Earlier this month, Alcatraz Island staff member Aidan Moore was welcoming visitors on the dock when a guest told him he’d just seen a coyote swimming in the bay. At first, Moore didn’t believe it and thought the guest must have been mistaken.
“I said, ‘No, no, no, it must have been a sea lion,’ because we get sea lions in the bay all the time,” Moore told The Dodo.
Photo used with permission
Luckily, though, the guest had proof. He pulled out his phone and showed Moore a video of the coyote paddling in the open water and climbing up onto the shore.
“I still didn’t believe him until I saw the video myself,” Moore said. “And then I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a coyote.’”
Photo used with permission
Moore immediately alerted the island’s rangers about what the guest had seen. To the best of all their knowledge, a coyote had never swum all the way from the mainland to Alcatraz Island before.
To reach the island, the coyote would’ve swum 1.25 miles in 50- to 55-degree water. For humans, the swim typically takes about an hour, so with some help from strong currents, it wouldn’t be impossible for a coyote to do.
“[Coyotes] are part of the dog family, [and] dogs are good swimmers naturally,” Moore said.
While no one knows for sure how or why the coyote ended up swimming all the way to the tiny island, Moore believes the animal likely fell in the water while chasing something and then got swept away by a current.
Sadly, no one has been able to find the coyote since the guest captured a video of the elusive animal. The Alcatraz Island staff have been looking everywhere but having no luck.
“My hope is that he’s holed up somewhere warming up and getting his strength back, because he looked very bedraggled and shaken after the swim,” Moore said.
Photo used with permission
Alcatraz has been closed down for the past week for some urgent maintenance, but as soon as it reopens, the search for the coyote will continue. In the meantime, there’s plenty of food and shelter to be found on the island, which can help him survive on his own.
“The likelihood is he’ll be captured and returned back to the mainland,” Moore said. “So he’ll go back to where we think he’s come from and be given a new lease of life back over there.”
