New Ogopogo Sighting

I recently learned, through email, of David Woetzel’s encounter with the Ogopogo cryptid in Canada. (David and I have been actively involved with living-pterosaur investigations for years, although he has traveled extensively on searches for a number of non-pterosaur cryptids.) It seems that his group, which included William Gibbons, just missed getting direct photos of the Ogopogo itself; instead they photographed the large wake.

New Ogopogo Sighting: A Photographic Update

Bill Gibbons also adds:

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), [as well as Loren Coleman, of course].

Ogopogo Lake Monster

It’s common practice for many major documentary producers to either ignore the possibility of living pterosaurs or dinosaurs or to treat unorthodox sightings as if unreliable,  simply because what is  described seems  to be a dinosaur or a pterosaur. A recent episode of “Proof Positive” ended with a conclusion that was surprising only to those who are not aware of this tendency for standard models to dominate media productions.

image_pdfimage_print