San Francisco Bay

The San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary in which water draining approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean. Technically, the Sacramento River flows into Suisun Bay, which flows through the Carquinez Strait to meet with the Napa River at the entrance to San Pablo Bay, which connects at its south end to San Francisco Bay, although the entire group of interconnected bays are often referred to as "the San Francisco Bay."

Ecology

Despite its urban and industrial character, San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta remain perhaps California's most important ecological habitats. California's Dungeness crab, Pacific halibut, and Pacific salmon fisheries rely on the bay as a nursery. The few remaining salt marshes now represent most of California's remaining salt marsh, supporting a number of endangered species and providing key ecosystem services such as filtering pollutants and sediments from the rivers. Most famously, the bay is a key link in the Pacific Flyway. Millions of waterfowl annually use the bay shallows as a refuge. SF Bay provided the nation's first wildlife refuge, Oakland's artificial Lake Merritt (constructed in the 1860s) and America's first urban National Wildlife Refuge, the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge (1972).

Related Topics:
Delta - Ecological - Habitats - Dungeness crab - Halibut - Salmon - Fisheries - Salt marsh - Species - Sediment - Pacific Flyway - Waterfowl - Lake Merritt - 1860s - San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge - 1972

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Tellingly, much of the SFBNWR consists of salt evaporation ponds purchased or leased from Leslie Salt Company and its successor, Cargill Corporation. These salt ponds produce salt for a variety of industrial purposes, including chlorine bleach and plastics manufacture, as well as supporting dense populations of brine shrimp, and therefore serving as feeding areas for waterfowl. In 2003, California and Cargill entered one of the largest private land purchases in American history, with the state and federal governments paying about $200 million for 16,000 acres (65 km²) of salt ponds in the south bay. SFBNWR and state biologists hope to restore some of the recently purchased ponds as tidal wetlands.

Related Topics:
Salt - Evaporation - Leslie Salt Company - Cargill Corporation - Chlorine - Bleach - Plastic - Brine shrimp - 2003 - Tidal

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