Cadborosaurus willsi

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Cadborosaurus willsi (Caddy) is a formally and authenthically described* large aquatic reptilian species living along the Pacific Coast of North America. Its name is derived from Cadboro Bay in Victoria, British Columbia, and the Greek root word "sauros" meaning lizard or reptile. The animal is similar in form and behaviour, and probably closely related, to the popularly named "Ogopogo" of deep interior lakes of B. C. and to the "Loch Ness Monster" of deep freshwater lakes of northwestern Europe. Among the localities at which more than 300 documented sightings have been made during the past two centuries is San Francisco Bay, California, Deep Cove in Saanich Inlet, B. C., and several breeding localities in the Strait of Georgia, B. C.

  This large poikilothermic and aquatic-respiratory reptilian species resembles a serpent with vertical coils or humps in tandem behind the horse-like head and long neck, a pair of small eleva- tional front flippers, and a pair of large webbed hind flippers fused to form a large fan-like tail region that provides powerful forward-swimming propulsion.  Through a process of locomotory body transformation, the long slender body can be doubled up into rigid vertical humps that effectively reduce friction of the snakelike body surface with the water and enable the animal to attain recorded swimming speeds of >40 k.p.h. at the surface.        
   Zoological reality of the species has been authenticated in the original specimen-based description in a refereed scientific journal* in which the type juvenile specimen is represented by 3 different close-up quality photographs (in the B. C. Provincial Archives in Victoria), in which at least three new-born relatively tiny precocial "baby" specimens have been independently held by at least three pairs of human captors during the past 40 years, and by more than 100 documented sightings, photographs, sonar images, and sketches of live animals made independently at predicted times and places, subsequent to the original description in 1995 and continu- ing to the present.

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• Bousfield, E. L., & P. H. LeBlond, 1995, in Amphipacifica I Suppl. 1: pp. 1-25, 19 figs., 1995.