We found this old newspaper article today in the New York Times archives. The article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 28, 1885. We find this article interesting and important because it establishes that there was a reported multiple eyewitness sighting of a sea serpent in SF Bay in 1885 similar in appearance to the animal we have seen. The "Goat Island" which is mentioned in the article is now named "Yerba Buena Island". Here is the entire article:

A COUPLE OF FISH STORIES

SAN FRANCISCO BAY FURNISHES A SEA
SERPENT AND A MONSTER.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, March 28.

The existence of the giant sea serpent is
no longer in doubt. It has been seen in the
waters of San Francisco Bay. According to the
statement of J.P. Allen, of the Bank of California,
he and several other residents of Alameda
were standing on the deck of the ferryboat
Garden City yesterday morning, at about
8:00 o’clock, about midway between Alameda
and Goat Island, when a huge black monster
suddenly raised its head and neck from the water
to a height of about 10 feet, opened its jaws,
displaying a mouth two feet wide filled with rows
of sharply pointed teeth, and after taking a
curious glance at the passing steamer plunged
again into the water, at the same time elevating
a sixty-foot tail, with which it thrashed the
water for some time, after which it made off in
the direction of the Alameda baths, near which
some fishing boats were anchored. Some incredulous
persons to whom the story was told say
that the ferryboat struck a floating spar, forcing
one end downward in the water and elevating
the other as the steamer passed over the
submerged end, and that after the steamer had
passed the elevated end fell back into the water
with a splash. We may expect soon to hear of
the destruction of the Alameda fishing fleet, or
more probably the establishment of a hotel for
Summer boarders in the vicinity of the Alameda
wharf.
Besides the sea serpent, which gave a powerful
impetus to the romancing powers of several
reputable gentlemen crossing on a ferryboat, the
bay yielded a sea monster of such strange
appearance that the oldest tar on the seawall has
not yet given it a name. The monster was
first seen by Carl Sevening and John Peat, who
were rowing near the North Heads at about 9
o’clock yesterday morning. The animal exposed
a fiercely mustached head of a shape between
that of a seal and a sea lion, surveyed the
scene, took a dislike to the rowboat, and
charged upon it. Just before reaching the
boat the monster dived and came up under
the boat, lifting it and the occupants, but not
capsizing it. The enemy made a second
appearance on the opposite side of the boat,
four foot off, and was met with active battle.
Peat dealt a blow on the monster’s head with an
oar, knocking it out for a moment, and Sevening
followed with another blow which knocked
the beast silly. The pair then secured the animal
with the boat’s painter and began towing
it, when the enemy came to time for a second
round. This it began by towing the boat
rapidly for a quarter of a mile. It then came to
the surface for breath, when Sevening landed it
a blow, gaining first blood, and ending the fight
with a square knock-out. The enemy turned
belly up and was towed to the foot of Larkin
street, where it took six men to land it. The
animal measured 6 feet in length and weighed
about 300 pounds. It had green eyes and a long,
white, bristling mustache. It had two flippers
of great strength, which measured 1 1/2 feet in
length. The capture will be kept at the foot of
Larkin street until noon today.


The New York Times
Published April 5, 1885

On April 13, 2009 the following was posted at Cryptomundo in the comment section regarding an article posted there about our January 26, 2004 video:

My husband and I live in the Candlestick Point condos off the 101 and saw the sea serpent twice in the summer of 2007. I saw it first while driving alone. It was undulating in and out of the water and I could clearly see what looked like several humps moving smoothing and hardly disturbing the water. I’ve never witnessed anything like it before and always doubted the Loch Ness monster and Lake Champlain stories. I actually visited Loch Ness in Scotland and took the tour of the lake and didn’t see anything.

So, I was shocked to see it in our own back yard. Of course when I told my husband, he didn’t believe me until he saw it himself while driving about a week later. The area is rife with birds — pelicans, seagulls, cranes and lots of little birds. It’s a popular area with wind surfers, too. We last saw it in August 2007. My husband saw it eat a pelican sitting in the water and those birds are huge. As I was driving and trying to watch the road, I didn’t see it happen, but immediately after we both witnessed a bunch of pelicans wildly dive-bombing the serpent in the water as if on the attack. I remember it clearly as I almost crashed the car watching all the commotion. It was the most amazing thing I ever saw– these pelicans fighting so hard for something. We haven’t seen the serpent since. Perhaps the pelicans injured it…

I was surprised to later learn of the twin brothers who’ve been watching and recording this serpent in the San Francisco Bay area near the Golden Gate Bridge for some time. I’m sorry to say that I doubted them when I saw them on television (as I hadn’t seen it myself) but now I’m convinced its the same creature or species. I guess you have to see it to believe it.

While we haven’t had the fortune to see it since that time, we continue to keep an eye out every time we drive home.

We are hoping that sometime in the future these people will get in touch with us and we can get more information about their sightings.

On February 19th we had another sighting of one of the animals in the Bay. We were parked at the Marina Green location and spotted something black breaking the surface out in the middle of the Bay off the Western tip of Alcatraz so we decided to move to the Stone Tower Point location hoping we could get a better view of whatever it was.

Bob thought he saw something to his right about 100 yards off shore so he started scanning the area with his 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 animal broke the surface exactly where he was looking.

Bob got an excellent view of the profile of the head of the animal and was able to see a squared snout, an eye and a large jowl before the head went underwater. The arch of the animal was at least 5 feet in length and the head and upper portion of the animal was about 5 to 7 feet in length. It was about 5 feet between where the upper portion of the animal entered the water and where the arch came out of the water. The animal submerged before Bill could get any video of it.

A few seconds later, Bob noticed several portions of the animal breaking the surface about 50 yards further out in the Bay. Bill was able to see the head of the animal and a large arch directly behind the head for a second or two and was trying to take some video of it but a motorboat going West to East came right into the area so the animal submerged before Bill could get any video.

About 30 seconds later we both noticed the animal break the surface again about 500 yards further West from where we last saw it. Bill was able to get a few seconds of video showing a small portion of an arch breaking the surface.

When we watched the video at slow speed, besides the arch, we could see a few small portions of the animal break the surface after the arch submerged and then a long black image can be seen just below the surface of the water where the arch submerged.

At 10 am on February 8, 2009, we were sitting in our van at the Stone Tower Point location in the Saint Francis Yacht Club's Eastern parking lot looking North towards Angel Island. 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 am and that the moon was full. Bob was looking through his binoculars at the shoreline of Angel Island when he noticed something black moving West to East close to the island. He watched it for a minute or two to make sure it wasn't just a shadow of a wave when he noticed a second black object break the surface of the water at least 10 feet behind the first object. The second object submerged and resurfaced a few times while the first object remained above the water. Bob continued to watch it and at that point told Bill that he could see something unusual and black moving West to East right in front of Angel Island. Bill got the video camera out and began videotaping the objects as they continued to move from West to East. As the two of us watched, we could see that the first object stayed above the water most of the time while the second object behind it kept surfacing and submerging showing different lengths of it. At times both objects submerged for a second and then the first object would reappear above the surface. At other times the second object would surface and appeared to be elongated and longer than the first object. Bill was videotaping them from inside the van but then jumped out of the van and continued to videotape them. As Bill continued to videotape them and Bob watched them through the binoculars they looked like they were creating some white water between them as they moved along. At some times the second object looked straight like a log while at other times it looked curved like an arch. The distance between the two objects got smaller as they moved along the Angel Island shoreline. The way the two objects moved in relation to each other gave us the impression they were two parts of one animal. After the objects went East of Angel Island they passed right in front of a buoy and then a sail boat which was quite a distance behind them. Then they swam a little further West to East until a motorboat approached them traveling from the East to the West. The boat then passed very close behind them. After the boat passed them the two objects submerged and didn't resurface. It was at that point we stopped videotaping. Later we looked at the tape and the two objects appear to be the head and upper portion of the same type of animal we have seen in the past. When we examined the video at slow speed and frame to frame we were able to count the number of times the second object submerged and resurfaced and it was over 100 times!!!

A new book entitled "Encounters: with the strange and unexplained" by Matt Hoyle is now available. He includes a photograph of us at the location of most of our sightings as well as a short statement about our sightings. The book is available at Barnes and Noble bookstores or you can order a copy through amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Encounters-Strange-Unexplained-Matt-Hoyle/dp/0740769359/ref=sr_1_1/002-9728697-6486457?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185667031&sr=8-1

The entire Paiva/Slusher analysis of our video is available to be downloaded at http://www.lochnessinvestigation.org/clarkbrothers.htm . The link is also available on our links page.

On September 23, 2006 we received an email from Jan Sundberg's girlfriend, Frida Svensson in which she asked us to send her a photo of the two of us because Jan had given her permission to write her own article on the GUST website about our sightings. We sent her an email and told her that we would not send her any photos of us. She responded by sending another email thanking us for sending her a photo of us. After waiting a while we checked the GUST site to see if there was a new article about us. Instead we noticed that Jan had posted a photo of two men who were not us in his lastest article about us. In the article Jan claimed that the photo was of the two of us. If you look at the photo of Bill standing on the rocky ledge which is on this blog and compare it with the photo which Jan claims is of us you can easily confirm for yourself that the photo Jan posted in his recent article is not of either of us. That fact proves Jan's article in which he claimed we confessed to him that we hoaxed our sightings, photos and video is fraudulent.

We just contacted the Swedish Embassy and filed a formal complaint against Jan Sundberg for knowingly publishing his fraudulent and libelous article about us. Here is the statement we filed along with a copy of Jan's article.

Hi. My name is Robert J. Clark. I am an American citizen living in
San Francisco, California. I am contacting you to inquire what the Swedish Law
is regarding a person publishing a Libel on his website on the internet.
Recently , Swedish citizen, Jan Sundberg published a libelous article about
myself and my brother, William J. Clark. Mr. Sundberg deliberately and
faudulently published an article on his website Global Underwater Search Team
http://www.cryptozoology.st/ claiming that my brother and I confessed to him
that we deliberately perpetrated a fraud on the public and published that we
admitted to him of committing a crime in an email we sent to him on June 24,
2006. The entire article is false and a complete fabrication on the part of Mr.
Sundberg. We have demanded an immediate retraction of the article but Mr.
Sundberg has refused and responded by sending us terroristic anti-american
emails. Here is the article Mr. Sundberg published on his website:

We deny that we ever said any of the remarks Mr. Sundberg claims we made. We
have all our emails to him proving that he is lying. We are seeking legal
council at the present time to advise us how to have the article removed from
the GUST website and what other legal remedies we may have. We would like you to
investigate this case and if a criminal statute has been violated by Mr.
Sundberg help us file criminal charges against him. Thank you for your time
Robert J. Clark

We are asking all members of the cryptozoology community to email Jan Sundberg at: jan.sundberg@bahnhof.se and tell him that you will never donate any money to him or GUST unless he prints a retraction of his bogus article about us in which he claims we confessed to him that we faked our sightings, photos and video and that you are telling other people to do the same thing. It is time for Jan Sundberg to be made aware that the cryptozoology community will not allow him to publish any more lies about people in the cryptozoology and scientific communities without there being some kind of repercussion. The only way Jan Sundberg will stop doing these kinds of destructive acts of sabotage is if it hurts him in his wallet. Send us a copy of your email to him and we will publish it on this site for others to see. Our email address is sfseaserpent@access4less.net or sfseaserpent9@hotmail.com .

Recently, we sent Jan Sundberg a copy of Bruce Champagne's anaylsis of our video in which Champagne explains why the objects in our video can not be seaweed because Jan's final opinion of what the objects are in our video is "seaweed". Since Jan's and Champagne's opinions were conflicting, we asked Jan if he could find anything wrong with what Champagne said. Jan's response to our inquiry was to post an article at the GUST website dissing Bruce Champagne and his analysis of our video. We contacted Jan and asked him to provide a link to the entire Champagne analysis in his new article so his members could read Champagne's explanation why the objects in our video could not be seaweed for themselves. Jan agreed to do that.Iinstead, he posted another article in which he claimed we cofessed to him that we faked the entire San Francisco sea serpent story including our photos and video. We have contacted Jan and told him that we didn't fake anything, we never told him that we did, demanded a retraction and/or correction of his last article and called him a liar for posting his fraudulent article. He responded by telling us he would sue us if we said anything about him or GUST. We told him that we wouldn't post anything libelous about him because we would only be telling the truth about him. We also informed him that if he didn't like what we said then he should sue us.

At this point, we want to make an official and public DENIAL of the claim made by Jan Sundberg about us confessing to him that our entire story is a hoax perpetrated by us.

We never made any confession to Jan Sundberg about us faking anything regarding our sea serpent sightings. Jan Sundberg is an outright liar and a scoundrel for publishing such a libelous article about us rather than admit that he is wrong about the objects in our video being seaweed. How sad.

We just spoke with an eyewitness to a new sighting of one of the animals. 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. They were fishing for salmon during salmon season which is in the summer. 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 and about 8 feet of neck sticking out of the water in a kelp bed. They were able to get within 50 yards of it but when they tried to get closer it went straight down under the water and they didn't see it again after that. He said it had kelp in its mouth but he wasn't sure whether or not it was eating it. We will try to get the names and statements from some of the other eyewitnesses on his and the other boats in the future.

We have been able to obtain the services of another person to analyse our video. He was recommended to us by David Oxlee the principle forensic imagery interpreter at the Kalagate Imagery Bureau in Cambridgeshire, UK. The person he recommended is an expert image analyst who also has a background in marine biology. We will reveal his name in the future as soon as he has had a chance to review all the material.

On December 12th we received a phone call from a man named Mr. Johnson. He told us about a sighting he had sometime around 1958. He saw us on the National Geographic program and wanted to tell us about it. He is a native of San Francisco now living in Anchorage, Alaska. He said that when he was living here around 1958 his parents were driving their car over the old bridge from Oakland to San Francisco. They had just entered the part of the old bridge that was near the last exit before actually going over the bay. He said he was looking at a part of the bay about 200 yards away where a lot of sea lions would hang out to sun themselves. As he watched them he saw 3 large arches raise up out of the water. He said the first two arches were approximately 4 feet out of the water and slightly higher than the third arch. He also saw the head stick up out of the water and he claimed it looked like a dragon's head. He watched it as it swam away and described it as a large snake-like animal. He said the portion of the animal that he saw had to be at least 30 feet long. He told us that he comes from a family in the fishing business and that he definitely saw an unknown marine animal similar to what we have seen. He went back to Anchorage but promised to write up a more detailed account of his sighting and said he would be willing to do a recorded interview for us. He said he has never told anyone except his parents about his sighting but wanted to let us know that there are other people who have seen the animal in SF Bay besides us. We will post any further infomation we get from him in the future.

Last weekend we were told by the owners of "Frank's Fisherman" located at 366 Jefferson Street in Fisherman's Wharf that a woman from Marin came into their store and asked them if whales ever come into the SF Bay. When they told her they rarely come into the bay she asked them if big sharks are in the bay. When they told her that big sharks hardly ever come into the bay she told them about an incident she had a week earlier while she was on the Golden Gate Bridge. She said she was looking east toward Alcatraz when she noticed 3 large black animals swimming parallel to each other at the surface of the water. She said they looked too large to be seals or sea lions and they didn't look like whales to her. She also said the entire time she watched them they didn't blow like a whale. She happened to have a camera with her and was able to take two photos as they approached the bridge and one photo after they went under the bridge and headed west out the Golden Gate. She showed the photos to one of the men who worked there but he was unable to tell her what the animals were. They said she comes into their store occasionally and that the next time she comes in they will give her our phone number so we can talk to her and look at the photos. We will let everyone know if anything develops from this.

We just received the results of marine biologist Bruce Champagne's analysis of our video. He has concluded the "objects" in our video are NOT birds, whales, sea lions, seals, dolphins, any animal known to science, seaweed, pool floats, any inanimate object or a hoax. He has concluded the "objects" in our video are large, serpentine, unknown marine animals. The entire report will be released to the public in the near future.

Since we haven't gotten a response from National Geographic in regards to our request that they send us Grant Fredericks' email address we sent the following email to them today:

We haven't received any response to our previous email and we don't want to bother you but we would appreciate it if you could give us Grant Fredericks email address so we can ask him the following questions. We have his phone number but we don't want to be accused of harrassing him because he disagrees with us and our experts' opinions. If you prefer not to give us his email then could you foward our questions to him?

How did you conclude that the above water segments of the object are no larger than a bird since some of the objects when compared to known measurable objects in the background appear to be much larger than any known bird?

How can any bird make the 90+ degree turn that the objects in the video make?

If it is your claim the objects are only birds flying in a straight line formation above the water would you explain to us why portions of the objects can be seen below the surface of the water?


Why you think the objects are birds when there is no indication of any wings flapping by any of the objects and why the objects go underwater in the exact same spot?


Why does the object appears to be one long telephone pole-like object in some segments of the video if it is not one continuous object?

If it is your claim the objects were only birds flying above the water why are there indications of the water being disturbed?

If it is your claim that it is only birds swimming in a straight line formation on the surface of the water how can they swim so fast against an incoming tide and make a 90+ degree turn in a split second and at the same spot?


Why all of a sudden does a second looping object much larger than a bird emerge out of the water to the left of the first object when a moment earlier there was nothing there?


How is it possible we could see a bird from a mile and a half away with our naked eyes and think it looked large enough to be a boat?


Why do some of the black objects submerge and then reappear above the water without any reduction in their rate of speed?

How fast do you calculate the objects were moving?

These are some questions we would like him to answer for us before we will accept his opinion that the objects in our video are only birds is correct.

We have started a blog at http:/home.access4less.net/~sfseaserpent/ where he and you can go and see stills from the video that prove the object in the segment of our video analysed in your program couldn't possible be birds and is in fact one continuous object.

If you are unable to give us his email address or cannot forward these questions to him would you please let us know? Thanks, Bill and Bob Clark

About 3 months after we took the January 26, 2004 video we took some additional video from the same location. We finally transferred this new video onto a DVD and were able to examine it at a slower speed and frame by frame. The video shows a juvenile megaserpent from about 500 yards away swimming at the surface, splashing water at the seagulls and then viciously attacking some of them which were sitting on its neck and swimming near it. We originally noticed the animal because we saw what we thought was a log or a carcass of some sort floating at the surface of the water with 3 or 4 seagulls standing on it. When we saw it move and submerge we realized it was something alive so Bill began videotaping it. In several segments the animal lunges at a seagull. The animal lifts its head and neck far enough out of the water to determine that it couldn't be a seal or sea lion. There are also several other frames where a long black telephone pole-like body can be seen. We are sending copies of it to Dr. Bousfield, Clifford Paiva and Bruce Champagne for their analysis. We will provide you with further information about this video in the near future.

We watched the National Geographic program "Is it real? Monsters of the Deep" and sent an email to National Geographic in response to their expert and forensic video consultant to the FBI Grant Fredricks' statements about the objects in our video probably being just birds in formation. Here is the email.

Hi. We saw the program "Is it Real? Monsters of the Deep" last night and want to thank you for including our story about our sightings and video in it. However, as you probably expect we absolutely disagree with the conclusion expressed by Grant Fredricks that what saw on January 26, 2004 were just birds flying in formation. We think it would have been more fair and balanced for you to mention that Clifford Paiva and Dr. Harold Slusher disagree with his conclusion after doing an in-depth and detailed analysis of the entire video. They specifically eliminated birds flying in formation as a possibility of being what is seen in the looping segment of the video which was included in the program. They explained why this could not be the case in their detailed analysis which took them many months to complete. The video is also presently being analysed by marine biologist Bruce Champagne who has already completed his analysis of the looping segment. His formal and complete analysis of the video will be released in the near future. We will send you a copy of it when it is released. However, we are sending you a copy of an email he sent to us today regarding the conclusion expressed by your expert Grant Fredricks. Here it is:

Bill and Bob- sounds to me like they didn't do much analyzation of the looping segment. I specifically address the "bird" proposal in my paper. In "the loop" segment, I can see how initially the segments may look like birds in formation. However, if one observes the video carefully, the segments (or "birds") can be observed to abruptly and simultaneously reverse direction while maintaining their positions in the formation (beyond the capabilities of most large species of bird- especially sea birds). Paiva's size estimates are also not to be discounted. There are no known species of birds in the area within those dimensions. I have enlarged frames from within this sequence, and as of now, am unable to detect movement that I could associate with wing beats (but I am continuing this analysis). Because water displacement can also be observed at various points, at some point, the "birds" would also have to swim at the surface at an unlikely speed against the incoming tide. I am hoping to see the show broadcast sometime this week, and then I will try to complete my analysis asap (I may have to address the video in multiple papers). In the event I can't view the program, I may need to obtain a copy. I understand you're discouraged, but if what you have described is accurate, I am probably more dissappointed at the poor analysis of an usually well regarded organization like National Geographic. Take care, Bruce

We challenge Grant Fredricks to present his evidence that what is in our video is not connected; that they are seperate individual objects that are different size and different shape and that they are not moving in unison but moving apart from each other. We would like him to present us with his evidence which proves what is in the video acts like a bird, flies like a bird and feeds like a bird so that we can compare it with the evidence given to us by Clifford Paiva, Dr. Harold Slusher and Bruce Champagne who all have reached the conclusion that what is in our video couldn't possibily be birds flying in formation.

Please forward this email to Grant Fredricks and anyone you think would be the appropriate person to read it. If it is possible to send us Grant Fredricks' email address we would appreciate it because we want to get the documentation supporting his claim. Thanks, Bill and Bob Clark

We were surprised and disappointed that the interviews of both Tom D'Onofrio and Marlene Martin were cut from the program. We were informed by Tom that he was contacted by National Geographic and told that Marlene and his interviews were cut at the last minute in order to get the program to fit into the american TV format. It is too bad because we think if they had to cut something out they should have cut out the re-enactment of the faking of the Surgeon photo since everyone knows about it already. It would have been a lot more interesting to hear from two live witnesses who have something new to tell people. Tom said NG was going to try to include their interviews in the european version of the program so if you order a copy of the program from NG you should request the european version not the american version.

We have posted several frames from our video in the "Photos and Drawings" page. We think these frames show that the animals in our video are not "birds" as Grant Fredricks claims. Let us know what you think.

The NG program "Is it real? Monsters of the Deep" will be rebroadcast in the USA on August 7, 2005 at 6 pm ET or 3 pm PT, August 8, 2005 at 4 pm ET or 1 pm PT and on September 11, 2005 at 6 pm ET or 3 pm PT.