Volunteers make a difference.  Along the San Mateo County coast, trained volunteers play a major role in protecting the Western Snowy Plover—a small shorebird that lays its eggs on the sand at a few California beaches every summer. 

The snowy plovers, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, may be found on several local beaches during the winter months.  In the spring and summer, the plovers congregate on the few beaches that can provide safe nesting sites, including Half Moon Bay State Beach—a busy recreational beach where a protected habitat is set aside for the plovers to nest.

Volunteers in the Half Moon Bay State Beach Plover Watch program monitor the beach to help protect the plovers and point them out to beach visitors.  Public education—sometimes including presentations for school groups—is an important part of the volunteer program.

Click below for details on volunteering.

Join Jake Sigg and Jon Campo and many other knowledgeable people on an exploration of one of the Bay Area’s hidden jewels.  Sanchez Creek Canyon, just 15 minutes south of San Francisco in Pacifica, is home to rough-skinned newts, rubber boa snakes, and federally listed red-legged frogs.  This relatively intact watershed is one of only two canyons in Pacifica that has never been developed, except for the presence of a rustic archery range.  Expect to see red-stemmed dogwood, hazelnut, fringe cups, columbine, oceanspray, trillium, slim Solomon, woodland sanicle, five species of ferns, and many other local gems.

The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, the SF Public Utilities Commission, and the North Central Coast Water District are proposing to build a pipeline and a 20,000-sq ft water tank platform 40’ tall to bring water to the Sharp Park Golf Course.  The tank and concrete pad will transform the canyon’s secluded, wild character—one of only two coastal canyons without substantial development.

Don’t miss the chance to walk through this wild place before this threatened development takes place.  It is not certain that it will go forward, but only an informed public can stop it, or slow it down sufficiently to insist on a public process, including hearings.

Questions?  Jake Sigg 415-731-3028, Jon Campo 650-355-0247

Click below for directions.

The Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) has appointed Sandra Thompson to its Board of Directors. Thompson is a native of Iowa, where she grew up on her family’s farm. She spent 18 years in various sales, marketing and strategy positions with IBM, where she led e-commerce and Internet infrastructure initiatives worldwide as vice president of network solutions.

Tar balls have washed up on several beaches from San Mateo county to Santa Cruz, reports the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Here on the Coastside, they have been reported at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve and Fitzgerald Beach.  The tar could come from a natural oil seep on the ocean floor, although none are known in this region.

The samples were sent for analysis to the Department of Fish and Game Water Pollution Control Laboratory in Rancho Cordova. There, scientists can match the tar’s chemical fingerprint to known natural oil seeps, or determine that the tar is from a boat or tanker.

Gulf of the Farallones and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries Joint Advisory Council meets this Thursday, Feb. 15 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Our Lady of the Pillar Church, the Bell Building, 540 Kelly Ave., Half Moon Bay.

One of the most ominous threats to the health of the our ocean’s environment and marine life in the Mid-Coast is S.M. County’s continued approval of all of the inappropriate residential over-development of groups of Antiquated 25’ Sub-Standard Lots in East Hillside Areas & West Side Bluff Areas of Miramar that destroys Coastal/Ocean Viewsheds which is a Coastal Resource and where domestic water wells being allowed strains shared aquifers. All of the McMansions being constructed in these two fragile areas are a DIRECT threat to the ocean. 

It is especially concerning that the County’s so-called "LCP Update" is proposing that 3,500 sq.ft. or above yet under the 5,000 sq.ft. Zoning Lot Minimum Requirement for El Granada, Princeton, Moss Beach & Montara be considered, BUILDABLE AS A MATTER OF RIGHT and that anything rolled in & bolted down or constructed on the multitude of Antiquated 25’ Sub-Standard Lots (there are at least 800 of these tiny lots in the Granada Sanitary District Service Area alone)in singles or in groups that the County terms as being "Affordable" or "Market Rate" Housing won’t be included in their yearly Growth Rate Controls.

Keep in mind none of these tiny lots are even expressed in County’s old, over-estimated LCP Buildout Numbers from the 1980’s upon which they erroneously based all of their out-of-scale assumptions upon for water & sewer infrastructure expansions, plans for water supply additions, road expansion projects, urbanizing park/rec. projects. Note that the County’s LCP Update materials state that this Coastside’s schools will be run year around in order to accomodate all of the additional students.

You will be able to express your concerns about over-development at this meeting. And, it is also important that you fax letters of concern to the Coastal Commission c/o Rebecca Roth & Ruby Pap at (415) 904-5400 as they are examining the County’s LCP Update at this time and will benefit from your input.

Barb Mauz

The Farallones Marine Sanctuary is looking for volunteer naturalists to help promote ocean awareness in the sanctuary’s Visitor Center in the Presidio of San Francisco, or at community outreach events throughout the Bay Area.

An initial Naturalist Orientation will be held on Saturday, March 10th from 10am to noon at the sanctuary’s offices, Building 991 Marine Drive, on Crissy Field Beach in the Presidio of San Francisco, California 94129. RSVP to Joanne Mohr at 415/ 561-6625, ext 307.

A biologist at Año Nuevo Island Reserve discovered some tracking devices that had implanted in young salmon, according to a release from UC Santa Cruz. It sheds new light on what happens to young salmon after they leave our streams.

But the first logger Morris found on Año Nuevo Island told a fascinating story. Hayes and Bond implanted the logger in a hatchery-raised Coho salmon on March 15, 2006. That salmon swam down Scotts Creek to the lagoon, where it lasted 13 days. On March 28, the temperature logger records it was eaten by a warm-blooded predator. The logger emerged on top of Año Nuevo Island on March 29.

Because it showed up on top of the island, researchers can rule out the theory that an elephant seal or a harbor seal ate the Coho. Hayes and Bond say the guilty predator is probably a bird, but they can’t be sure.

"Unfortunately, the temperature loggers top out at about 25 degrees Celsius," Bond said. "The stomach temperature of the predator was much warmer than that. We never thought that we’d recover the tag of any of our fish that got eaten. We missed getting a good, precise measurement of the predator’s body temperature."

The chance discovery indicates that gulls may be a more important predator for young salmon than anyone thought.

Click below to read the press release.