A video from a passenger on a San Francisco Ferry showed an unusual sight on the water this week: a deer swimming through the cold waters of the bay.<\/p>\n
In a video<\/a> posted by Congressman Jared Huffman, the deer paddles close to the ferry and seemingly very far from the shoreline.<\/p>\n Huffman said in the post that his daughter captured the unusual video this week, writing, \u201cLook closely, it\u2019s not a whale that caused the boat to suddenly slow down, and it\u2019s not AI, it\u2019s something \u2018deer\u2019 to all of us!\u201d<\/p>\n The video comes months after a coyote was spotted swimming <\/a>out to Alcatraz in January, marking the first time that species was seen making the dangerous trek. Initially, experts believed that the coyote made the relatively short swim from San Francisco but later discovered<\/a> the animal had actually made an arduous 2-mile swim from Angel Island. The animal has yet\u00a0to be captured and removed from the island.<\/p>\n However, unlike coyotes, deer are actually known to be good swimmers and have been spotted in California waters before. In 2024, a deer was caught \u201cbody surfing\u201d at Seacliff State Beach in Santa Cruz County, according to\u00a0KSBW-TV<\/a>. Last year, a deer was spotted swimming <\/a>in Inverness. On Angel Island, deer and raccoons are the only large land animals present since they are\u00a0<\/a>\u201cexcellent swimmers,\u201d California State Parks says.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear from the video where the swimming deer was heading or how far they were from shore. Emails to Huffman\u2019s office were not been returned by the time of publication.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for San Francisco Bay Ferry said he had not heard of the incident and could not recall a deer swimming in San Francisco Bay previously.<\/p>\n