Column: May 24, 2020
With news of pending plans to reopen businesses around the state, I’ve started daydreaming about the little things I’m looking forward to once the pandemic is over. While dining out and happy hours with friends top my wish list, I’m also looking forward to getting out on the Bay again. There’s...
Blog Post: May 1, 2020
The pandemic has shut down the global demand for fossil fuels. That means Bay Area refineries can't process all the crude oil that’s already loaded on tankers and coming our way. It's estimated that the oil tankers currently along the West Coast are carrying enough crude oil to meet as much as 20...
Column: February 1, 2020
On January 10-12, high tides in San Francisco Bay washed up onto the shoreline of a large former pharmaceutical company in Richmond. A few hours later, the outgoing tide pulled contamination—including pesticides, toxic chemicals, and radioactive waste—off the industrial land and into the Bay. ...
Blog Post: January 17, 2020
This winter, for the 120th annual Christmas Bird Count, Baykeeper Senior Scientist Jon Rosenfield (pictured, below right) and Skipper Mark Caplin led a bird count aboard the Baykeeper patrol boat.
Every year, the Audubon Society organizes this bird census drawing on observations from citizen...
Blog Post: December 12, 2019
Baykeeper Field Investigator Cole Burchiel is busy planning for our annual aerial survey of the King Tides in the Bay.
These extra-high tides occur every year when the earth's orbit aligns at its closest point to the sun and moon, resulting in extra gravitational pull. This natural phenomenon isn't...
Column: December 3, 2019
What I saw on the San Francisco Bay shoreline that day worried me.
I asked our volunteer skipper, Robert, to maneuver the Baykeeper boat closer. Since the last time we'd been to the site, more heavy industrial equipment had piled up near the water. And more barges were crowding the dock. It looked...
Blog Post: November 14, 2019
Baykeeper Field Investigator Cole Burchiel recently patrolled the area around Hanson Aggregates—a company we've repeatedly challenged in court for taking excessive sand from the Bay's floor.
The large amount of Bay sand that they mine every year contributes to shoreline erosion and habitat loss...
Blog Post: October 17, 2019
Baykeeper Senior Scientist Jon Rosenfield was recently joined by our partners from the Rose Foundation for Communities & the Environment for a Bay patrol on the Baykeeper boat. They got to see firsthand how grants to Baykeeper can make a big impact.
The patrol investigated a number of...
Blog Post: September 13, 2019
Earlier this month, Baykeeper's newest team member, Field Investigator Cole Burchiel (pictured below, left) and Senior Scientist Jon Rosenfield (right), joined a pollution patrol on the Baykeeper boat.
They visited the Levin coal terminal to monitor for any signs of pollution, checked out another...
Blog Post: August 15, 2019
While patrolling the Bay on the Baykeeper boat over the last few years, we've noticed that a construction facility in Richmond has been slowly growing its operation and creeping into the Bay. More and more barges are starting to crowd the dock, and heavy industrial equipment keeps piling up along...