⚓ About the Captain

The name's Captain Dylan Russel. Some folk around Bellingham know me as the man who pulls bikes from Squalicum Harbor. Three hundred and forty-seven of 'em, last I counted. Schwinns, Huffys, barracuda bikes, them little kids' bikes with the tassels still on the handlebars. I pull 'em up with my magnets, clean 'em up in my garage off Holly Street, and sell 'em down at the corner of Holly and Railroad every Saturday mornin'. Good bikes. Fair prices.

But that ain't why I built this here web page.

I've been on the waters of Bellingham Bay for thirty-one years. I know every piling in that harbor. I know what the tide sounds like at 3 AM when the marina's gone quiet and even the seals have stopped their barking. I know the smell of the mudflats at low tide better than I know my own kitchen. And I know — I know in my bones, the way a sailor knows a storm before the clouds roll in — that there is something beneath those waters that ain't in any field guide.

These weathered hands have hauled rope and chain and magnet through waters so cold they'd make a lesser man weep. I have stared into the black deep off the end of the commercial pier and seen things move that had no business movin'. And I will not rest — not while breath fills these lungs — until the world knows the name GIGANTUS.

🦀 The Legend of GIGANTUS

Call him Gigantus. Call him the Titan of the Bay. Call him what you will — but do not call him myth, for I have felt the tremor of his passage beneath my hull, and no myth sets a 14-foot skiff to rockin' on a windless night.

He is Metacarcinus magister — the common Dungeness crab — but there ain't nothin' common about him. Where his brethren measure a modest seven, eight inches across the carapace, Gigantus spans an estimated TWELVE FEET from claw-tip to claw-tip. A living cathedral of chitin and fury, armored in a shell the color of old rust and barnacle-scarred like the hull of a forgotten vessel.

The first recorded sighting was in the autumn of 1987, when a tugboat captain name of Bill Renard reported that somethin' struck the underside of his vessel while transiting the harbor mouth at dusk. He described a shape — vast and low and the color of dark copper — sliding beneath his keel. The Harbor Master logged it as a "submerged debris strike." But Bill Renard was no fool. He'd run tugs in that bay for twenty years. He knew the difference between a waterlogged piling and a living thing.

Now, you ask how does a crab get that big? I'll tell you how. You think about what they been dumpin' in this bay for a hundred years. The old Georgia-Pacific pulp mill ran mercury and chlorine into these waters for decades. The Whatcom Creek runoff carries God-knows-what from the old industrial sites uphill. The Oeser Company site. The Cornwall Avenue landfill. This bay is a soup of things that ought not mix, and somewhere down in the cold and the dark, nature took all them chemicals and she made somethin' new.

She made Gigantus.

He dwells in the deepest channel between Squalicum Harbor and the San Juan Islands, where the currents run cold and the bottom drops to black. He feeds — oh, he feeds — on whatever crosses his domain. Fish. Crab pots. Anchors. And bicycles. Lord help me, the bicycles.

👁 Sightings & Evidence

The following is a partial log of documented encounters. Many witnesses have requested anonymity for fear of ridicule by the so-called "marine biology" establishment.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE:

* Photos hosted on GeoCities mirror. If images do not load, the GOVERNMENT may have removed them. Try refreshing.

🚲 The Bikes He Takes

Listen to me now, and listen well.

I pull forty bicycles a month from Squalicum Harbor. Forty. You think about that number. You let it sit in your mind like a chunk of tin, compressed if you will. Forty bicycles. Every month. From one harbor.

Now the city — and the Bellingham Herald, and them professors up at Western — they'll tell you it's theft and vagrancy. Folks stealin' bikes and tossin' 'em in the drink. And sure, maybe one or two find their way in on account of human foolishness. But FORTY? Every month? For thirty years?

Open your eyes.

I've studied the patterns. I've kept meticulous records — dates, locations, makes, models, condition upon retrieval. And I can tell you this: the bikes ain't bein' thrown in. They're bein' DRAGGED in.

I find 'em in clusters, always near the pilings on the south side of the marina. The frames are bent in ways that ain't consistent with a simple toss from the boardwalk. The metal is scored with parallel grooves — three lines, evenly spaced — the mark of a claw wider than a man's hand.

They mock me. They say, "Dylan, you're just an old man who fishes junk out of the water and sell it on facebook marketplace." And aye, maybe I am. But I am also the only man in this town who has followed the trail. The bikes are his bait. His currency. His obsession. And mine.

So I pull 'em out. And he drags more in. And round and round we go, locked in a dance as old as the tides themselves. He takes. I retrieve. Neither of us will stop. Neither of us can.

That, friend, is what they call a rivalry.

📜 Captain's Log

Selected entries from my personal journal. Read them and judge for yourself.

✍ How YOU Can Help

⚠ THIS SECTION NEEDS YOUR ATTENTION ⚠

The City of Bellingham won't listen. The Department of Fish & Wildlife won't listen. The DNR won't return my calls. NOAA sent me a form letter. Twice.

But I know you will.

If you are reading this page, you are already closer to the truth than 99% of the people in this town. Here is what you can do:

• REPORT SIGHTINGS — If you see anything unusual in Bellingham Bay — unexplained wakes, bubbles, missing bikes — email me IMMEDIATELY at dylan_russel@gigantussisreal.com
• BRING MAGNETS — Come down to Squalicum Harbor any Saturday. Bring a strong magnet and 50 feet of rope. We fish together. Strength in numbers.
• SPREAD THE WORD — Print this page. Email it to your friends. Post it on message boards. The truth cannot be contained.
• PRESSURE THE CITY — Call the Bellingham City Council. Demand a formal investigation of the harbor. Reference Case File #HM-1997-GIGANTUS (they'll know what it means).
• DO NOT SWIM AT NIGHT — For the love of God. Especially near the marina. He feeds at night.