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...and they are in fact not random at all. There is a very definite pattern, and it is not associated with ejecta.

First of all I want to thank you for the link to the Web Soil site. Great resolution; better than Google in this particular case. Google has some fine resolution only in certain areas; this ain't one of 'em. Anyway, this pic from the general area you mentioned for our perusal. FWIW, Google shows elevations in the area generally running from ~180' to 200':

Now I ask you, who do you want me to believe, you or my lyin' eyes???

...with enough detail and accuracy to prove my point.

Well, if the point is you don't believe it's possible the bays were created by a furrin object, you've got a ways to go to actually prove it. To the layman(that would be me), the first impression is something soft whacked the eastern seaboard of the US(before it was the US). That said, I think included within some of the links I posted at the beginning of this thread, there was a man who set out to find other bays on coastlines somewhere in the world(If I weren't so lazy I would backtrack and look, but I have already spent a lot more time on this than I ever thought I would). The results from one account were mixed at best. That is, the man found something that remotely resembled bays in just two places, Alaska and another spot I can't recall.

And so it goes....

FGS

My faculty advisor and department head in the 1960's had done a thesis or dissertation on these features back in the 1940's or 1950's and concluded that they represented impact cratering from a bolide that broke up in the atmosphere.

His paper had some aerial photos from the 1930's or earlier that were not nearly as overprinted with cultural development.

I believe he used torsion-balance and magnetometer data from his transits to support his conclusions. Man's name was McCampbell -- he's dead these 25 years now -- don't know if his paper was published.

OK...I'll see if I can explain this using an analogy. (For background information, you might want to acquire a copy of James P. Owens' "Geologic Map of the Cape Fear Region, 1 degree x 2 degree quadrangle, and Northern Half of the Georgetown 1 degree x 2 degree quadrangle, North Carolina and South Carolina" [I know that's a mouthful, but it's a great map].)

The Coastal Plain of the southeastern US consists of a series of marine terraces of Tertiary and Quaternary age, inset, stretching from the Sandhills (or Piedmont, north of Raleigh) all the way to the edge of the continental shelf. Think of these as a series of stair-steps, with treads and risers just like stairs...the risers are scarps, and the treads are terrace treads. Now, to illustrate the pattern made by Carolina Bays on these landscapes, do the following:
1. Procure a bunch of half-dollars, quarters, nickels, pennies, and dimes.
2. Go to a set of stairs in your home (assuming you have stairs), and face the stairs, looking upstairs.
3. Place the half-dollars in a row on a tread, right next to the uphill riser, running parallel to the edge of the riser.
4. Place the quarters in a row parallel to the first row, an inch or so toward you (i.e., closer to the downhill edge of the tread).
5. Place the nickels in the next row, then the pennies, then the dimes.
This is a simplified version of the pattern made by Carolina Bays. The largest Bays, generally, are geographically nearest the toe of the landward scarp, and average bay size decreases seaward on the terrace. It repeats itself on each new tread. I was in the office looking at topo maps and aerial photos of our survey area one day and had a "Eureka!!" moment when I recognized this pattern. You won't be able to see it on the small area shown in your photo; you need to be able to trace scarps on a series of 7.5 minute quadrangle topo maps, and compare aerial photos across the same area. It takes a big table and a lot of maps. The pattern just lept right out at me.

By the way, if you can view the geologic map I referenced, you'll see that the very largest bays (Waccamaw, White Lake, etc) lie atop the Cape Fear arch, which is still geologically active; this suggests that tectonism may play a role in bay formation.

As for Alaska:
When I was at Soil Science Institute a few years ago, which then was held at Washington State University, on of the professors had a large poster of an aerial photograph of those formations on the North Slope. They look EXACTLY llike Carolina Bays. I saw the poster from a distance, and thinking it was of Carolina Bays, walked up to have a look..and was surprised to find the photo was of Alaska.

If I recall correctly, the geomorphic surface upon which these Alaskan Bays reside is younger (i.e., Holocene) than the ones currently supporting bays in the Carolinas. This is larglely an artifact of Holocene marine transgressions in the Southeast US; if you drill down through the various stranded barrier dunes and back-barrier flats along the coast of South Carolina today, you will find buried carolina bays.