Search For The Cameron Lake Serpent

Brigette Horvath knew she saw something strange in Cameron Lake on Vancouver Island two years ago, and a team of researchers say she might be right. Was it a fish, an eel or some kind of serpent-like creature? She didn't know. But Horvath grabbed her camera and managed to fire off one shot before the batteries failed. The researchers who specialize in looking for so-called crytozoological creatures -- in other words, monsters -- spent yesterday on the lake probing the depths with a sonar-like fish finder. At first, they picked up a couple of large contacts at the bottom of the lake, about 45 metres deep, then something more pronounced on a second pass. "Something just went 'ping' on the alarm on the fish finder and we saw this absolutely massive object in the midst of various fish," said John Kirk, president of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club.They made four more passes and the contact held stable, making it unlikely that it was a school of fish, which tend to scatter eventually, Kirk said. "We were quite stunned that there was something that big in the lake and it was in about 60 feet of water, less than 30 yards from shore. It was quite amazing," he said. Horvath, who lives in Nanaimo, said she was driving along Highway 4 on July 30, 2007 when she saw a strange semi-circle in the lake. "You could see like a serpent shape," said Horvath, who isn't the only person to report something strange in Cameron Lake. "It wasn't logs," she said. "It wasn't waves. There were no boats in the area. It was, like, right there. You could actually see a large fish, (an) object, no, not an object, something alive."