Monday, December 10, 2012

Lake Monsters continued

Long before Nessie's Media debut, Ogopogo, Canada's most famous lake monster, resident of Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, was making media waves. Roy W. Brown, (editor of the Vancouver Sun) in 1926 (a full 7 years before the article on Nessie) wrote (Too many reputable people have seen ( the monster) to ignore the seriousness of actual facts". Over the years there have been hundreds of sightings at Loch Ness, but thousands of sightings of Ogopogo, including half a dozen films. The first time Ogopogo was caught on film was August of 1968, when Art Folden and his family spotted something near the shore of the lake late one afternoon. Using an old 8mm camera Mr. Folden recorded the animal submerging and resurfacing multiple times. Having very little film left, Folden stopped his camera every time the creature submerged and started filming again each time it resurfaced.According to Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe ( authors of The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep) one Kerry Voth examined the Folden film frame-by-frame in 2000, and revealed some surprising details. "A threshold increase analysis showed that the creature was a solid object rather than a shadow effect. A large position of it is actually out of the water showing humps and a dark-green color with brown running along what appears to be the spine of its back. The object exhibits three protrusions, one to each side and a third upward."
ogopogomonster.com claims that over 1170 people have seen a beast in the waters of Okanagan. The site also claims that Ogopogo, called Naitaka by the native canadians, is the original lake monster, known sightings of the beast supposedly go back a full eighty years before the first known sightings of a creature in the waters of Loch Ness. According to ogopogomonster.com "Ogopogo is protected by Federal Law under the Fisheries act: 'No one shall hunt, kill fish or marine animals by any means of rocket, explosive materials or explosive projectiles or shells,' Ogopogo is also specifically protected under Provincial law under the Wildlife Act."
With so many sightings, photos and films, its no wonder people are convinced Ogopogo exists. However, if Ogopogo is real where are the bodies? Why in all this time have we never found any lake monsters, dead or alive? While I would like to believe in animals like Nessie and Ogopogo, until a specimen is recovered most will continue insisting lake monsters are just a myth.
TBC...