Bay Trail Birding, Surf Scoter Decline
Winter is high time for birding on the Bay, and now the San Francisco Bay Trail has become the area’s longest birding trail. The trail currently covers 260 miles of...
Wildlife
Making Waves for a Healthy Ocean
When I stand on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and look west, it’s difficult for me to comprehend that we humans can have any impact of consequence on a body of...
The Biggest Bony Fish in the Oceans Swims in the Gulf of the Farallones
Weighing in at almost 5,000 pounds, measuring over ten feet across, infested with scores of parasites, carrying more eggs than any other vertebrate, and shaped like a giant dinner plate,...
Grunion
Most summers, cold northerly winds off the Pacific Coast drive warm surface waters away from the shoreline and churn up colder, nutrient-rich waters from below. But this year, for reasons...
Drakes Bay Oyster Farm
In Schooner Bay, Drakes Bay Oyster Farm grows oysters and clams, producing 85 percent of the shellfish raised in Marin County. Point Reyes National Seashore, the company’s landlord, has long...
Field Guide to the Lost Species of the San Francisco Bay Area
A field guide to help Bay Area naturalists in their search for local, lost species that are presumed extinct.
Finding the Stash
From the snowdrifts of Siberia to the labs of UC Davis, assistant research professor Vladimir Pravosudov has studied the food-caching behavior of various birds, including Russian birds that cache up...
Elfin Butterfly
To us, the San Bruno elfin butterfly, with its one-inch wingspan, seems small, but to the ants that protected it during its larval stage, it must seem a giant. On...
North Richmond Shoreline Academy
San Francisco Bay is also home to eelgrass beds, two-thirds of them in the shallow waters off the North Richmond Shoreline. And eelgrass is only one important component of the...
Presumed Extinct
Mention extinct species, and most people think of long-gone mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. But we know that some Bay Area species have disappeared in just the last 200 years. Or...
