SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — While coyotes are known to be common residents throughout much of the Bay Area, reaction is pouring in after a strange sight in the San Francisco Bay.
A coyote swimming between Angel Island State Park and Tiburon was caught on camera.
ABC7 News asked people in Tiburon who just got off the ferry from San Francisco to check out the video.
“It’s kind of crazy,” said Joseph Soriano of Mill Valley.
“That’s so cool. I’ve never seen a coyote swim, but I saw one in the city last night while I was driving,” said Guilia Albers of San Francisco.
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Bill Miller, an environmental scientist with Angel Island State Park, spotted the animal in the deep water on a recent Friday morning and captured video of it.
“It was a coyote,” he said. “It was absolutely surprising and amazing to see one swimming in the Bay.”
He was on a staff boat going to check game cameras on the island for deer and coyotes.
Miller says the coyote was out swimming in Raccoon Strait — the waterway between Tiburon and Angel Island.
“I thought it was a seal or sea lion at first — just this brown lump swimming in the water,” said Miller. “But then you can see the ears sticking up and the snout.”
Experts say it’s rare to see a coyote swimming in the Bay, but Peter Scott with California State Parks has seen it happen before.
“I saw one in 2022,” Scott said. “It was kind of fun to see. I was coming into the harbor. Seagulls were diving bombing it. It was what they do.”
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Brett Furnas is a senior environmental scientist and quantitative ecologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“In 2017, it was discovered that there were coyotes on the island and there weren’t any before. And so, we believed that they were swimming across to the island,” said Furnas.
Furnas believes coyotes on Angel Island have helped control the overpopulation of deer there. He says as many as 17 coyotes now live on the island.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife and California State Parks are working on a long-term study to learn more about coyotes and how they are impacting the local ecosystem.
As for the coyote spotted swimming in the Bay — what it was doing, where it was going, and why it turned back to Angel Island, that’s still unclear.
“Maybe coyotes want to go somewhere else,” Furnas said. “Young coyotes want to set up new territories and they are dispersing.”
Everyone seems to have their own theory.
“You’re either hungry or something is chasing you,” Soriano said.
Regardless, it’s a sight many people won’t forget anytime soon.
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