Cadborosaurus
Aliases: Caddy / Territory: Canada
British Columbia's sea serpent: centuries of coastal accounts, one carcass photographed in 1937, still no specimen.
Long serpentine beings swam through the traditions of the Pacific coast well before any newspaper got involved. The Manhousat, a Nuu-chah-nulth group of Vancouver Island, tell of the hiyitl'iik, a water being recorded by ethnographers, and other coastal nations have their own names for comparable sea creatures. As always, those living traditions deserve to be kept distinct from the twentieth-century media exercise of turning them into a single animal awaiting capture.
The modern case opens in October 1933, when a clerk of the provincial legislature and his wife reported a large, elongated animal off Cadboro Bay near Victoria. Archie Wills, editor of the Victoria Daily Times, recognised a running story when he saw one and christened the beast 'Cadborosaurus' — 'Caddy' to its friends. Hundreds of sightings have accumulated since, from Puget Sound to Alaska, describing a dark, humped body, a head likened to a horse or camel, and fast vertical undulations.
The file's centrepiece dates from 1937. At the Naden Harbour whaling station in Haida Gwaii, workers pulled a roughly three-metre carcass with a slender neck and an odd head from the stomach of a sperm whale, and photographed it before the remains were lost. In 1995 oceanographer Paul LeBlond and zoologist Edward Bousfield went so far as to formally name the species 'Cadborosaurus willsi' on the strength of those photographs — a move their peers sharply criticised, since a photograph is not a type specimen.
Sober readings are readily available. The Naden Harbour remains look very much like a foetal baleen whale or a decomposing shark, whose collapsing tissues routinely manufacture false 'long necks'. As for the sightings, sea lions swimming in single file, seals, stray oarfish and drifting logs cover most of the record. Caddy remains one of the best-stocked sea-serpent files of the North Pacific — enough to intrigue, not enough to convince.
+ Notable reports
// Cadboro Bay, Victoria, B.C.
A legislative clerk and his wife report a large serpentine animal at the surface. Coverage in the Victoria Daily Times coins the name 'Cadborosaurus'.
// Naden Harbour, Haida Gwaii, B.C.
A carcass about 3 m long with a slender neck is taken from a sperm whale's stomach and photographed. The remains vanish; the surviving photos are read as anything from a whale foetus to an unknown animal.
// British Columbia
Paul LeBlond and Edward Bousfield publish a formal description of 'Cadborosaurus willsi' based on the 1937 photographs. Zoologists reject the naming for lack of a specimen.
+ Leading rational explanations
- Sea lions or seals swimming in line, creating the illusion of a single humped body
- Decomposed carcasses (basking sharks, cetacean foetuses) mimicking a long-necked animal
- Oarfish, sturgeon or drifting logs seen in poor conditions
- Media amplification after the 1933 naming
Status note
Class 3: the Naden Harbour photographs are a genuine but contested physical trace — most plausibly a foetal baleen whale — and no specimen has ever been examined.
+ Frequently asked questions
- What is the Cadborosaurus?
- A reported sea serpent of the British Columbia coast, nicknamed Caddy, described since 1933 as a long, humped animal with a horse-like head. No specimen has ever been captured or authenticated.
- What was the Naden Harbour carcass?
- A three-metre body pulled from a sperm whale's stomach at a whaling station in 1937, photographed and then lost. Most zoologists consider it a foetal baleen whale or a decomposed shark rather than an unknown animal.
- Does Caddy have Indigenous roots?
- Coastal peoples of the region have long described serpentine water beings, such as the hiyitl'iik of the Manhousat (Nuu-chah-nulth). Those traditions predate the media-made 'Cadborosaurus', which only dates from 1933.