By now everyone who is connected by radio, tv, internet or newspaper is aware that James Gray of Microsoft has just disappeared from the face of the earth while expertly sailing his 40ft sailboat on a day cruise under nearly perfect condition, through very well known waters, to the Farallon Islands. Speculation as to his whereabouts is wide-open and even the most serious and likely suggestions underscore just how slight slight is the ability of our human pereceptions to be able to actually see what’s going-on around us. The idea that there can’t be something previously unknown on the order of a large animal living out in waters all around us because if it were there we’d have seen it and photographed it…well, that greatly overestimates our powers of observation, not to mention our ability to photograph stuff.

Another news item currently getting some chatter in the Bay Area is the recent report that as many as several dozen Orcas have migrated from the Pacific Northwest and are currently cruising the coastal areas just outside the Bay. One speculation is that they’ve keyed-in on the up-swing in salmon populations along the northern and central Californian coasts, since it’s believe that these are salmon eating populations of orca (in contrast to the transient populations which are found in association with predation on large marine mammals), though I haven’t read if there’d been any positive ID by cross checking this population’s distinctive dorsal profile and coloration with known populations, nor have I heard if DNA had been collected and whether it had been compared to known population characteristics.

I don’t know if anyone else has made the connection but there have been verified modern reports of Orca and other whales actually sinking boats of the size reported to be sailed by Mr Gray of Microsoft (an encounter with a wooden boat and a humpback in Alaskan waters years ago, and an trans-pacific class modern sailboat off the coast of South America rammed and sunk by an Orca), though admittedly it’s more likely that Mr Gray has had a catastrophic encounter with another ship or partially submerged log. Interestingly, the SF Chronicle’s article this morning also noted that the last time Orcas were seen INSIDE the bay(reportedly) was in the 50s.

The Bay and the not-too-distant ocean environment are an interesting piece of geography in both human and geologic/oceanographic senses, and the kinds of stimuli and kinds of scale to which our human senses are evolutionarily geared are simply in-adequate to appreciate what it is we have outside our known space.

I don’t necessarily have to believe that colonies of briney cryptids inhabit the bay in order to be open and even supporting of ideas that require a big unknown animal or population of animals to pay us a visit from out of the largely unknown watery realm every once in a while and still believe that we could miss it entirely or discover that our pathetic little camera caught only a fuzzy indecipherable blip even though my own eyes and my mind, working in colusion told me it was a sea-serpent, and it is hard to argue with a racing-skull filled with rowers…especially if they were as articulate and enthusiastic as the south-side rowers I’ve known.

Not an appropriate comparison to someone piloting a boat. Look at it this way: if a sea serpent were on the road itself as you drove to work, you’d notice it.

On one hand, I’ve never seen the video. (Might this be a good time to suggest that the Clark brothers put it up on the web?) On the other hand, you’ve never stood on the shoreline of the St. Francis and Golden Gate Yacht Clubs (not just one small boat harbor, but two) and seen all the boats go by. The closest of these sightings, in which the creature actually struck the rocks near shore, was about one hundred to three hundred feet from several hundred anchored yachts, two fancy yacht club buildings (where someone is always hanging out) and was observed from a parking lot. To leave the yacht club harbors and travel west you would have to pass right through the alleged sea serpent hangout. Can you imagine Bigfoot hanging out around a toll gate of a parking lot and nobody seeing him?

Let’s put it this way. I’ve been interested in this stuff all my life. I would be thrilled if I could take a five minute drive (the time it would take me to drive to the location from where I’m typing this) to the scenes of the sighting and stake the place out. I would buy the gear. I would spend the time. (I need another hobby.) But I won’t. Because I honestly think, based on my own experience, that there’s nothing there. I’ve already done all the watching I think that place deserves. (Hours and hours of watching the water in the exact spot where I should apparently been looking for a sea serpent, except I was looking for striped bass or a halibut.)

I wish the Clark brothers the best of luck, but for now, I won’t be joining them.

I don’t buy the arguments that there are fishermen and all sorts of people on the water and no one has ever seen the likes of that before–people miss things all the time–it is a fallacy that people as a whole are observant and aware of their surroundings. I drive to and from work every day and the amount of times that I actually look up in the sky or pay attention to the water in the river as I go over the bridge are minimal…there could be all kinds of things popping up out of said river and I would never see it because I’m concentrating on the road…my point, people are not as observant as we like to think. If they were, the Clarks would not have been the few to have witnessed and filmed what they did (I am guessing someone else might have witnessed it, but either tossed it off, or did not want to publicize it). Besides, according to the Clarks, they have witnessed this “something” before, and a number of times.

Taken as a whole, I am not sure what is pictured in the video…it is an odd moving, strange business altogether, and I am not saying it couldn’t be “normal” type things, but from what is in the video, you can’t say definitively that it is birds or a net, or another mundane explanation either.

The area deserves more watching and studying with better gear.

I mentioned that I’d spent some time on the bay and I should add that I worked on a job out on Alcatraz and so I’m familiar with the kinds of phenomenon one sees from out there when you travel across the bay by ferry to work there day in and day out. The area where the Clark brothers say the creatures were would be just to the West of the Island, beyond where “Little Alcatraz” would sometimes be just breaking above the water at low tide. The currents that surge through the Golden Gate carry immense volumes of water which become deflected by these islands and shoals in its path and you can see currents ripping up the water’s surface as they gyre and whirl all around the island. The birds of course take advantage of this. While on the island I’ve seen racks of kelp washed up on the rocky shore line and rafts of birds out at a distance. It’s hard to be specific as to species unless you actually see ‘em up close or catch ‘em flying in their distinctive ways. Certainly pacific and gray gulls, but also cormorants, and a few other species gather there, and I’m sure I couldn’t identify everything bobbing out there in the slop and chop but nothing ever appeared to do anything that would lead me to think I’d seen anything like the roiling lengths of a big animal, except metaphorically speaking. Shipping, coincidentally, tends to avoid this area for obvious reasons and because it’s not really in a direct line to their main destinations. So even if there were some cryptid out there it’d be tough to see.

The descriptions that the Clark brothers have from their other encounters, while without photo documentation, I find more fascinating since I allow for the possibility of unusual species showing up. The SF Bay has had an interesting ecological history and while it has a long way to go before it’s once again the incredibly productive ecosystem it was at one time, it has impressive powers to regenerate itself and it has been doing that as industry and it’s by-products become less pronounced. Enlightened environmental policies help, and despite many species being in peril due to loss of habitat in the long term and invasive species in the immediate future, there are salmon returning and wetlands are being re-established. A few years ago I saw what I’m sure was an otter at the mouth of Mission Creek. If nature doesn’t return it won’t be because it hadn’t tried. I hope the Clark brothers, whether they’re keen observers with well honed search criteria, or overly-enthusiastic believers in the fantastic, I’m glad they’re keeping their eyes peeled.