Thursday, March 7 1991

Ogopogo Brouhaha
Okanagan Lake's fish story is heads and tails above the rest
By Ellis E. Conklin
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
P-I Reporter

KELOWNA, B.C. -Seems everyone in this vacation playland halfway between Vancouver and Calgary has a sea-serpent story to spin.

Some actually claim to have seen the beast, 70 feet in length, high-tailing it across the dark waters of Okanagan Lake.

It's a whale of a story.

Each year, there are 30 to 40 "sightings" of the large, unidentified swimming object, the Canadian equivalent of Scotland's Loch Ness monster.

"It looked like a submarine surfacing, coming up toward my boat," Lionel Edmond recounted of his close encounter with the creature.

"I've seen it, all right. I saw it moving faster than my speedboat," said Herb Rashke as he watched snowflakes light on the legend-steeped lake last week.

It had been a bad day for sea-monster watching. They say the creature is a fair-weather monster, which chagrined a Japanese television crew that had come armed with remote underwater camera and a tiny submarine to find the bashful beast, the one they call Ogopogo.

The lake may be 80 miles long and more than 1,000 feet deep in places, but Tokyo-based Nippon TV insists Ogopogo can run but it can't hide.

Fusako Suzuki watched happily in the snow as the Nippon crew tested the underwater camera in a hotel swimming pool. The sub, equipped with gyro, sonar and acoustic gear, had not yet arrived. But that didn't stop a steady stream of quizzical hotel guests from watching the preparations, their noses pressed to the lobby windows.

"They're looking for Ogopogo," someone explained.

"Oh, yes. Ogopogo," people nodded.

With a radiant smile, Suzuki said, "Yes, we shall find it." Suzuki is part of a 15 person crew that arrived a week ago to begin an 11 day search for the elusive monster.

This is the second Nippon expedition. Last summer, 80 million Japanese TV viewers gobbled up the first Ogopogo segment, which showed a large object surfacing in the Peachland area of the lake, as well as a 30 foot long wriggling object on sonar.

It was the sonar reading that particularly inflamed the Japanese crew's curiosity. Ogopogo, ever the tease, has brought them back, much to the amusement of many of Kelowna's...