$10,000 prize

Started by monstr, June 01, 2003, 06:32:01 AM

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Seen any good sea monsters lately?
Keeping a sharp eye open for the elusive Cadborosaurus could net you $10,000, thanks to a just-launched search for the mystical sea serpent some people claim lives in the waters off the coast of Greater Victoria.
Oak Bay Tourism, in partnership with Caddy Marine tours, the Oak Bay Beach Hotel and Marine Resort and the Oak Bay Business Improvement Association, is hoping to spur on "Caddy hunters" to find the beast and bring back a three-minute video of a live Cadborosaurus in the wild.
Living proof of the beast that is this region's Loch Ness will be worth $10,000 to whomever captures the creature on tape. A second prize of $1,000 is being offered to anyone who takes a photograph of the creature.
Oak Bay Tourism chair Karl Morris said "Caddy", as locals affectionately call him, has a strong Oak Bay connection and a rich history.
"It's been known to exist in the waters off Vancouver Island for 100 years and there are stories in First Nations mythology about it," Morris claims. "The reason why Oak Bay Tourism is taking it on is that most of the sightings have been in Oak Bay."
The search for Caddy is clearly a canny tourist "hook," based on a fun new way to sell Oak Bay as a place to visit. But Morris indicated that it's more than that. While the notion of thousands of searchers taking to the seas laden with high-tech tracking equipment is amusing, there is also a serious side to pursuing this possible cousin of the Loch Ness Monster and the Okanagan's fabled Ogopogo.
"What we're trying to do is to lend assistance to the organizations and the scientists who have been looking for it," qualified Morris.
In the search for Caddy chances are you'll find people such as Jason Walton at Caddyscan, a Victoria-based organization devoted to collecting data on Cadborosaurus.
Walton is also team and field co-ordinator (as well as vice-president) of the B.C. Scientific Cryptozoology Club. Cryptozoologists are researchers who study animals yet unclassified by science.
"Although (Cadborosaurus) has been seen all along the coast from Oregon to the Queen Charlottes, Oak Bay seems to be the prime location," Walton said. "Scientists believe it to be migratory."
Walton said there's more evidence to substantiate the existence of Cadborosaurus than there is of the Loch Ness Monster.
Dr. Paul LeBlond, a retired professor with UBC's department of oceanography, has had what he calls an "eccentric" interest in Cadborosaurus for a number of years.
"For all we know, it doesn't look like a fish or behave like a fish. It's probably either a large reptile or a large mammal," he speculated. "There are stories, there have been sightings, there are photos, but there is no corpus dilecti."
Morris said the search for Caddy will begin on dry land with the distribution of thousands of washable tattoos of the snakelike monster at the Oak Bay Tea Party (June 7-8). T-shirts bearing its likeness will also be on sale. A Web cam on top of the Oak Bay hotel (with images available at www.oakbaytourism.com) will be pointed at the ocean for those with enough time to wait around until Caddy breaks the surface of the waves.
In time, Cadborosaurus could replace the humble tea bag as Oak Bay's unofficial icon.
"That's the idea, to have fun," said Morris.
The window of opportunity for collecting either the videotaped or photographic evidence of Cadborosaurus (and claiming that elusive prize money) is between now and Sept. 30 — which has been dubbed the first annual Oak Bay Cadborosaurus Sighting Season.