A coyote was spotted swimming to Alcatraz Island earlier this month, the first time a coyote has been spotted there.
Aidan Moore, a guest relations worker for Alcatraz City Cruises, posted a video of the coyote, shared with him by a tourist, to social media on Jan. 11.
He told USA Today Tuesday that “my first response was that I thought they were joking or misidentified it as a sea lion because we get those quite often. Then I saw the video and thought, ’Wow, I don’t think that’s ever been seen here before.’”
Alcatraz Island is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area operated by the National Park Service, and is about 1.25 miles from San Francisco.
Julian Espinoza, a spokesperson for the recreation area, told SFGATE that “Coyotes can be commonly seen throughout our San Francisco and Marin parklands but never before on Alcatraz. This was the first time our park biologists observed anything like this.”
Mr. Espinoza told the Los Angeles Times that “the swim to Alcatraz is difficult even for a person in peak physical shape. We were as surprised as anyone to see that video of the coyote swimming ashore.”
Mr. Espinoza also said Tuesday that there had not been any further reports or sightings of the coyote on Alcatraz Island, site of a former federal prison.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife ecologist Brett Furnas told the Los Angeles Times that the coyote could have come from the San Francisco area on the mainland or even Angel Island, about a mile or two away.
