By Helen Fitanides As we wrap up 2018, we have a heartwarming story of a very special invertebrate making a return to our Point Pinole Reef: the Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida). 2017 was a record rainfall year for California, and most of us rejoiced in the welcome moisture. However, the consistent rainfall between January and March 2017 brought so much freshwater into the San Francisco Bay that salinity at Point Pinole dropped to under 10 parts per thousand (ppt) for over two months. Olympia oysters are best adapted for salinities in area of 25ppt, and while they can close up and wait during …
Living Shorelines
Citizen Science and Healthier Watersheds
“If you see a problem and feel that something should be done about it, and you look around and you see that no one else is doing anything - you’re elected.”-Nick Carter, 1997 Goldman Prize winner, Zambia Two years ago, neighbors across Contra Costa County saw a problem: there was no standardized method to test and share the water quality data in the County’s creeks. They decided to do something about it. I joined a small group of volunteers began meeting monthly to share experience, methods and equipment, with the goal of standardizing volunteer monitoring throughout the county. This …
Bubbles & Bivalves: Celebrate 20 years on November 8th
By Lauren Woodfill Oysters, sustainable hor d’oeuvres, live music, silent auction, wine? Sounds like a great night out! Join us at Berkeley’s David Brower Center on November 8th for Bubbles & Bivalves and help us celebrate our 20th Anniversary! We are so thrilled to have the opportunity to come together with friends, supporters, and fellow environmental leaders who are passionate about making our Bay more resilient, and who know how to have a great time while doing so! Bubbles & Bivalves is a fun event that gives back to our community, making our incredible programming possible …
A New Home|Oyster Hotels Move Across the Bay
By Helen Dickson Several years ago, The Watershed Project built oyster hotels: baskets full of Pacific oyster shell that were kept in a slip at the Marina Bay Yacht Harbor. A variety of marine invertebrates, including our native Olympia oysters as well as such characters as bay barnacles, yellow finger sponges, and sea lettuce, moved right in and colonized the shells. Recently, we teamed up with the Marin Rod and Gun Club to relocate our oyster hotels across the bay to the ¼ mile long pier that the private Club owns. Our hotels are now more accessible, and we plan to use them as an educational …
What’s on the Waterbar Menu?|Waterfront views, incredible oysters, and sustainable seafood practices
By Linnaea Weld and Liza Dadiomov Waterbar, located on the San Francisco waterfront, offers breathtaking views of the Bay, high-quality, delectable seafood, a full bar, and an exemplary sustainability ethic. Eric Hyman is the Purchasing Manager and Beekeeper of this not-to-be-missed restaurant. Communications Intern Linnaea Weld and Education Coordinator Liza Dadiomov had the pleasure of sitting down with Eric to learn about Waterbar's history, purchasing philosophy, and the upcoming Oysterfest. Linnaea Weld: What's the story behind Waterbar? Eric Hyman: Waterbar's been open seven and a …
Enigmatic Engineers Restore San Francisco Bay|Witness the power of an estuary
By Lisa Owens Viani Millions of tiny engineers—the size of a quarter—are busy beneath the surface of San Francisco Bay, filtering water, stabilizing shorelines, and providing habitat and food for other animals. These oysters, says Rowan Jacobsen, author of The Living Shore, and keynote speaker at our Bubbles & Bivalves event, are ecosystem engineers, especially in estuaries like San Francisco Bay. Writes Rowan, "They transform estuaries from algae factories into the most productive protein factories on earth. The transformation takes many paths. It goes from sunlight to algae to …
Join Us for Our 5th Bubbles & Bivalves! | A Benefit to Support the Living Shoreline Initiative
Thursday, May 8, 2014 7:00pm - 10:00pm The Aquarium of the Bay, The Embarcadero & Beach Street, San Francisco Join The Watershed Project, James Beard Award-winning author Rowan Jacobsen for oysters, champagne, libations, and hors d'oeuvres from the Bay Area's finest sustainable restaurants, wineries, and breweries. Learn about our native oysters while helping restore the critical underwater ecosystems of our magnificent San Francisco Bay! Oysters were once ubiquitous in the San Francisco Bay. Unfortunately, due to ecosystem degradation, the native oyster population has plummeted over the …
Centuries of Conservation | My Story of Building 100 Behemoth Reef Balls
By Martin Murray There is only one thing I have done in my life that will last hundreds of years. It will still be there for my great-great-great-grandchildren to witness and appreciate in the future, and it will do wonders for the San Francisco Bay. The project that I am so very proud to have been a part of is the building of artificial oyster reefs that were recently placed in the Bay at Point Pinole in Richmond. I joined The Watershed Project team as an intern in May of 2013, and I was amazed at three things when I started. Firstly, how quickly I was able to become immersed in the project …
