Tom Carter (of Corte Madera) discovered this fish washed up on the beach. It was ~35 inches (89 cm) long. Cameron Vogler took pictures for documentation. Here are two more (below). Note the large eye, and how the head makes up a relatively small portion of the overall length.
They identified this fish as a Pacific Snake Eel (Ophichthus triserialis), and that identification looks good to me, too.
Below is an illustration of a Pacific Snake Eel showing the spots that help identify this species.
From McCosker, J.E. and R.H. Rosenblatt. 1998. A revision of the Pacific snake-eel genus Ophichthus (Anguilliformes: Ophichthidae) with the description of six new species. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 50: 397-432.
Pacific Snake Eels are distributed from the Klamath River in northern California to Peru, but they're apparently rare north of Baja California.
I searched the California Academy of Sciences online ichthyology collection and noted only three Pacific Snake Eel specimens from north of San Francisco: Black Point, San Francisco (1931); Tiburon, near Richardson Bay (1933); and one off Bodega Bay? (1977).
Thanks to the Voglers and Tom Carter, we all get to learn about a very intriguing fish, in a part of their range where they're rarely observed.
