July 5, 2009
Kelowna, British Columbia’s Daily Courier is reporting two scientists have agreed to analyze the remains of a mysterious-looking specimen found along the shore of Okanagan Lake.
A tissue sample of the creature will be sent to a researcher in Ontario for DNA testing, and the carcass itself will be examined by a scientist in Alberta.
The remains were found two weeks ago by Kelowna resident Dan Poppoff as he paddled his kayak near the far end of Lakeshore Road. For now, he’s still got the carcass, which measures more than a metre-long in his freezer at home.
Poppoff is reluctant to suggest the strange-looking carcass might be an example of an Ogopogo, the legendary inhabitants of Okanagan Lake. But he is interested in finding out just what it is. He contacted Arlene Gaal, a Kelowna woman who was written extensively on Ogopogo sightings over the years.
Gaal is making arrangements to send the tissue sample and carcass to the two researchers, who she declines to identify.
“If I name them, people will be calling them left and right, and they won’t be able to get on with the business of determining just what this creature is,” Gaal said late in June.
“But I can assure you that both of them are very reputable people, experts in their fields. Both of them are attached to universities,” Gaal said.
Gaal isn’t sure when the results of the investigation will be available, but she hopes it will be fairly soon.
Stay tuned, as Cryptomundo will follow up on this story.
Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under Breaking News, CryptoZoo News, Forensic Science, Lake Monsters, Ogopogo