I was recently contacted by Bill and Bob Clark about their 14 definitive sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay since February 5, 1985.
Part I can be found at SAN FRANCISCO BAY 'SEA SERPENTS' Sightings History & Report - PART I
They state, "We had an extremely close definitive sighting of a 60+ foot long serpentine marine animal unknown to science from only 20 yards away directly in front of us while we were sitting in our parked car looking at San Francisco Bay."
Bill and Bob Clark's YouTube channel documents the sightings.
A BRIEF SIGHTINGS HISTORY
October 31, 1983
According to a newspaper article in the November 3, 1983 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, written by Steve Rubenstein, "SEA SERPENT CAPTURED ON PAPER. A 100-foot-long sea serpent was sighted off Stinson Beach by five people who had not been drinking.
'it was black with three humps' said Matt Ratto, who got the best look. The five witnesses, all members of a construction crew who were repairing a stretch of Highway 1 on a cliff overlooking the ocean said the serpent surfaced on Monday shortly before 2:00 p.m.
A flagman named Gary saw it first. He said the serpent was swimming toward the cliff from Duxbury Point, five miles away. He called Ratto, another flagman, on his two-way radio and told him to grab the binoculars.
By that time, both men said, the serpent was 100 yards offshore and less than a quarter mile away. It was being followed by about 100 birds and two dozen sea lions.
'The body came out of the water first.' said Ratto, who said he stared at it through binoculars the crew keeps on hand to watch nude sunbathers on the beach below during their lunch break." (Marlene Martin told us when we interviewed her that Ratto clarified the actual reason for having the binoculars was to search the cliffside for rocks that had fallen down on the road below.)
"There were three bends, like humps and they rode straight up.' he said, grabbing a pen and sketching a snake-like creature with a rounded head and a blunt nose.
Ratto said the serpent turned around, lowered its head beneath the waves, and swam out to sea. As it swam it gradually lowered its humps below the surface until it was no longer visible.
Another witness, truck driver Steve Bjora said the serpent was moving as fast as a car. 'The sucker was going 45 to 50 miles an hour.' Bjora said. 'It was clipping. It was boogying. It looked like a long eel.'
Marlene Martin, a safety inspector for the Department of Transportation, also saw the Stinson sea serpent. She was unavailable for comment yesterday, but her daughter, Tina said, 'Mom came home and told me it was the biggest thing she ever saw in her life, and my mom doesn't lie. She said it made Jaws look like a baby.'
Ratto said he doesn't lie either. 'Look' Ratto said, 'I'm not a psycho. I'm a regular guy. If I was going to make something up, I'd make something up like a 12-foot Mickey Mouse with five arms.'
Nonetheless, the Stinson sea serpent was proven yesterday to be as difficult to describe as it was to capture.
Bjora, for example, said the serpent had two humps. Ratto said three humps and Tina Martin had said her mother had specified four humps.
Jack Swanson, a biologist at the nearby Point Reyes Bird Observatory, said there had been periodic sightings of strange creatures off the Marin County Coast, and 'no one ever figures out what these sightings are.'
'A whale surfacing and backlit sunlight, silhouetted with a lot of glare, could look like the Loch Ness monster. On the other hand, there may be all sorts of prehistoric creatures swimming around out there that we know nothing about.'
Ratto said he was sure the creature was not a whale, a porpoise, or a submarine. 'there's no way it could have been a whale or a porpoise,' Ratto said, 'and it was too graceful to be a machine.'
'Anyway,' he added 'a submarine doesn't have a head.' "
On February 17, 1999, we interviewed Marlene Martin at her home. During our interview, she gave us some new information. The worst was that Matt Ratto was killed by a backhoe while working at a construction site. Marlene also said there were actually seven eyewitnesses but two of them didn't want to acknowledge having anything to do with the sighting.
It began when she was called on the two-way radio by one of the workers who said something weird was swimming toward them from Duxbury Point. She saw a V-shaped wake as it swam up to the beach 250 feet below them. At that point, it was completely underwater. Then it made a U-turn and headed toward the Farallone Islands. As it swam away from the beach she saw three humps followed by part of a fourth hump. At that point, she had the binoculars and when the sea serpent was a quarter of a mile away it raised its neck 15 feet out of the water and started swishing about. It held its head up shaking water all over and opened its mouth exposing many large teeth. She remembered the eyes appeared to be a very dark red, not only the pupil but the whole eye. She had difficulty describing the shade of red, saying, "not a blood red, but more of a ruby red." She gave more details about the teeth saying, it had, "alligator-like teeth all around the mouth."
In another newspaper article published in the POINT REYES LIGHT on Thursday, November 14, 1983, written by Pierre Hauser it said "Marlene Martin, a safety inspector for Caltrans, was less blase than Ratto about seeing the creature - 'It shocked the hell out of me' - and seemed to think it merited the extensive media play. 'That thing's so big he deserves front-page coverage. Except with all the attention I'm worried about its safety. Someone might try to kill it.'
Martin first spied it near Bolinas and watched it swim all the way down to Stinson and then turn out toward the Farallones.
'It had a wake as big as a powerboat's and it was going about 65 miles an hour. It looked like a great big rubber hose as it moved. If someone had gotten in its way it would have plowed right through them.'
Before it's submerged, Martin saw it raise its head and a part of its body out of the water, and open its mouth. 'It was like it was playing,' she said.
Martin characterized the creature as a 'giant snake or a dragon, with a mouth like an alligator's,' but said describing it was 'like describing an elephant to someone who has never seen one. it was at least 15 or 20 feet in circumference, but it was hard to tell how long it was. I mean how long is a snake?' she wondered.
She said it resembled monsters whose pictures she could never bring herself to look at as a child."
November 2, 1983
A sighting of a sea serpent by some fishermen in Pacifica, California, just south of San Francisco was reported by a Portland, Oregon radio station.
February 5, 1985
Bill and Bob Clark's first sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
February 28, 1985
Bill and Bob Clark's second sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
March 1, 1985
Bill and Bob Clark's third sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
Sometime in 1985.
A sighting of a sea serpent by Tisa Walden one night while she was riding in a car with two other adults and a small child on Highway 101 heading north between the San Francisco Airport and San Francisco. When we interviewed Tisa at her home she said she was in the backseat of the car and when she looked to her right out the passenger side back window she saw the sea serpent about 25 yards offshore. She said she saw the head and about 5 feet of the "neck" and two arches behind the "neck" above the surface of the water. She said she only saw the sea serpent for a few seconds but was absolutely certain about what she saw.
December 22, 1986
Bill and Bob Clark's fourth sighting of the sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
December 23, 1986
Bill and Bob Clark's fifth sighting of the sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
January 24, 1987
Bill and Bob Clark's sixth sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
February 25, 1987
Bill and Bob Clark's seventh sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
March 1, 1987
Bill and Bob Clark's eighth sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
August 7, 2001
Early in the morning at dawn, photographer Dennis Dooley saw and photographed something in the San Francisco Bay that he thought was a skull-type boat but after developing the photograph he was surprised to discover what he photographed was not a skull-type boat. Here is Dennis Dooley's affidavit describing what occurred that morning.
"On the morning of 7 August 2001, while photographing along the San Francisco Bay waterfront, I inadvertently captured images that, after the film was processed, puzzled and mystified me as I viewed the contact sheets. As a professional photographer with seventeen years of experience editing my own and other people's photos, my eyes are trained to quickly spot anomalies in any scene, and after studying the images for some time, leaving and coming back to them, I could not come up with any satisfactory explanation for the objects in my negative. As a black and white photographer, I am chiefly looking for light effects and strong compositions, and when before dawn I walked out onto Pier 7, located one block South of the downtown Ferry Building on the San Francisco waterfront, my intention was to capture the sun rising behind the western span of the Oakland San Francisco Bay Bridge. I stopped at about midway along the pier to survey the scene. Scattered clouds and mist above the bridge, where the sun was about to peek above the horizon near the central pillar of the western span, promised an atmospheric sunrise. Using my Nikon 8000s 35MM camera with a 28-105 zoom lens and Liford HP5 film (400ASA), I adjusted to slightly underexpose, as I wanted to capture the sun's reflected path of light on the water, and silhouette the bridge. As I was preparing the camera, I glanced up to notice what appeared to be a rower in a skull-type boat approaching the sun stream path from the right, or San Francisco side. Realizing on the instant that this added element might elevate what I knew would be a good photograph into a 'money' shot, I hastened to lift the camera and compose the shot, balancing the bridge and the sun's path on the water. I tripped the shutter several times, hoping that I would capture the boat and rower in the middle of the sun's path. After lowering the camera, I was surprised to not see, after minutes of gazing, any object on the calm water where I had seen it before, or anywhere near. There was some slight disturbance in the water where I had seen the object. I made a mental note that I would not find out if I had captured anything in that sunstream until I processed the film. After viewing the mysterious object(s) in the negatives, which seemed not to be a boat with a rower, nor anything else I could easily identify, I made a mental note to mention my experience to Bill and Bob Clark, long-time San Francisco residents, who I knew had experienced sightings of unidentified 'things' on Bay waters before. They encouraged me to enlarge the negatives to show them, and I did make a series of enlargements. I scanned the negatives on my Kodak 3600pdi scanner before processing them in Adobe Photoshop, which produces very high-resolution images. After seeing the enlargements, they seemed quite interesting, and forwarded copies to Dr. E.L. Bousfield, managing editor of Amphipacifica Research Publications in Ottawa, Canada. After a lengthy analysis, which he mailed back to the Clarks, he concluded that 'you may have something here indeed'. I have written the above testament for whomever it may interest or concern."
January 26, 2004
Bill and Bob Clark's ninth sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
May 3 or 4, 2004
Bill and Bob Clark's tenth sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
February 11, 2006
Bill and Bob Clark's eleventh sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
Summer of 2006
We interviewed a fisherman who asked us to withhold his name. He said he sighted a sea serpent while he was on his fishing boat with another man about a half mile out in the ocean off Navarro Beach which is about 125 miles north of San Francisco.
It was sometime during the day and it was foggy. Several boats were in the area and they were talking to each other over their radios when the wife of one of the men on another boat said she could see a sea serpent nearby. They all were laughing about it until she told them where to look and when they looked over they saw the head of a sea serpent and about 8 feet of neck sticking out of the water in a kelp bed.
December 19, 2006
Bill and Bob Clark's twelve sightings of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
Summer of 2007
We interviewed a husband and wife who asked us to withhold their names. They said they had two sightings of a sea serpent near the Candlestick Point condos off Highway 101. The wife saw it first while driving alone. It was undulating in and out of the water and she could clearly see what looked like several humps moving smoothly and hardly disturbing the water. Later in August that summer her husband said he saw a sea serpent eat a pelican that was sitting in the water in the same general area as his wife's first sighting while she was driving their car.
Sometime around 2008
We interviewed a young man who asked us to withhold his name. He said he sighted a sea serpent while riding in a car crossing the San Mateo Bridge west. He said he saw something, "very, very, very odd swimming in the waters near the middle of the bridge about 2 miles from shore. It looked like a very large dog, with a long neck and long ears that hung down."
February 8, 2009
Bill and Bob Clark's thirteenth sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
February 19, 2009
Bill and Bob Clark's fourteenth sighting of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay. For more details refer to Bill and Bob Clark's list of 14 sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
March 16, 2013
We interviewed a young man and he requested we withhold his name. He said,
"My mom, sister, and I were watching dolphins off of Baker Beach. About 20 minutes later we saw what we thought might have been a sea lion. This amazing creature you have documented curled out of the water, just the body, three or four times the size of the dolphins we had seen earlier. I caught the end of a tail." Baker Beach is just Northwest of San Francisco.
This will be a 2-part presentation that contains their sightings comments and interpretations:
NINTH SIGHTING
January 26, 2004, we had our next sighting. After dropping our car off at the local auto repair shop, we hoped it would just take a few hours but the auto mechanic said he was very busy that day and he wouldn't be able to repair our car until later in the day. We had no choice but to leave our car there and since we had to wait until 5:00 p.m. to pick it up, we decided to walk the few miles to Fisherman's Wharf to kill some time.
We had our video camera with us so when we got to the wharf we decided to hang out by the bay for a while. We thought a good place to go would be the top of a hill that had a great view of Alcatraz Island and Angel Island.
We were there for about an hour when our next sighting occurred around 12:30 p.m. The bay was fairly calm with no white caps. We both were looking directly at Alcatraz Island and we both noticed that there weren't any boats on the bay including near Alcatraz Island which was very unusual for that time of day. We both looked away from Alcatraz Island for an instant then looked back and we both noticed that there was a large black object above the surface of the water in front of and near the west end of Alcatraz Island where just a second earlier there had been nothing. We both questioned whether it was a small boat but neither of us had seen it come into the area. While we were watching it, we both saw a second black object about the same size as the first black object surface from beneath the water just to the left and slightly behind the first black object. A split second later, a little smaller third black object surfaced just to the left and slightly behind the second black object. That's when we both knew whatever the black objects were they weren't boats. Then without warning, the entire area between Alcatraz Island and Angel Island literally erupted with so many black objects we couldn't count them all.
There had to be at least 50 black objects breaking the surface of the water so Bob turned to Bill and told him to videotape what was going on and we could try to figure out later what they were.
By then Bill had already pulled out the video camera and he began videotaping as many of the black objects as he could. Eventually, Bill was able to get 3 1/2 minutes of video of some of the black objects doing various movements above the surface of the water. Unfortunately, since we hadn't planned on looking for the sea serpent that day, we hadn't thought about recharging the battery and after videotaping for 3 1/2 minutes the battery died. A few minutes later a ferry boat came into the same location where the black objects had just been so Bill turned the video camera back on hoping there might be enough charge in the battery to videotape the ferry boat. As it turned out there was enough charge in the battery to videotape the ferry boat passing through the area. Since the battery was now dead and we wouldn't be able to get any more video even if any of the black objects resurfaced, we decided to stop looking anymore that day and left the area.
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TENTH SIGHTING
On May 3 or 4, 2004 we had our next sighting. We were on the same hillside where we took the January 26, 2004 video. This sighting of the sea serpent was much closer to us than the January 26, 2004 sighting. This sighting occurred while we were walking on the path toward the location where we had our January 26, 2004 sighting. We both noticed something that looked like a log floating in the water with 4 or 5 seagulls standing in a line on it. The object we thought was a log was approximately 15 feet long and it was just floating on the surface of the water not moving. As we were watching, the object expanded to more than twice its original width so we knew it wasn't a log. We both thought it was a sea lion or some other marine animal that had died and was bloated. While we continued to watch it, the object wiggled and went underwater. We now realized whatever it was it was alive. Then it resurfaced about 50 yards away northeast from where it had submerged. All of the seagulls that were standing on it began to attack it and it seemed to be fighting back. There was so much commotion going on that Bill began videotaping it. He continued videotaping for a few more minutes until the sea serpent stopped fighting with the seagulls then swam away to the east and dove underwater. A couple of seconds later, the sea serpent resurfaced a few yards further east then dove underwater again and never resurfaced.
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ELEVENTH SIGHTING
On February 11, 2006, we had our next sighting. We were at the same location on the hillside where we took the January 26, 2004 video. We don't remember the exact time but it was sometime before noon. We were looking out towards Alcatraz Island when we noticed some disturbance in the water to the left of the San Francisco Municipal Pier and a group of seagulls circling the area where the disturbance was. As we watched, we saw the sea serpent break the surface of the water exposing a head and a large arch several feet behind the head. The sea serpent quickly submerged and then resurfaced a few seconds later exposing its head and another large arch a few feet behind its head again. The sea serpent was now swimming east towards the San Francisco Municipal Pier. Bill pulled out his video camera and started videotaping. Bill got a few minutes of the sea serpent swimming along the municipal pier. The sea serpent submerged and resurfaced several times and each time it exposed a head and a large arch several feet behind its head. Just then a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter flew very low directly over the area and the sea serpent submerged and never resurfaced after that.
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TWELVETH SIGHTING
On December 19, 2006, we had our next sighting. We went to our usual spot in the parking lot just east of the Saint Francis Yacht Club. It was a little after sunrise when we got there. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot we both noticed that one of the buoys which we refer to as buoy X because it has a large X painted on it had what appeared to be a long straight vertical black line painted on it. Buoy X is about 50 yards further out and about 100 hundred yards further east than the closest buoy we've been referring to that the sea serpent has been seen at. We call the closest buoy B because it has a big B painted on it.
As we sat there, we both remarked to each other that someone had painted a long black vertical stripe on buoy X. We didn't pay any further attention to buoy X, and for about 15 minutes we scanned the rest of the bay for any sign of the sea serpent.
Eventually, Bob happened to look over at buoy X and while he was looking at it, to his surprise, he saw the vertical black stripe on buoy X dive forward into the water and disappear underwater. Bob immediately told Bill to look at buoy X because there was no longer a vertical black stripe on it and that he saw what we thought was a vertical black stripe on buoy X dive forward into the water. As soon as Bill noticed that there was no longer a vertical black stripe on buoy X he grabbed the video camera and started videotaping the area hoping to get some video of what had been leaning on buoy X. Bill was able to get a short video of the sea serpent as it swam away to the west with just a small portion of it breaking the surface of the water. The sea serpent never resurfaced after that and Bill was unable to get any more video of it.
We both were angry at ourselves for not taking a video of buoy X earlier when the sea serpent was leaning up against the buoy. Apparently, the sea serpent had been leaning on buoy X for several minutes sunning itself. Because we thought it was just a vertical black painted stripe on buoy X and not the sea serpent we missed an opportunity to get a good video of about 5 feet of the upper body of the sea serpent leaning on buoy X.
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THIRTEENTH SIGHTING
Our next sighting occurred on February 8, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. We were sitting in our car in the parking lot east of the Saint Francis Yacht Club. It was high tide and the bay was fairly calm. We later checked the tide tables and found out it was a slack tide at 10:00 a.m. Bob was looking through his binoculars for about 15 minutes at the shoreline across the bay when he noticed something black moving west to east close to the shoreline. He watched the black object for a little while to make sure it just wasn't a shadow of a wave when he noticed the second black object break the surface of the water at least 10 feet behind the first black object. The second black object submerged and resurfaced a few times while the first black object remained above the surface of the water. Bob continued to watch the two black objects and at that point, he told Bill that he could see something unusual and black moving west to east right in front of the shoreline. Bill got the video camera out and began videotaping the two black objects as they continued to move from west to east.
As the two of us watched, we could see that the first black object stayed above the surface of the water most of the time while the second black object behind the first black object kept surfacing and submerging exposing different lengths of it. At times both black objects submerged for a second then the first black object would reappear above the surface of the water.
Some of the time the second black object would surface and appear to be elongated and longer than the first black object. Bill was videotaping the two black objects from inside the car then he got out of the car because the video camera was going in and out of focus. As Bill continued to videotape the two black objects Bob watched them through the binoculars and they looked like they were creating some white water between them as they moved along. Sometimes the second black object looked straight like a log while at other times it looked curved like an arch. The distance between the two black objects got smaller and smaller as they continued to move west to east along the shoreline. The way the two black objects moved about each other gave us the impression they were two parts of one animal.
After the two objects went further east in the bay they passed right in front of a 10-ft high green buoy. At this time the second black object exposed a long length of body above the surface of the water. The two black objects continued to move west to east until a large motorboat approached them traveling from east to west. As the motor boat approached the two black objects the second black object submerged and only the first black object remained above the surface of the water. After the motorboat passed by, the first black object was also submerged and neither of the black objects was seen again after that.
It was at this point Bill stopped videotaping.
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FOURTEENTH SIGHTING
On February 19, 2009, we had our next sighting. We were parked at the Marina Green location where we had our first sighting on February 5, 1985, and spotted something black breaking the surface of the water out in the middle of the bay off of the western tip of Alcatraz Island. We decided to move to the parking lot just east of the Saint Francis Yacht Club hoping we could get a better view of whatever it was.
As we sat in our car Bob thought he saw something to his right about a hundred yards offshore so he started scanning the area with the binoculars. While he was looking at one spot, all of a sudden the head, a portion of the upper body behind the head, and an arch of another portion of the upper body of the sea serpent broke the surface of the water exactly where Bob was looking.
Bob got an excellent view of the profile of the head of the sea serpent and was able to see a squared-off elongated snout, an eye, and a large jowl below the eye before the head went underwater. The arch of the sea serpent was at least 5 feet in length and the head and the upper portion of the sea serpent were about 8 feet in length.
There were about 5 feet between where the end of the upper portion of the sea serpent entered the water and where the beginning of the arch came out of the water. Bob yelled excitedly to Bill that the sea serpent just appeared in the binocular's field of vision.
Bill tried to look at the location where Bob was saying he was seeing the sea serpent but a portion of the car next to the side window and windshield blocked his view. Bill tried to see the sea serpent but it submerged before he could even get a look at it.
A few seconds later, Bob noticed several parts of the sea serpent breaking the surface of the water about 50 yards further out in the bay directly in front of us.
Bob yelled to Bill where the sea serpent was and Bill could see some commotion in the water. Then he saw the head of the sea serpent and a large arch directly behind the head for a few seconds. Bill tried to take some video of it but before he could a motorboat going west to east came right into the same area of the bay so the sea serpent submerged before Bill could get any video of it.
About 30 seconds later we both noticed the sea serpent break the surface of the water again several hundred yards further west from where we last saw it. Bill was only able to get a few seconds of video showing a small portion of an arch breaking the surface of the water.
After that sighting, we wanted to concentrate on showing the videos we had already taken to as many of the people as possible whom we had already contacted about our sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay.
At that time we stopped looking for the sea serpent and haven't looked for it since then.
That's the end of our sightings of sea serpents in San Francisco Bay for now but not the end.
Bill and Bob Clark's YouTube channel documents the sightings. They can be contacted at billandbobclark2@gmail.com
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