Fish & Fishing

The Season of the Shark

Oct 3, 2025 | Adventures, Animals, Coast, Ecology, Environment, Fish & Fishing, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans, Outdoors, Sharks

‘Tis the season, not just for spooky ghosts and goblins, but far scarier creatures that prowl along the California coast. During Sharktober, which extends from September to November, great white sharks, the largest predatory fish on the planet, are on the hunt.

Every year these lords of the deep migrate more than a thousand miles from a zone east of Hawaii known as the “White Shark Cafe.” Their destination: the Red Triangle, a swath of ocean stretching from Bodega Bay in the north to the Farallones Islands in the west and Monterey Bay in the south. The cold, nutrient-rich waters of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary nourish a rich array of marine life, including seals and sea lions that lure great whites eager to feed heavily and build strength and stamina for the winter months.

An Upwelling of Life

Apr 18, 2025 | Beach, Climate Change, Coast, Ecology, Environment, Fish & Fishing, Marine science, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans, Outdoors

Native tribes called the Sonoma Coast the “place of churning waters.” The mighty Pacific never stops splashing, crashing, snaking into fissures, wearing away cliffs, grinding rocks into stones, stones into pebbles, pebbles into sand. But the force that parts the seas and moves the waters comes from the wind, which propels the seasonal explosion of life known as Upwelling.

Frank Zappa’s Jellyfish

Aug 16, 2024 | Adventures, Animals, Fish & Fishing, Marine science, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans

“Have you heard of Frank Zappa?”

Visitors touring the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Reserve often seem surprised by my question. Baby-boomers call out answers: Guitarist. Composer. Had a band called the Mothers of Invention. Named his kids Moon Unit and Dweezle. For those too young to recall, I explain that shaggy-haired, iconoclastic Frank Zappa (1940-1993) released more than sixty albums and rocked the music world in a career that spanned three decades,

The Blobs: Fantasy vs. Fact

Jul 5, 2024 | Climate Change, Environment, Fish & Fishing, Marine science, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans

In The Blob, a 1958 horror movie, a gelatinous people-eating alien terrified a small town as it devoured residents and grew bigger, redder and more voracious. The film became a drive-in favorite and a sci-fi cult classic. More than half a century later the entire West Coast of North America faced a very real and even more dangerous Blob. In the winter of 2013/2014 a “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” of high pressure, as meteorologists described it, clamped over the north Pacific like a lid, stalling winds and blocking storms. Warmer-than-normal waters spread, eventually covering about 3.5 million square miles from Alaska to Mexico—an area larger than the contiguous United States.

A Very Big Fish Story

May 17, 2024 | Adventures, Animals, Environment, Fish & Fishing, Marine science, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans, Outdoors

A mile offshore from Bodega Head in 120 feet of water, the captain cuts the engine. The 65-foot chartered research vessel pitches from side to side in steep swells. Ten men, one young woman, and I take our stations at the railing.

“Lines down!” a voice booms.

Not until this moment do I realize that I probably should have considered my gender, age, size, and complete lack of fishing experience before volunteering as an angler for the California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program. My life goals immediately winnow down to three: Do not fall off the lurching boat. Do not join the miserable retchers chumming the waves with their breakfasts. And prove to be of some scientific value by catching at least one fish.