Bill Steciuk

The whole thing was a scientific expedition and we weren't interested in the 2 million dollars reward. As a matter of fact, our expedition was up and running, we had it up and running way before they came up with that 2 million reward. It's kind of an important thing. What we did, we are doing it scientifically with sonar and all kind of stuff.

Do you believe there is an Ogopogo in the lake?

Well, absolutely! There is a species of animal that lives in this lake. There is no question. I believe there is more than one. I believe there could be hundreds of them. Most of the sightings, following three separate categories, and all those three categories, it has to do with size and color. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that maybe they're male, female, offspring. And beside that, it's unrealistic to think that one creature is going to survive in the lake for hundreds and hundreds of year.

Plus which I didn't tell you is that I had a sightings off Okanagan bridge in 1978 which is what really started all of this, for me. Well I was going to work one day, it was... it was a few years ago and I saw an object off the side of the bridge moving towards Kelowna. Stopped the car, backed all the traffic up across to the west side all behind me, and I got out and I saw this object and it was three humps and there was a head in the front moving in and out of the water and it was moving towards Kelowna. So that kind of spark my interests in Ogopogo at that point.

Do you believe it's a Plesiausor?

Well, there... There is local expert here that thinks that's what it is. Frankly I'm not quite sure what it is. I believe it's a... I don't know. We did quite in depth research before we did our first expedition last year. In terms of doing surveys and we came up with the fact that over 90% of the people who see Ogopogo, or see something in the water, do not report the sightings. And the reasons for that, you know... ridicule... or whatever. But the matters is there's been a couple of thousand reports of sightings in the water over the last 50 years. So that only represent 8% of all the people that have seen Ogopogo, these people are seeing something in the lake.

Expeditions...

Is it a big sturgeon?

That's kind of a popular belief here in the Okanagan that it is a sturgeon. But the fact of matter is, to my knowledge, nobodies has ever seen a sturgeon in the Okanagan Lake, and nobody has ever found the remains of a sturgeon in the Okanagan Lake and has not proven that sturgeon are here.

Before the first sightings, did you believe in Ogopogo?

Well probably like the majority of the people in Okanagan: Oh maybe, maybe not, you know!! But seeing is everything!!

How long was last year expedition?

Our expedition was slated for 3 and half weeks. That is quite a long time. Unfortunately we had a lot of down time, we had some equipment problems, mechanical problems. As well as the weather did not cooperate very well last years, so we had a lot of down days where we just didn't go out. So out of the 3 and half week, we may have gotten 14 days out of it.

Did we find Ogopogo this year? The answer is NO. But we did get two remarkable hits sonar, front scanning sonar. We got those in the north end of the lake at the deepest part. That is off of cars landing in the north end, 235 meters of water. But interestingly enough, and you should know this, that's only into the sediment. That's the water depth. You have an other 4 or 5 hundred meters of sediment of bedrock. Which make this lake 23 hundred feet deep. Which also make it one of the deepest lakes in North America. A lot of people don't realize that. The sediment has been coming in for the last glaciations periods as well as the run off. That all has contributed to the sediment of the lake. So the lake is much deeper than the actual water depth.

The documentary...

We hope to have it ready by October 15 of this year. Made for television documentary. And that is basically what we did last year, what we found. One of our sonar hits would be in that documentary, and many of our diving sequences. We had a numbers of divers with us last years as well and we explored Rattlesnake Island area. There is a number a caves there and a hundred of meters of water. So we did quite a lot of stuff. All of that will be in the documentary. And there is also a bit of the story too. It's going to be an interesting thing.

The Legend...

Interestingly enough, when the first settlers came to the valley back in 1850-60-70 they heard about these stories. And this is documented, they use to post an armed guard on shore at night to protect the family from Ogopogo. That is a true story. And you should also know that Kelowna back in those days, was really here and south. The actual town site of Kelowna didn't exist. This is the original Kelowna, the mission and farther out.

Can Pro Productions
http://www.seesya.com