A “Loch Ness Monster” in Parksville’s Cameron Lake?

Two massive strikes on a fish finder tells cryptozoologist John Kirk that there’s a large aquatic animal in Cameron Lake, just west of Parksville-Qualicum Beach, and he and his research team want to find it.

“I’m not ready to say what it is, or if it’s a monster, but there’s something there and its very large – certainly larger than any trout or lake fish,” says Kirk, co-founder of the BC Scientific Cryptozoology Club (BCSCC) and author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters, who conducted an initial research expedition on September 19, 2009 at Cameron Lake.

The first pass of the lake that Saturday morning located two large contacts at 56 and 58 Ft. But a pass of the lake later in the afternoon was even more successful.

“The alarm made a resounding ‘ping’ on the fish finder and we saw this absolutely massive object in the midst of various fish,” says Kirk. “In 20 years of doing research on Okanagan Lake (looking for Ogopogo), I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s significant and amazing – like walking into a Sasquatch on the highway.”

“It’s significant and amazing – like walking into a Sasquatch on the highway.” They made four more passes of the object and received readings at about 74 feet each time, ruling out that it was a school of fish.

After analyzing the data collected, Kirk and members of the BCSCC determined that the sonar strike was consistent with an animal at least three metres in length.

Kirk says it’s a “mystery in need of an answer” so he and the BCSCC will be returning to Cameron Lake in mid-September in hopes that they’ll have more luck with the weather which may make a sighting possible.

“Last year we had a lot of choppy water which makes it very difficult to see any sort of surfacing of the creature, “says Kirk. “When the water is flat, we may find whatever is down there responds to sonar frequencies and may surface.”

The researchers came to Cameron Lake in 2009 after repeated sightings of something in the water. The best evidence was a photo taken in 2007 by Bridget Horvath, who snapped a strange shape in the water that appeared to be three objects swimming in a circle.

“Our organization has received reports coming from Cameron Lake since 2004,” Kirk says. “Witnesses have been describing what looks like a dark creature in the lake; one even saying that he was pulled around the lake in his fishing boat by something for close to an hour.”

Kirk says this is completely consistent with sightings of water creatures in other Vancouver Island Lakes, the nearby seashore, and many sightings along Highway 4 (which parallels Cameron Lake) of Sasquatch.“ This is really a Cryptid Corridor of sorts – there is a lot of activity occurring on Vancouver Island,” he says.

The BCSCC was founded in 1989. The group studies elusive creatures, such as lake monsters and Sasquatches, known as cryptids and the study of called cryptozoology: from the Greek (cryptos) for hidden, and zoology, the study of animals.

Kirk is also chairman of the Crypto Safari Organization which sends investigators around the world, and has traveled to Africa as part of research teams in search of living dinosaurs.