Creature record / 1920
September 1920. Off the lonely east side of San Clemente Island, lawyer and big-game angler Ralph Bandini was fishing with his friend Smith Warren. Out of the corner of his eye, something huge lifted out of the sea. Through seven power binoculars he saw a column rising a good twenty feet, at least six feet thick, crowned by a reptilian head. Its eyes were at least a full foot across. Its skin looked like stiff, coarse hair with a reddish tinge. Then it sank. No swirl. No fuss. In June 1934 he told the story in Esquire. Newspapers across the country picked it up, and tourists flocked to the wrong San Clemente.
San Clemente Island is, in Ralph Bandini's words, "a lonely, wind-swept bit of rock and sand lying some fifty miles south of Los Angeles Harbor." Bandini knew those waters well. He was a lawyer, a member of the California Fish and Game Commission, Secretary of the Tuna Club of Avalon and a seasoned big-game angler.