List of sea serpent sightings in the Pacific Ocean (1990–)

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<< List of sea serpent sightings in the Pacific Ocean (1946-1989)

The following is a list of alleged and circumstantial sea serpent sightings reported from the Pacific Ocean and its marginal seas since 1990.

Northern Pacific

A number of relatively recent Cadborosaurus sightings have been reported from Saanich Inlet, where some cryptozoologists believe sea serpents may come to breed (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The majority of recent sea serpent reports from the North Pacific have been published as a result of long-term investigations into "Cadborosaurus," the sea serpent of the Salish Sea, carried out by Paul H. LeBlond, Edward Bousfield, and the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club. By the early 1990s, Bousfield feared that Cadborosaurus had become extinct, as there had been no sightings since 1987, despite appeals to local fishermen and sailors. However, a number of reports from Vancouver Island's Saanich Inlet, where cryptozoologists such as Bousfield theorise the animals may breed, provoked others to come forward with their own alleged sightings, with eight being reported from 1994 alone. According to John Kirk, interest in Cadborosaurus at the beginning of the 21^st Century was higher than it had been at any point since the 1930s. Kirk attributes this interest in part to Operation CaddyScan, a project which has kept Telegraph Bay on the coast of Vancouver Island under live camera surveillance since 2002. Modern Cadborosaurus sightings continue to be published on the Operation CaddyScan website↗, although alleged eyewitnesses are not identified for privacy reasons.

Terry Osland (Saanich Inlet, 1991)

A Sidney resident named Terry Osland reported a sea serpent sighting in Saanich Inlet during late June 1991. She claimed that she had been walking her dog towards Ardmore Point early one morning, when, as the dog refused to go any further, she noticed an unfamiliar animal, with a horse-like head about a foot wide, apparently watching her from over a cliff. It immediately dipped its head down and disappeared into the water, splashing loudly, and when Osland rushed to look over the cliff, she saw its huge back end, with a long tail and two rear flippers, disappearing beneath the surface, followed by the forequarters rising up again. According to Osland, the animal, which was not any species of cetacean, was much larger than a killer whale (Orcinus orca), with hairless silvery-grey skin like that of a dogfish, and a rounded, lizard-like tail with "little feet on the back". These "little feet" were presumed to have been a tail fluke, but Osland's drawing↗ depicts the animal as flukeless.

“

I saw this face looking at me, then it disappeared over the edge and the dog was fighting to get away. I heard a splash and I looked over and saw the back end go into the water. It then came up twice and I saw the top of its head. It was bigger than a killer whale. I've seen them, and it couldn't have been an elephant seal. It was hard to describe. It was smooth, it had no hair and the tail was rounded like a lizard tail and it had like little feet on the side back of the tail. It had grey, silvery colour skin that resembled the smooth skin of a dog fish. I never saw a long neck.

”

In a later interview, Osland claimed that the sea serpent had a distinct, unpleasant smell, which left a metallic taste in her mouth, and which she later compared to the smell of a reptile house. She also estimated that the animal had been around 40' long. A marine biologist from the local Provincial Museum suggested that the animal could have been an elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris), but Osland rejected this.

“

And as I came up to where the steps go down, this head popped up, and I looked straight into the face of this creature, which was, oh, I guess almost a foot wide in the face. And then it dropped its head down, and I sort of backed off, and I heard a splash. And I went to look over again, and I saw it going into the water just the tail end. I definitely knew I'd seen something because not only did I see it, but I could smell it. And it left a funny taste in my mouth, which was sort of metallic-like. So, I feel that definitely did see it, because those three senses taste and sight and the smell. And the next morning, I phoned the Provincial Museum to ask them about it, and they said that they thought I'd seen an elephant seal. But that was definitely not an elephant seal.

”

According to LeBlond, Kirk, and Jason Walton, Osland's account is so out of the ordinary that it cannot be considered a sighting of the "usual" type of Cadborosaurus. They instead suggest that it may have been an animal more like Ogopogo, the freshwater lake monster of British Columbia.

Dorothy Sinclair (Ocean Shores, 1992)

Washington resident Dorothy Sinclair told Paul H. LeBlond that she had observed a sea serpent in the surf from her vacation home in Ocean Shores, on the Washington coast's Point Brown Peninsula, in January 1992. She described the animal as having a "long, slender neck," and a head which it bobbed up and down several times.

“

The long, slender neck rose, I would say, five or six feet in the air. The thing that struck me was that incredible dignity! The animal wasn't afraid, and each time it rose out of the water, its head did a sort of ritualistic nod before it would curl down again ... Every 100 feet or so, it would rise, make a ritualistic forward nodding motion, then arch back down into the water. It did that four or five times before I couldn't see it anymore.

”

Don Berends & James Wells (Saanich Inlet, 1993)

Another sea serpent was allegedly observed in Saanich Inlet, near Brentwood Bay, on 14 July 1993, in this case from the air. Two pilots, Don Berends and his student James Wells, claimed that, while practicing in a Cessna float plane, they saw a pair of extremely serpentine, looped animals in the sea, which they initially mistook for floating logs. Each animal displayed two greyish-blue hoops above the water, under which the men could clearly see sunlight. The animals dived when the Cessna landed, but resurfaced several dozen feet away, making off rapidly.

“

I saw something irregular. It was not clearly a monster, but it was different from what we usually see. We saw them in front when they made a splash. They (each) had two hoops. We landed right where it had been and then we saw it rise out of the water in front of us and we were still moving at 50 miles per hour and it started moving away. They were 20 to 40 feet away and going quite quickly.

”

Dave Holt (Roberts Bay, 1994)

Dave Holt, an experienced boater who ran a wildlife cruise business told Operation CaddyScan that he had seen a periscoping sea serpent at the entrance to Roberts Bay, north of Sidney on Vancouver Island. The animal allegedly appeared in the early morning during July 1994, and was witnessed by five other people. It reportedly rose vertically out of the water by 10 ft (3 m), and remained still for around forty seconds before sinking and disappearing. Holt described it as blackish-green in colour, similar to a sea lion, with a long neck↗ wide enough that one "couldn't wrap your arms around it".

Oak Bay Marina (1998)

A pair of fishermen told Operation CaddyScan that they had seen "two large animate objects," moving in unison, outside Oak Bay Marina, off Victoria, on 20 July 1998. The objects were moving very fast, and the fishermen were certain they were not seals.

Sylvie Beauregard (Galiano Island, 2013)

Operation CaddyScan informant Sylvie Beauregard reported seeing a sea serpent swimming from the beach of Galiano Island, one of the Southern Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia, on 15 December 2013, at around 8:30 AM. It was described as serpentine and glossy black, with its forequarters standing around 3 ft 5 in–4 ft (1–1.2 m) above the surface of the sea, and Beauregard judged that it was 40–50 ft (12–15 m) in length but just 20–25 in (50–63 cm) in diameter. Although it was described, and drawn, as almost exactly resembling a giant snake, it allegedly had a tail which was seen "wagging in and out of the water," and Beauregard's drawing depicts it undulating vertically, like a mammal, rather than horizontally, as a snake would move.

Port Townsend (2019)

An alleged 2019 sighting of a sea serpent in the Strait of Juan de Fuca was reported to Operation CaddyScan in June 2019, two months after the sighting allegedly occurred on the evening of 8 May 2019. The sea serpent was reported from near Port Townsend, at the tip of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. The witnes described seeing three parts of the animal; a 3 ft (91 cm), turtle-like head held about a foot out of the water; a single 18 ft (5.4 m) hump the size of an upturned canoe, some distance behind the head; and the terminal end of the body, which appeared to be "several tips or appendages together". The whole animal "seemed covered in rough, irregular bumps," and it appeared to have a dorsal ridge or ridges. The witness took a photograph of the animal, which was described as "inconclusive," and made a rough drawing↗.

Tropical Pacific

Cook Islands (1993)

According to the Cook Islands News Daily, during September 1993, a Reverend Solomona and his son, fishing between the twin atolls of Manihiki and Rakahanga in the Polynesian Cook Islands, where they were drawn to a particular spot on the water by the circling of seabirds, reportedly saw an animal resembling a lizard, but larger than a whale, surface near their boat, prompting them to immediately sail away. This is regarded as a possible marine saurian, a sea serpent type explained variably as a marine crocodilian, mosasaur, thalattosuchian, or pliosaur.

Hạ Long Bay (Before 2007)

During a 2007 Destination Truth investigation in Vietnam, Josh Gates collected several modern sightings of sea serpents from floating villages and flooded caves in Hạ Long Bay. None of the accounts were detailed, but all agreed that the sea serpent was very large, and was capable of destroying boats. A fisherman named Vu Van Queyen thought it was the size of a house, and another named Vu Van Tu, who did not get a good look at the animal, called it a "dragon". Since the 1920s, the Hạ Long Bay sea serpents have been known locally as tarasques, after the armoured dragon-like monster from French mythology.

Southern Pacific

A number of marine saurian sightings were reported from New Zealand's Kapiti Coast during the 2000s (CC BY-SA 3.0).

During the 2000s, the last in a long series of supposed mosasaurian marine saurian sightings were reported off the coasts of New Zealand, particularly around the Kapiti Coast region of North Island. Sometimes associated with taniwha legends, these sightings began in the late 19^th Century, but became more common in the late 20^th and early 21^st Centuries, and have attracted attention from cryptozoologists such as Tony Lucas, Karl Shuker, and Dale A. Drinnon.

Earl Rigney (Canterbury, 1993)

In 1993, an Earl Rigney of the Canterbury Region, on South Island's eastern coast, allegedly observed a large sea serpent through a telescope. He intially mistook the animal, of which he caught a glimpse with his naked eye, for a whale, but, upon viewing it through his telescope, he saw that it was a large crocodile-like animal, roughly 30 ft (9 m) in length, "breaching on the surface of the water".^{[primary source needed]}

Paekākāriki (2001)

In Summer 2001, a party of teenagers boogey-boarding off Paekākāriki, on the Kapiti Coast, allegedly saw a large sea serpent "explode" out of the sea nearby.^{[primary source needed]}

Raumati Beach (2007)

In 2007, an unidentified woman with an infant daughter reportedly saw a sea serpent the size of a small whale splashing in shallow water off Raumati Beach, a few miles north of Paekākāriki on the Kapiti Coast.^{[primary source needed]}

Selected sightings map

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