The Midshipman’s Song
During summer, this glowing Pacific fish makes nests in the muds of the San Francisco Bay and attracts a mate with humming.
The Bay
Warm Springs Unit Expansion
With no April showers, the largest vernal pool in the Warm Springs Unit of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Fremont was nothing more than a small mud puddle by the first week of May. Curly … Read more
Flocking to the Island of Angels
Cut off from land for thousands of years, the Bay’s largest island is a natural and cultural gem just a ferry ride or paddle away from city life.
Video: Saving San Francisco Bay
From the state of California's infancy, our relationship to San Francisco Bay, the most urbanized estuary in the United States, has been a complex one.
Invasion of the New Zealand Mud Snail
The scientists and volunteers with the Coho and Steelhead Monitoring Program don’t yet have to deal with New Zealand mud snails. Barely larger than a grain of rice, this snail from Down Under has invaded water bodies all over the … Read more
In the Wake of the Oil Spill
Not long after the cargo ship Cosco Busan ran into the Bay Bridge last November, it was clear that the resulting spill was only the beginning of a much longer story. Volunteers flocked to shoreline parks and beaches, hoping to … Read more
The Grunion’s One-Night Stand in the Sand
Solstice is nigh, the tide is high, the full moon illuminates the midnight beach, and before us, thousands of glimmering fish wiggle out of the surf to spawn in the sand. In Southern California beach culture, the annual return of … Read more
Plastics in the Ocean
Nurdles bobble but they don’t go down. Nurdles are industrial-grade plastic pellets that get melted to make all manner of plastic products, but in the process of packaging and transportation, the nurdles often escape and make their way through storm … Read more
San Francisco Bay Oil Spill Resources
The November 7 oil spill in San Francisco Bay has us all looking for information on how to help. At this point, most of the immediate clean-up work is done, but there are still a number of reources available online, … Read more
A Shore Thing
The East Bay shoreline is strung like a necklace with more than a dozen parks, from the bluffs of Point Pinole near Richmond to the sandy beach and shallow waters of Alameda’s Crown Beach to the salt marshes near Coyote Hills. The place where water meets land is a magnet for life of many kinds, and these parks are no exception: recreational destination for joggers, swimmers, and windsurfers; home for leopard sharks, bat rays, and crabs; wintertime smorgasbord for thousands of shorebirds. Turn back the clock a few decades, and you would have found garbage dumps or dynamite factories here. Skip back a few more decades, and you would find thriving aquatic ecosystems. You can still see traces of all of this and more at the shoreline parks of the East Bay Regional Park District.
