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.
Years ago I learned to sail by the wind on a 26-foot sloop in San Francisco Bay. After the initial terror, I came to relish the exhilaration of skimming across the water, rocketed by gusts and tugged by currents. At times I’d imagine endlessly drifting on the open sea with the sun and the stars as my only companions.
Velella velella (from the Latin for “veil”), commonly known as “by-the-wind sailors,” live this fantasy. Ancient mariners found in oceans around the world, they have no need for seaworthy vessels. They are shaped like exquisite toy sailboats.
On a blustery March day, a squad of volunteers and researchers from the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Reserve take up grabbers and gloves against a sea of microplastics. Our mission: Clear trash from a local beach and document the prevalence of plastic on the...
Blues are bigger; fin whales, faster; humpbacks, more acrobatic. But the nobly named Eschrichtius robustus (aka Eastern Pacific Gray)— splotched, blunt-headed, stout and muscular–is nothing less than amazing. World Whale Day, celebrated the third Sunday of February, is an ideal time to celebrate their awesomeness.
“Do you know what whale breath smells like?”
Our captain doesn’t wait for a reply.
“Rotten broccoli!” he bellows as a humpback spouts a few yards from our boat.
Awed by its size and unexpected stench, I almost forget that these majestic giants are, like us, air-breathing, warm-blooded, baby-nursing mammals. But unlike us, some whales have bodies as long as two school buses, tongues that weigh as much as an elephant and hearts the size of a small car, with an aorta (main artery) wide enough for a human to slide through.
The King Tide comes to conquer. Amid fury, foam and thunderous claps, its forces roar on shore and devour everything in their path. White-fringed waves swirl across jetties, smash against cliffs, engulf beaches, inundate mudflats, pummel piers. The unstoppable invader extends its watery domain so high that it seems to be creating the world anew.
As a little girl watching a Blue Planet video, Madeline Frey dreamed of becoming a scientist and discovering a never-before-known animal.
“I wanted to find what no one else had looked at before,” she recalls, “to study what no one else had.”a nice post-turkey-day surprise.
Frey didn’t expect to identify eleven new species by age 20 — nor did she imagine that they would be slippery, slimy, alien-looking ribbon worms at the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Reserve on the Northern California coast.
Today it sounds almost unimaginable: A 325,000 kilowatt nuclear plant looming upon majestic Bodega Head, within a quarter-mile of the restless San Andreas Fault. An emissions shaft belching steam. Heated water spewing into the Pacific. Electrical cables draped from steel towers along Doran Beach. Six decades ago this seemed the inevitable fate of Bodega Bay, then a remote fishing port with more seabirds than citizens. What stopped PG&E’s plan for an “Atomic Park” was an unlikely band of citizens-turned-activists who became known as the Hole in the Head Gang.
Thirty years ago, on assignment for a national women’s magazine, I visited Bodega Bay for the first time to interview the parents of Nicholas Green, a seven-year-old boy who became an international hero and unofficial patron saint of organ donation.
“Piccolo Nicola” (little Nicholas), as Italians call him, was killed by bandits’ gunfire as his family drove through southern Italy in the autumn of 1994. In their darkest hour, Reginald and Maggie Green donated his organs, saving or transforming the lives of seven Italians.
Never mind spooky ghosts and goblins. Far scarier creatures are prowling along the Northern California coast. During Sharktober, a season that extends from September to November, great white sharks, the largest predatory fish on the planet, are on the hunt.
