
really neat. Because of the way it was coming out of the water,
it appeared to have three humps. It was massive, I`d say
30 feet long," he said.
"It was absolutely dead calm.
"We were a mile back and you could clearly see the way
water was moving around it. You could see it moving in the water
and the way the water was affected by it."
Ogopogo?
"I don`t want to be called a freak in
public," Krug said with another laugh.
The "once-in-a-lifetime " sighting ranks right up
there with watching the 1987 Alberta tornado that killed 28
people from three blocks away and seeing a red, fiery meteor
passing over his head last November, he added.
Sanderson wrote down all the details and sent them in a letter to
Kelowna Ogopogo expert Arlene Gaal so the sighting can be
documented for historical purposes. Sanderson also received a
call from a woman who also saw something in the lake and they
compared their experiences.
"Thank goodness, I wasn`t by myself. Am I getting
razzed. My coffee group is razzing me. My friends.
"But I`m putting it out there, saying this is
something that we saw, the three of us," she said.
"I actually witnessed the most incredible sight in
Okanagan Lake. I believe that this was a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity that I shared with two other witnesses. We stood
there together for that moment in absolute amazement. We do not
have proof of this sighting, but we know what we saw and we
shared it together."
If people want to know more about the location, Sanderson is
willing to rent a boat and go from the launch to the exact area
where the creature was sighted .
The excitement still hasn`t worn off.
"I`ve been vibrating for three days," she
said with a laugh.
However, "I will never swim in the lake again. I will not
jump over the side of boat in the middle of the lake. I will go
to the shore because I can now see that he or she likes those
deep waters."
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Schlike22 posted Fri, Jul 17 2009, 5:28am 
A 30 foot sturgeon ? Sure, why not. Seems a credible witness on the fact he is convinced it was a sturgeon. But the length is a bit out there..........interesting.
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: bigrex posted Fri, Jul 17 2009, 12:48pm 
My only problem with the ID is the fact that if it had been a sturgeon at the surface, why is there no mention of the Shark-like dorsal fin near the tail. After all, if this creature was 30 feet long and 3 feet above the surface, the fin should have been rather prominent, unless the fish was swimming on its' side.
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Dick Raynor posted Fri, Jul 17 2009, 1:19pm 
"Gets a little confusing, because the man that had the sighting says it was a sturgeon, "What else could it be"? "

Hi Cherokee, that's the BCSCS for ye :-) Guy says he saw a sturgeon, they say "wait a minute there old-timer!" Rule of thumb for size of fish not landed is "actual size = fisherman's size / 3"

Next time I catch a trout at Loch Ness I'd better get it DNA tested just in case it is really a mutated dwarf'n'morph Nessie. :-)
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Journasaurous posted Fri, Jul 17 2009, 6:30pm 
Sanderson says it was a snake-like creature. The other witness thinks it was a sturgeon but says, "What else could it be?" I think he has just chosen something that is more rational, when he has seen something that doesn't seem to have a rational explanation.
I am surprised no one has said it was a log yet. Okay, it was a log, and the witnesses exagerated. There you go. (Snigger)
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: MikeK posted Fri, Jul 17 2009, 10:16pm 
I have a photo of what i think it is, the worlds largest seahorse ever seen. It is the only logical explanation.
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Dick Raynor posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 12:06am 
Nay! That's the Water Horse of myth and legend!
But seriously, has anyone read the text in the opening thread and extracted what few facts are in there?

"About a mile out from us was distinctively what you would
say Ogopogo is. There`s three humps, right? The more we
watched it and watched it and watched it, you could see how
mistakes have been made over hundreds of years," Krug
said.
"It appeared to be a giant sturgeon. As it went in and out
of the water, there were three humps. I`m convinced it was
a sturgeon," he said, despite the lack of any evidence of
sturgeon in Okanagan Lake.
"What else could it be? Whatever it was, it was definitely
there. There was something in the water that was definitely cool,
really neat. Because of the way it was coming out of the water,
it appeared to have three humps. It was massive, I`d say
30 feet long," he said.
"It was absolutely dead calm.
"We were a mile back and you could clearly see the way
water was moving around it. You could see it moving in the water
and the way the water was affected by it."

The witnesses were at water level and they estimate the object was one mile away. Quite simply, they cannot know how big it was unless they knew the distance, and with an unknown object you don't know either so it is all pure guesswork.

But let's give them the benfit of the doubt, and superb vision, and having done that it is easy to calculate that a 30 foot object one mile away is around the size of a grape seed, or the width of a matchstick, held at arms length, and in this case divide it into three parts. The sea outside my window varies between 1.5 to 2.5 miles in width depending on which way I look. There is no way I could see any detail in 3 10ft objects out there in the middle.

Given the huge number of boats on Lake Okanagan, the stillness of the water and the way boat wakes persist for tens of minutes, it seems sensible to put the observation down to waves left by boat that have passed from view.

But they can still be massive, neat, and like - defintely there :-) Or as Tim Dinsdale used to say "It was entirely real, you know Dicky"
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Cherokee posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 12:52am 
Dick, you're always so damned logical.

Makes the rest of us look like baffoons.

=D
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Dick Raynor posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 3:30am 
Hi Cherokee,
On my tour video I have an image of myself manning a Loch Ness Investigation camera in 1967, and often get a cheap laugh by pointing out how little I have changed. Occasionally passengers say "Wow you must be really dedicated, having spent 42 years searching for the monster!", and I say "Not really, I'm just a slow learner."

The "logical" bit you refer to was maybe caused when I fell off my bicycle some years ago and suddenly found I could remember my schoolboy mathematics. And you don't look at all like buffoons - well, not you, ever, and some of the others are quite sensible. Sometimes :-)
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Cherokee posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 8:13am 
I think the fact that I misspelled buffoon really hit my point home. =D
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: MikeK posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 1:28am 
I am so glad someone else noticed that. I too was wondering about the whole "it was a mile away" thing. Glad to know it's not just me. On your excellent website you do a fantastic job explaining the misleading way waves appear. I for one having been on the water my entire life have seen alot of strange waves, but they were just that, waves. Oops, time to run, my pet baby Ogopogo has diarrhea again.........
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Dick Raynor posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 3:54am 
Hi mikek, the reported conversation sounds like a combined pitch to MonsterQuest and Discovery Channel, don't you think? I'm only disappointed they didn't describe it as weighing 1200 lbs and being over one hour away from them.

Oops, time to run... Irritable bowl syndrome?
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: MikeK posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 4:29am 
Wow, i did not think about that, the whole MQ angle, you good sir are truly "The Man". That makes total sense, tourists are hard to come by in these difficult economic times so why not try and wrangle up some goof's from some television show, after all, their money spends just as well. I still believe there is something there, what?, remains to be seen, or photographed in some blurry fashion as is customary when dealing with cryptids. And my baby Ogo has been ill as of late, terrible mess in his bowl. It could the mooshoepork i feed him.
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Journasaurous posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 10:04pm 
That picture just kills me. rofl
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Journasaurous posted Sat, Jul 18 2009, 10:15pm 
I would say that the lakes dimensions could throw you off a bit. I suppose if you had some sort of laser range finder, you could be accurate.
Except for that inconsistency, I would say that this is a typical sighting.
Most of the witnesses are a fair distance away, yet they are able to get a feel for the size of the creature. For the most part, the creature is so large, that many will never venture onto the lake again, in any form of conveyance. Certainly, swimming is out for most witnesses. I don't think they feel it will eat them, it's just that it's large enough to hurt a person or wreck a boat by accident.
If it's a sturgeon, it's a sturgeon that is breaking all the rules for size. Some witnesses are out on the lake in boats and think they have come across a telephone pole or huge tree floating in the lake, until the darn thing starts moving and they realize that it's alive.
I think you will hear about this again and again. There really is something big in Okanagan Lake. I'd like to move there. I'd like to be just as scared as those people, for the same reason. Wouldn't anyone?
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Dick Raynor posted Wed, Jul 22 2009, 6:35pm 
Hi J, I'd agree that it is a stereotypical sighting, and Mr Krug seems on the money with his remarks about this explaining all those mistakes over the years. Local enthusiasts seem to be assuming that all witnesses see the same thing which is extremely unlikely.


The only thing he didn't come out and say was it was a boat wake. It is unlikely to have been a sturgeon because no-one has ever caught one in Okanagan Lake :-)

Cheers, Dick.
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: MikeK posted Wed, Jul 22 2009, 8:08pm 
Good point Mr.Raynor, however, has anyone ever really fished for sturgeon there? I am always trying new lakes and rivers, doing research first to see what species exist in those bodies of water, research being reading/interviewing local fisherman/etc. In most cases i was able to either catch or see species that i was informed do not live in these waters. Just a thought. And sturgeon fishing is difficult at times, it really helps if you know the exact species of sturgeon before setting out as well, not all of them are bottom feeders. Largest white sturgeon caught in North America (not by rod and reel now) was 20 feet long and over 1500lbs back in the late 1800's, i wonder, where are it's parents? Think i'll hit a lake today.
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: Dick Raynor posted Thu, Jul 23 2009, 1:28am 
I can only direct you to "official" reports like this one which states "There has been only anecdotal evidence of sturgeon sunning themselves on Skaha and Okanagan Lakes however there is no fishery accounts or has there ever been a wash-up of a carcass.Bull, 2003 (pers.comm.)
Reports of the sturgeon persist from Okanagan Lake but these have not been verified.Lane 1990; CDC,2003; McPhail and Carveth 1993
No records recent in the Okanagan Region FISS, 2003

If no-one has caught one, or found a dead one, maybe they just aren't there? Maybe all those 30 foot bad-ass snake-like creatures have scared the bejesus out of them and creeped them out?
Subject: Re: New Okanagan sighting
From: MikeK posted Thu, Jul 23 2009, 1:46am 
Excellent point, they would tend to avoid predators, at least the smart ones. Okanagan is one of those lakes i am beginning to doubt any strange large animal/fish in, Illiamna and Kanas do look promising though. I believe Okanagan's sightings to be similar to Loch Ness's sightings in the strange waves catagory and not actual living animals/fish. If it turns out there actually is some form of unkown creature there is no way it could be air breathing, it would be seen much more often. How do you catch something when you don't know what to use for bait? Quite the puzzle.


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