The Water Horse of San Francisco Bay

Mysterious SF does not go to a lot of parties, but the ones he does go to are interesting. Several years ago, at a party MSF met David, who claims his friends have seen sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.

Mysterious SF asked David exactly what his friends saw. David started to describe the head, but before he could get anything out, MSF asked him, Head like a horse, right? David looked at your area blogger funny and said, Yeah, exactly. 

Several years ago, Mysterious SF was sitting on someone else’s toilet, flipping through a copy of Outdoor Life Magazine. He read a letter from an woman who claimed to have seen a sea serpent while on a boat off the Farallone Islands in the 1960s. The creature, seen from the neck up, had large eyes, a mane of long hair, and generally looked much like a horse. After observing it for a period of five minutes, the creature slowly slipped underneath the waves, never to be seen again. 

Soon after she saw the creature, the eyewitness spoke to another man who claimed to have seen an identical creature ten years earlier and hundreds of miles south off the Santa Catalina islands. The accompanying illustration, done by the magazine's cartoonist, was of a smiling cross between a horse and a whale. 

In August of 1997 Mysterious SF attended a lecture by Prof. Paul LeBlond of the University of British Columbia on the subject of cadborosaurus willsi, or "Caddy", a sea serpent-type species that has allegedly been seen several times in and around Cadboro Bay, British Columbia, for so long the local Native Americans have record of it. LeBlond thinks that Caddy is not only a zoologically sound species, but that it actually exists. 

According to LeBlond, eyewitnesses report Cadborosaurus' head looks like--you guessed it--a horse. 

Mysterious SF grilled David rather thoroughly about what his friends had told him. David related  the following:  

1. The creature is long and serpentlike, with the head of a horse. On both occasions the creature was estimated to be at least 30 feet long. 

2. The creature is seen in the very early morning, usually around 5 or 6 am. I didn't find out where in the bay, exactly, and it was implied that the persons who allegedly saw such a creature were on a boat.

3. These two individuals have seen the creature at least two times, in 1960s and 70s.

4. There are allegedly "a lot" of people who have seen the creature over the years. 

5. The two individuals were writing a paper on their experiences, and claim to have photographs of the creature.

I decided to dig a little deeper into the subject. Benard Heuvelmans, a zoologist who wrote the 1965 book, In The Wake of The Sea Serpents, mentioned not only a Caddy-like creature, but also of a creature seen off Santa Catalina island numerous times by sport fishermen. Heuvelmans repeats a passage from the book Tight Lines, authored by veteran California fisherman Ralph Bandini. In the 1930s, Bandini had been secretary of the elite southern California big game fishing club The Tuna Club, and in his book wrote of sighting the creature while fishing for marlin. 

All of a sudden I saw something dark and big heave up. I seized my glasses. What I saw brought me up straight!

A great columnar neck and head, I guess that is what it was, lifting a good 10 feet. It must have been five or six feet thick. Something that appeared to be a kind of mane of coarse hair, almost like a fine seaweed, hung darkly. But the eyesthose were what held me! Huge, seemingly bulging, round at least a foot in diameter!

We swung toward it. Then, even as I watched through the glasses, the Thing sank. There was no swirl, no fuss Just a leisurely, majestic sinking and it disappeared, about a quarter of a mile away. 

The time of the sighting is recorded as eight a.m. Most Caddy sightings take place in the early morning or dusk. And as David reported, the San Francisco Bay serpent had only been seen in the early morning or at dusk. 

Comparing sightings of Caddy, the Santa Catalina monster, and the creature seen in San Francisco Bay, further parallels emerge. Firstly, they are generally described as having horse or camel-shaped heads. A mane is always mentioned, as are large eyes. Most eyewitnesses describe a critter between five and fifteen yards long (although as noted Bandini says he only saw a ten foot long neck.) Finally, the creature's preferred means of escape from the view of humans is not to spectacularly dive underneath the surface like a whale, but instead to gradually sink out of view. 

Publicly, Mysterious SF says:  Points #4 & 5 are usually the last one ever hears from someone who claims sightings and the evidence to back them up. Usually the hoaxer, realizing that he has painted himself into a corner, slowly sinks from view, never to be seen again. Just like the water horse. 

Mysterious SF is all for this creature existing. The correlations of physical characteristics and behavior could have a common point of origin. Furthermore, he's all for it existing outside of San Francisco Bay. (More on that later.) And occasionally, some such animal may enter the bay following the seasonal fish migrations--anchovies, herring, salmon, striped bass, halibut, etc. But he has an awfully hard time picturing this thing as a permanent resident. 

Privately, Mysterious SF says: I have this sinking feeling these things are smarter than most people think.