Cadborosaurus, nicknamed “Caddy,” is a sea serpent reported along the Pacific coast of North America, especially around Vancouver Island and the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia. Witnesses describe a long, serpentine animal with a horse- or camel-like head, a long neck and vertical humps behind it. Caddy has an unusually long paper trail for a sea serpent, including a carcass photographed in 1937 and a formal scientific name published in 1995, and an equally long record of skeptical reanalysis.[1][2]
| Nickname | Caddy |
|---|---|
| Region | Pacific coast of North America, especially British Columbia and Washington |
| Typical description | Long body with vertical humps, horse-like head, long neck, front flippers |
| Named by | Archie Wills of the Victoria Daily Times, 1930s |
| Famous evidence | Naden Harbour carcass, July 1937; Hagelund’s “baby” Caddy, 1968 |
| Proposed scientific name | Cadborosaurus willsi (Bousfield and LeBlond, 1995) |
| Leading explanations | Sea lions, elephant seals, oarfish, basking sharks, whales, pipefish |
Sightings and the name
Reports of a large serpent off southern Vancouver Island drew public attention in the 1930s. Archie Wills, an editor of the Victoria Daily Times, combined the name of Cadboro Bay in Victoria with the Greek sauros, lizard, to make “Cadborosaurus,” and the nickname “Caddy” stuck.[1]
Some reports have simple explanations. In 1943 two police officers reported a huge sea serpent with a horse-like head in the Strait of Georgia, but one of them later realized it had been a bull sea lion leading six others in a line, their backs rising and falling like the humps of a single animal.[1]
The Naden Harbour carcass, 1937
In mid-July 1937, at the whaling station at Naden Harbour on Haida Gwaii (then the Queen Charlotte Islands), workers cutting open a sperm whale caught off Langara Island found a strange animal in its stomach. It was about three meters long, with a long, thin body, a small head and what looked like a tail fluke. The station supervisor, F. S. Huband, and a worker, G. V. Boorman, photographed it laid out on planks, and one photograph ran on the front page of the Victoria Daily Colonist on 31 October 1937.[3]
The director of the provincial museum in Victoria, Francis Kermode, examined a sample and tentatively identified the remains as a fetal baleen whale. The carcass itself was never preserved in a museum and has never been found, so the photographs are all that remain.[1][3]
A scientific name, 1995
In 1995 the marine biologist Edward Bousfield and the oceanographer Paul LeBlond published a monograph in the journal Amphipacifica naming Cadborosaurus willsi as a new genus and species of large marine reptile. They based it on more than 200 sightings and designated one of the Naden Harbour photographs as the type specimen. They argued that no known animal fits the descriptions, especially reports of flippers at both ends of the body.[1][3]
The paper was controversial from the start. Editors of the journal publicly objected to its publication as a formal species description, and other scientists replied in print in 1996. A photograph and eyewitness accounts are not normally accepted as the basis for naming a species.[3]
Hagelund’s “baby sea serpent,” 1968
In 1968 Captain William Hagelund reported catching a small, slender animal that he believed was a juvenile Caddy, which he described in a book some two decades later. It became one of the most-cited pieces of Caddy evidence. In 2011 Michael Woodley, Darren Naish and Cameron McCormick compared the features Hagelund described with those of known north Pacific animals and concluded that it was most likely a bay pipefish (Syngnathus leptorhynchus), a slender relative of seahorses that can raise its head and bend its body into a neck-like shape.[4]
What could Caddy be?
The paleontologist Darren Naish has described the attempt to name Caddy from photographs and anecdotes as bad science, and argues that the wide variety of descriptions is better explained by many different known animals:[1][3]
- Sea lions and elephant seals swimming in lines or rearing their heads, which can look like a single long animal with humps.
- Oarfish, extremely long, ribbon-like fish with a red crest, rarely seen at the surface.
- Basking sharks, especially decomposing carcasses, which lose their jaws and fins and take on a long-necked, serpent-like shape. A 2000 study suggested this for the Naden Harbour remains.[3]
- Whales and fetal whales, as Kermode suggested in 1937, and large fish such as sturgeon.
- Pipefish for small “baby” Caddies.
For other North American water monsters, see Ogopogo and Champ, and for another sea serpent, the Gloucester Sea Serpent.
References
- “Cadborosaurus,” Wikipedia.
- E. L. Bousfield and P. H. LeBlond, “An account of Cadborosaurus willsi, new genus, new species, a large aquatic reptile from the Pacific coast of North America,” Amphipacifica 1, suppl. 1 (1995): 3–25.
- Darren Naish, “The Case of the Cadborosaurus Carcass: a Review,” Tetrapod Zoology (16 November 2020).
- M. A. Woodley, D. Naish and C. A. McCormick, “A baby sea-serpent no more: reinterpreting Hagelund’s juvenile Cadborosaur report,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 25 (2011): 495–512; see also Tetrapod Zoology at Scientific American.
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from documented sources, replacing an earlier general description. The illustration above is an artistic impression.