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Fun
Facts About Life in & on San Francisco Bay!
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Seal Fun Facts
Whale Fun Facts
Shark Fun Facts
Salmon Fun Facts
Crab Fun Facts
Dolphin Fun Facts
Other Aquatic Creatures Fun Facts
Seabird Fun facts
Fishing Fun Facts
San Francisco Maritime History Fun Facts
San Francisco Bay Fun Facts
Seal Fun Facts
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Harbor seals belong to the scientific
order Pinnipedia, which includes seals, sea lions, and walruses.
Seals differ from sea lions in a number of ways, including having
shorter, stouter flippers, and no visible ear flaps. |
| • |
Phoca vitulina, the scientific name for harbor
seal, means “sea calf” or “sea dog.”
These nicknames represent harbor seals well as these seals resemble
a dog when their head pops up above the surface of the water. |
| • |
A group of seals is called a herd or a pod. |
| • |
Pinnipeds have adaptations that are key for their
survival in cold, aquatic and environments. Swimming is made
easier by their torpedo-shaped body the short paddle-like form
of the limbs. They have a thick layer of blubber, which insulates
the vital organs. |
| • |
Harbor seals have large eyes for good underwater
vision. When they are underwater, a mucus membrane continually
washes over the eyes in order to protect them. Vision underwater
is superior to a human being, but not on land. The large eyes
are better adapted for vision in dark murky water than on land
in the air. Seals do not have color vision. Some scientist believe
vision is not essential to their survival because they have
found healthy specimens, including mothers and pups blind in
the wild. |
| • |
Harbor seal do rely on their vibrissae (whiskers)
to locate items including food in deep dark waters. The vibrissae
move independently moving in and out transmitting information
to the brain. Mothers identify the pups using the sense of smell.
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Hearing is extremely well developed, but taste
is not. |
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Harbor seals have spotted coats in shades ranging
from silver-gray to black to dark brown. |
| • |
Harbor seals are usually between 5 and 6 feet
long and weigh up to 300 pounds. Males are a little bigger than
females. |
| • |
The average life span of a Harbor seal is 20
– 25 years. |
| • |
Harbor seals are true seals, meaning they have
no external earflaps. They have ears but lack an external ear
flap; instead they have small ear openings on the side of their
head. They must move on land by flopping on their bellies. |
| • |
Harbor seals live in small colonies of a few
families in locations all along the coasts and especially where
there are rocks. They can also be found out on sand bars, remote
beaches, mud flats, bays, and estuaries. Harbor seals spend
their lives along the same stretch of coastline. |
| • |
The adult harbor seal enjoys a diet of mollusks,
crustaceans, squid and a variety of fish including herring,
rockfish, flounder, salmon, hake and sand lance. During high
tides they like to hunt for fish, crabs, and shellfish. They
can consume five to six percent of their body weight each day
(10–18 pounds). |
| • |
Marine debris (debris that is not naturally part
of a marine environment) is a threat to harbor seals. They can
become entangled in fishing nets or plastic packaging materials,
causing injury or drowning. Harbor seals sometimes also ingest
plastic materials, which can cause starvation and obstructions
in the digestive tract. |
| • |
Differences between seals and sea lions:
- Sea lions have flexible hind flippers which they can
put underneath them so they can almost "crawl"
(or hop on all fours) across a hard surface.
- Seals on the other hand cannot rotate their hind flippers
beneath them so they tend to crawl across surfaces on their
bellies.
- Sea lions have ear flaps and normally grow to be much
larger than a seal.
- Both seals and sea lions eat a variety of marine life,
such as herring and other fish, Squid, etc. They are also
highly intelligent mammals and can learn fairly easily how
to mimic behaviors and communicate.
- One of the differences between a harbor seal and a sea
lion is their coloration. Harbor seals have a spotted or
mottled coat that varies from silver to dark gray. Usually
the dorsal (back) region has more spots that on the ventral
(underside) region.
- The harbor seal’s fore (front) flippers are much
shorter than sea lions with five digits with claws of equal
length. The sharp claws are used for grooming, scratching
and defense. The hind (back) flippers are also short and
have five digits with the middle ones the shortest and the
thinnest. Both the hind and fore flippers are webbed with
the hind used to propel and steer them in the water. On
land they are not as mobile and lack a rotating hip bone.
Unlike the sea lion that can walk on land a harbor seal
crawls on land much like a caterpillar.
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Male harbor seals reach lengths of about 6.6
ft. and weigh as much as 375 lb. The slightly smaller females
measure up to 5.6 ft. and weigh about 331 lbs. |
| • |
Harbor seals swim with alternate back-and-forth
movements of their hind flippers. They use all four flippers
for swimming and are capable of reaching speeds up to 15 miles
per hour, but usually cruise at slower speeds. |
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Harbor seals can dive to depths of 295 ft. and
stay submerged from 15 to 28 minutes. |
| • |
Unlike most other pinnipeds, harbor seals are
generally solitary and rarely interact with each other. When
hauled out, adults maintain several feet between them. Harbor
seals aren't highly communicative, but if threatened a seal
may respond by snorting, growling, lunging, scratching, aggressive
flipper waving or biting. |
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Harbor seals along the Pacific coast usually
give birth between February and July. The well-developed pup
may measure up to 39 in. and weigh 26 lb. |
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A pup nurses for four to six weeks. Its mother’s
milk contains as much as 45% milk fat which enables the pup
to more than double its weight by the time it’s weaned. |
| • |
A newborn seal is covered with a coat of soft
white or yellowish-white wool which is shed when it's one or
two weeks old. The succeeding coat consists of short, stiff,
course hairs without underfur. |
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The hands and feet (flippers) of seals are
long, flattened and fully webbed. Seals possess the following
physiological adaptations for diving which keep them from
getting the bends:
- Slowing of the heart rate.
- Slowing of the metabolic rate.
- Drop in body temperature.
- High tolerance of carbon dioxide in their tissues.
- Ability to store large amounts of oxygen in the muscle
tissues.
- Ability of their lungs to collapse when air is expelled
before diving.
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While swimming or diving, a seal can close its
nostrils. It can also use its tongue to seal its larynx and
esophagus when opening its mouth underwater to catch a fish.
Small fish can be eaten underwater, but the seal will surface
to eat a larger fish. |
| • |
The harbor seal usually sleeps on land, but sometimes
can be seen bottling in the water. Bottling allows the seal
to remain submerged with just its head exposed so it can breathe. |
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Whale Fun Facts
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Beluga whales sing! They're called
"sea canaries" because their songs sound like a canary.
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Each Humpback whale has its own unique pattern
of white on the underside of its tail flukes. This pattern is
used like a fingerprint to identify individual whales. |
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Humpback whale songs cover many octaves and last
as long as 20 minutes, after which they're repeated. |
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Blue whales are the biggest animal that has ever
lived on Earth. They can grow up to 101.7 feet long and weigh
between 90 and 120 tons. A female blue whale measured 110 ft.,
and another weighed 190 tons. |
| • |
The largest blood vessel of a blue whale is so
big that a small child could crawl through it. |
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The tongue of a blue whale weighs more than an
elephant. |
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Seven species of whales are protected by the
United States under the Endangered Species Act: the blue whale,
bowhead whale, fin whale, humpback whale, northern right whale,
sei whale, and the sperm whale. (The gray whale has been removed
from the endangered species list.) |
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Some whales are lungers, which means they take
in huge gulps of water and fish at the same time. Other whales
are skimmers — they swim with their mouths open, straining
the water out before they swallow their fish dinner. |
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Humpback whales blow "nets" of bubbles
around schools of fish to catch them. Then they swim up through
the bubble net to catch their food! |
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The heart of a full grown blue whale is as large
as a small car and can weigh up to 4000 lbs! |
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A blue whale is about 25 feet long at birth and
weighs almost 2 tons. By the time it's one week old the baby
weighs twice as much as it did at birth. It puts on weight at
the rate of 154 lbs. per day or 6.4 lbs. per hour. In the first
seven months of life, a blue whale can gain 32,700 lbs. |
| • |
A female blue whale can produce 94 gallons of
milk (that's richer in fat than cream) per day. The mother whale
feeds her baby more than 200 pounds of milk each day. When the
baby leaves its mother (at 7 months) it's 53 feet long! |
| • |
Blue whales eat over 4 tons of tiny shrimp called
krill per day. That's equal to the weight of an adult African
elephant. |
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Scientists have found 2000 lbs. of food in the
stomach of a blue whale which is equivalent to about 8000 hamburgers! |
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Sperm whales have the biggest brain of any animal
on earth, weighing more than 11 lbs. (An average human brain
weighs 3 lbs.) |
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The grey whale has the longest migration route
of any mammal, traveling from Baja, Mexico to Alaska each spring
then returning to Baja in the fall. |
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The humpback whale’s flippers grow to a
maximum of 31% of its body length: a flipper can be more than
18 ft. long. |
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The fastest speed of any cetacean was a bull
orca who was recorded traveling at a speed of 35 mph. |
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Ancient mariners saw transient orcas eating other
whales. Thus they were named "whale killer," a name
that has been reversed to "killer whale." There are
no confirmed records of orcas ever killing a person in the wild. |
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Orca family groups (pods) consist of five to
30 individuals. Each pod has its own distinctive "accent." |
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Shark Fun Facts
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Sharks are fishes. Like other fishes,
they're cold-blooded, have fins, live in the water, and breathe
with gills. A shark's skeleton is made of cartilage. |
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A shark's fusiform body shape (rounded and tapering
at both ends) reduces drag, which requires minimum energy to
swim. |
| • |
Sharks eat far less than most people imagine.
Cold-blooded animals have a much lower metabolism than warm-blooded
animals. In fact, in a zoological environment, a shark eats
about 1% to 10% of its total body weight each week. Studies
on sharks in the wild show similar food intake. |
| • |
Sharks will scavenge whatever they can catch,
but sometimes swallow things they shouldn't. Fur coats, tires,
nails, wine bottles, jewelry, a suit of armor and license plates
have all been found in sharks' stomachs. |
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Although it's not the largest of all sharks,
the great white is the largest predatory shark. Some relatively
harmless sharks, like the whale shark, are much larger than
the great white. |
| • |
Scientists can easily identify the teeth of a
great white shark. The upper teeth are large, broad, and triangular,
while the lower teeth are slightly more slender. All the teeth
are serrated. Like other sharks, a great white continually looses
its teeth and new ones grow in their place. |
| • |
Great white sharks average 14 – 18 ft.
long and roughly 1,500 – 4,000 lbs. The largest great
white ever documented was caught off the coast of Cuba and measured
21 ft. |
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Though great white shark attacks on humans are
well documented, they are generally rare. Recent studies suggest
that great whites may find humans unpalatable. Attacks probably
occur when the shark mistakes a human for a seal or sea lion,
the great white's principal prey. |
| • |
Great whites are often caught intentionally by
fishermen, or incidentally as bycatch. All sharks play an important
role in ocean ecosystems; without them, some animal populations
would increase tremendously, adversely affecting marine food
chains. One way to help conserve sharks is to learn more about
them. |
| • |
Over the years, people have used sharks for food,
medicines, and vitamins; shark teeth for weapons and jewelry;
and shark skin for sandpaper. But today some shark populations
are on the brink of extinction. Why? Shark meat is a popular
food. And thousands of sharks are caught by accident, snagged
in nets set out to catch other kinds of fish. |
| • |
Long portrayed as bloodthirsty predators, sharks
have lately fallen prey to a more efficient predator. Sport
and commercial fishermen catch about 200 million sharks each
year. Finning, or removing only a shark's fins for soup, accounts
for the wasteful destruction of many sharks. |
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Salmon Fun Facts
| • |
As recently as 30 years ago, over
one hundred thousand winter-run chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus
Tshawytscha) returned to the Sacramento River each year to spawn.
By 1991, only an estimated 191 winter-run chinook salmon returned.
Habitat loss, water pollution, and water diversions such as
the Red Bluff and Shasta Dams have taken their toll on this
once abundant species. Since 1994, the Sacramento River winter-run
chinook salmon has been recognized under the Federal Endangered
Species Act. |
| • |
Each individual stock of salmon is important.
A chinook salmon from one river may be quite different genetically
from a chinook of another river. This vast genetic diversity
has allowed salmon to survive for two million years by helping
them adapt to a specific local watershed or adjust to a changing
one. They have endured floods and droughts, disease, volcanic
eruptions, and even ice ages. Every stock lost to extinction
is a loss of important genetic information, leaving the remaining
fish less able to survive. |
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Chinook salmon are the largest of the Pacific
salmon — some individuals grow to more than 100 pounds.
These huge fish are rare, as most mature chinook are under 50
pounds. |
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Salmon are anadromous, which means they spend
most of their lives in the ocean, but return to freshwater streams
to spawn, or reproduce. Sometimes these spawning migrations
may cover tremendous distances of 2,000 miles or more, such
as the several month migrations of coho, king and chum salmon
that spawn in the Yukon River in Alaska. |
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Pacific salmon spawn once and then die. Atlantic
salmon may return to freshwater as many as three times to spawn. |
| • |
It is not completely understood how salmon can
so unerringly return to their original home stream at spawning
time. Various theories from taste and smell of the home stream
to navigating by the sun and moon and the earth's magnetic field
lines have been proposed. |
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Some salmon run up to 1,000 miles inland. |
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Steelhead and rainbow trout are the same species.
But rainbow live in freshwater only, and steelhead are anadromous
(go to sea). Unlike most salmon, steelhead can survive spawning,
and can spawn in multiple years. |
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Coho salmon spawn in small coastal streams and
the tributaries of larger rivers. They prefer areas of mid-velocity
water with small to medium sized gravels. Because they use small
streams with limited space, they must use many such streams
to successfully reproduce, which is why coho can be found in
virtually every small coastal stream with a year-round flow.
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Returning coho often gather at the mouths of
streams and wait for the water flow to rise, such as after a
rain storm, before heading upstream. The higher flows and deeper
water enable the fish to pass obstacles, such as logs across
the stream or beaver dams, that would otherwise be impassable.
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Male chum salmon develop large "teeth"
during spawning, which resemble canine teeth. This many explain
the nickname dog salmon. |
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Europeans were salmon dependent 25,000 years
ago — salmon was the main food source. |
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Salmon were so abundant during the middle ages
that apprentice contracts had clauses stating the apprentice
would only have to eat salmon once or twice a week. |
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Native peoples from the Ainu people in Japan
to the Klamath people on this continent and most all indigenous
people in between welcomed the first salmon ceremoniously. |
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Many native peoples believed salmon were people
who gave their salmon disguises as gifts to the land people
in gratitude for their respectful treatment. |
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The Irish believed in a salmon of wisdom who
when caught and eaten bestowed wisdom on the diner. |
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Crab Fun Facts
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The crab's scientific name is Callinectes
sapidus [call-in-ek-tis sap-ah-dis]. Callinectes sapidus means
"beautiful swimmer." |
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Crabs are also called decapods, which means 10
legs. |
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The crab's teeth are in its stomach! |
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On average, crabs live no longer than 3 years.
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If a crab loses its claw, another claw grows
back in its place. |
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The male crab is called a "jimmy" and
the female is called a "sook." |
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Dolphin & Porpoise
Fun Facts
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The harbor porpoise is a small whale.
Some dolphins live 20 years, while some whales live to be 100. |
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A large harbor porpoise is six feet long and
weighs two hundred pounds. |
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Harbor porpoises live in the North Atlantic and
North Pacific waters from the Arctic to Antarctica. |
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The harbor porpoise's favorite foods are fish,
herring, whiting, cod, squid, mackerel and shrimp. |
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The harbor porpoise lives about fifteen years. |
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Researchers can tell a porpoise's age by cutting
a tooth in half. |
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A dolphin is distinguished from a porpoise by
its long, sharp snout that is flattened like a beak, while a
porpoise has a short, blunt snout. Dolphin teeth are sharp and
cone-shaped; porpoise teeth are shovel-shaped. |
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The dolphin's name comes from the Greek word
"delphus" meaning womb because of its shape. |
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The spinner dolphin's upper jaw is black, its
body is gray, its belly is white, and its fins are dark. |
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The typical adult spinner dolphin is 13 feet
long and weighs about 600 pounds. |
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Spinner dolphins can swim 25 mph. and often travel
with tuna. |
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Other Aquatic Creatures
Fun Facts
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Squid belong to the marine family
called "cephalopod." This means "feet around
the head." |
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Some squid are less than an inch long, while
others can grow to be up to sixty feet long. |
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Squid have eight arms and two tentacles. Squid
are also invertebrates, meaning that they have no backbone. |
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Squid can move up to 20 miles per hour and can
fly though the air for distances up to 200 feet! |
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Krill is a transparent shrimp-like creature.
It's extremely important for many animals in the seas especially
squid, whales, and many fish. |
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Krill contain vitamin A which is mostly stored
in their eyes. No other marine animal produces such large amounts
of vitamin A. |
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The blue whale depends solely on krill for its
nourishment; over 2 million krill weighing 1 ton have been found
in the stomach of a whale. |
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Most krill have a light organ in each eye and
in parts of their body, which makes them glow in the dark. |
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Fish sleep with their eyes open. |
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Starfish don't have brains. |
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Seabird Fun Facts
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Battery 129 on Conzelman Road in
the Marin Headlands is known to birders as “Hawk Hill.”
In September and October, thousands of raptors, including Osprey,
Northern Harrier, accipiters, Red-shouldered, Broad-winged (rare),
and Red-tailed Hawks, Golden Eagle, Merlin, and Peregrine Falcon
pass over the region’s most famous hawk-watching site. |
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In the early nineteenth century, tidal marsh
was the dominant habitat type in San Francisco Bay. Its historic
acreage has been reduced by about 85%, due to development as
well as diking for agriculture and salt evaporation ponds. |
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Half the birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway
use the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary's wetlands for wintering. |
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In certain seasons, the San Francisco Bay-Delta
Estuary's mud flats and salt flats support more than one million
shorebirds. |
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Double-crested cormorants dive for fish and marine
invertebrates from the surface of the water. After catching
a fish, the cormorant surfaces, flips the fish in the air, then
swallows it head-first. |
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The double-crested cormorant doesn't have well-developed
oil glands and isn't very well waterproofed so it often dries
its feathers by perching on a pole or tree limb and stretching
its wings out. |
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Snowy egret plumes were very popular on hats
in the latter part of the 19th century and into the early twentieth.
The result was that these birds were hunted almost to extinction.
Each year more then a million of these birds were killed for
their ornaments. |
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As with other herons, the crudeness of the egret's
nest, the elliptical form of the egg, and other signs suggest
to some scientists that these birds are one of the lower forms
on the scale of bird life, not far removed from the reptiles,
when one reckons in eons of time. |
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Egrets eat small fishes, frogs, lizards, snakes,
shrimps, fiddler crabs, crawfishes, grasshoppers and aquatic
insects. More than any other herons that do so, they use their
feet to stir the bottom of shallows of ponds. |
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The great egret is distinguished from the snowy
egret by its greater size. The great egret has a length of 37"
– 39" while the snowy egret is 22" – 24"
long. |
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Egret nests, made up of reeds and sticks, are
often high up in trees and may harbor as many as five or six
eggs. During nesting season they can be viewed, looking like
brilliant white ornaments, high in the trees at the Audubon
Ranch in Bolinas. |
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The brown pelican is an unmistakable bird of
coastal waters, famous for its huge bill with expandable pouch.
Groups of brown pelicans fly low over the waves in single file,
flapping and gliding in unison. |
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Brown pelicans' feeding is spectacular, as they
plunge headlong into the water from as high as 60' and coming
to the surface with fish in bill. The bird tilts its bill down
to drain water out of the pouch, then tosses its head back to
swallow. Sometimes the brown pelican scavenges and will become
tame, approaching fishermen for handouts. |
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Research projects carried out by University of
California, Davis staff and students revealed the presence of
high levels of DDT/DDE in the marine environment, which they
discovered caused thinning of the eggshell. Brown Pelicans became
Federally protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1972.
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Brown Pelicans use their highly vascularized
feet to incubate the eggs by standing on them. Eggshell thinning
obviously makes the eggs more fragile and more likely to crack
or break when a 9 pound bird stands on them, however delicately
so. |
| • |
While breeding attempts appear to have leveled
out there are still many reasons for concern regarding brown
pelicans. Human disturbance and pollution remain large threats
to these birds. |
| • |
A familiar coastal resident often seen on wharves,
jetties and docks, the western gull dresses in spectacular white
plumage with a dark slate-gray mantle. |
| • |
The western gull catches fish by diving or wading.
It eats fish, marine invertebrates, carrion, refuse, small mammals
and both eggs and young of other birds. Western gulls feed largely
on small, surface-feeding fish of no use to sport fishermen.
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To break open the shells of their prey —
such as sea urchins and clams — western gulls drop them
from high in the air to hard surfaces below. They also harass
cormorants and pelicans, forcing them to regurgitate their catch,
which the gulls quickly gobble up. |
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The western gull is often seen following fishing
boats, feeding on scraps thrown overboard by fish cleaners. |
| • |
Gulls are subject to contaminants in their food,
especially when eating human refuse. Western gulls feed on refuse
only when natural prey is scarce. Birds that feed on refuse
sometimes have lower breeding success. Feeding gulls or any
other birds your picnic or snack leftovers is harmful to their
health — please don't do it. |
| • |
The western gull has a small population, with
limited distribution along the west coast of North America.
Though gulls prey on other birds, they don’t deserve their
reputation of being a nuisance. Their breeding areas were once
destroyed because people thought the gulls preyed on black-crowned
night herons, when actually the opposite is true. |
| • |
About 22-29 inches long, the western grebe is
the longest of the grebes, with the female being slightly smaller
than the male. The crown and back of neck are black, the back
is brownish-gray, the underparts are white, the inner web of
the wing quills is white. The neck is long and slender, the
bill is long, greenish-yellow with a dark ridge down the center.
The western grebe's toes are lobed with flattened claws adapted
for strong swimming and diving. The tail is negligible. |
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The western grebe is carnivorous, eating mostly
insects and fish, and some mollusks and crustaceans. They spear
fish with their dagger-shaped bills. |
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The western grebe has some 20,000 feathers to
keep it warm and dry. |
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Since the western grebe's feet are located far
back on the body, they have a very hard time walking; in fact,
they often fall down. |
| • |
The western grebe's ankle and toe joints are
very flexible, which allows them to both paddle and steer at
the same time. Dives may last 10 – 40 seconds. |
| • |
Due to their wing shape, long and thin, western
grebes need a long take-off run across the water to become airborne.
They fly quickly with rapid wing beats, but with trailing feet.
They maneuver poorly in flight. |
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Fishing Fun Facts
| • |
One hundred years ago, Chinese and
Italian fishermen found crabs in plentiful supply from the Straits
of Carquinez on the inland reaches of San Francisco Bay to the
sandy shorelines off Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda. Over the
years clams, the natural food of the crab, disappeared from
the Bay and the best crab catches were then made just outside
the Golden Gate. Today, the "crabbers" must drop their
crab pots far out near the Farallon Islands in 18 – 35
fathoms of water. |
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Crabs are caught in traps made of wire about
the size of a tire. Each fishing boat may drop as many as 200
pots. |
| • |
Even before there were any sidewalks or restaurants
at Fisherman’s Wharf some of the fishermen set up cauldrons
of boiling water and cooked the freshly caught crabs, serving
them in paper cups as crab cocktails to be enjoyed by visitors.
Men in smocks still attend the cauldrons, offering visitors
paper cups of fresh-cooked crab meat cocktails, or whole cooked
crabs to take home. |
| • |
In the old days the fishermen got their news
about the weather from Mother Nature instead of a radio report.
If the moon was in the east, the tide was coming in; or if it
was in the west, the tide was flowing out the Golden Gate. A
circle around the moon meant rain. Porpoises playing around
the boat meant a bad wind was brewing. |
| • |
Fishing back then was hard work. If the sailboat
was becalmed, the sailors waited long hours for a breeze, or
got out the oars and rowed. Sometimes they would throw a grappling
hook into the rudder chain of a passing steamer and get an easy
ride home. When the steamer crews complained to these marine
hitchhikers, the Italian fishermen yelled right back in words
that soon became a part of waterfront "lingo." |
| • |
Between the Gold Rush days and the turn of the
Century, the San Francisco fishing fleet was made up of lateen-rigged
sailboats which were copies of the craft the Italian fishermen
knew in their native land. Green was the prevailing color of
the tiny boats, and the name of a patron saint was painted on
the hull. |
| • |
In the fog-shrouded waters outside the Golden
Gate, singing was a means of communication. The Italians' natural
talent for song could be heard in renditions of arias from Verdi
lustily sung, if not always true to the ear. |
| • |
The Genoese fishermen's main competition were
Chinese fishermen, whom they passed laws against to push out
to other parts of the Bay (where the Chinese managed nonetheless
to sustain a thriving business). |
| • |
Chinese Shrimp Junks were single-mast vessels,
ranging from 30 to 50 feet in length, built almost entirely
of local redwood. The long, narrow junks plied the waters of
the shallower regions of the Bay Area from around 1860 to 1910. |
| • |
The Junk fishermen worked large triangular nets
staked to mud flats, and brought their catch of shrimp ashore
to small fishing villages. The shrimp was then boiled, dried
and processed for shipment to Hawaii and Asia. |
| • |
Working from historic photographs, oral histories,
and archaeological information, a largely volunteer crew, led
by San Francisco Maritime NHP curator and boat builder John
Muir, is reconstructing a forty-two foot junk. The junk is being
built outdoors at China Camp State Park, in San Rafael, California,
the site of one of the largest Chinese Shrimp fishing villages. |
| • |
The San Francisco fishing industry based at Fisherman's
Wharf reached its peak in the late 1800s, selling more fish
than all the other West Coast ports combined. |
| • |
The average fisherman made $2 or $3 a week, sometimes
as much as $5. On the other hand a loaf of bread cost less than
five cents, and good red wine came from grapes purchased for
$5 a ton. |
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San Francisco Maritime
History Fun Facts
| • |
C.A. Thayer is fairly typical of
West Coast, three-masted lumber schooners in size (219' extreme)
and cargo capacity (575,000 board feet). She carried about half
of her load below, with the remaining lumber stacked ten feet
high on deck, and secured with chain. |
| • |
Between 1895 and 1912, the Lumber Schooner C.A.
Thayer mostly carried wood from E.K. Wood's mill in Grays Harbor,
Washington, to San Francisco. But she also carried lumber as
far south as Mexico, and occasionally even ventured to Hawaii
and Fiji. |
| • |
In port, C.A. Thayer's small crew of eight or
nine men served double-duty as longshoremen. Unloading 75,000
to 80,000 board feet was an average day's work. |
| • |
In 1924 C.A. Thayer was converted to steam. Early
each April from 1912 to 1924, she hauled 28-foot gill-net boats,
bundles of barrel staves, and tons of salt from San Francisco
to Western Alaska. She spent the summer anchored out at Squaw
Creek or Koggiung; the fishermen worked their nets while the
cannery workers packed the catch on shore. Thayer returned to
San Francisco each September, her hold stacked with barrels
of salted salmon. |
| • |
From 1925-1930, C.A. Thayer made yearly voyages
from Poulsbo, Washington, to the Bering Sea's cod fishing waters,
off the Alaskan coast. At about 4:30am every day, the fishermen
launched their Grand Banks dories over her rails, and then fished
standing up, with handlines dropped over both sides of their
small boats. When the fishing was good, a man could catch 300
– 350 cod in a five-hour period. |
| • |
With her final voyage in 1950, C.A. Thayer entered
the history books as the last commercial sailing vessel to operate
on the West Coast. She is docked today at the Hyde Street Pier. |
| • |
As late as the California Gold Rush, East Coast
vessels still hauled New England lumber 13,000 miles around
Cape Horn to San Francisco. |
| • |
The last sailing schooner commissioned for the
lumber trade slid down the ways in 1905. |
| • |
When gold fever swept the nation in 1849, the
tiny trading post of Yerba Buena, now known as San Francisco,
almost overnight became the port-of-entry for over 700 ships
carrying thousands of fortune-seekers from all around the world.
Its population soared from 400 to 25,000 in just one year! |
| • |
The land mass itself crept into the Bay, the
result of landfill dumped on the carcasses of hundreds of deserted
ships whose crews abandoned them to search for gold. San Francisco's
border eventually extended a full six blocks east from the natural
shoreline and four blocks north to today's Fisherman's Wharf.
|
| • |
Resourceful entrepreneurs also put old ships
to use, converting some into saloons, warehouses, lodgings,
a jail, even a church. Meanwhile, the sailor-saturated area
around the port became the infamous Barbary Coast. |
| • |
During the Gold Rush days, sailors who fell prey
to The Barbary Coast's opium dens, crimping joints, saloons,
brothels and gambling houses often were slipped Mickey Finns
— whiskey laced with a dollop of opium — and shanghaied
on two-year long voyages. Skippers paid crimps up to $75 a head
for able-bodied hands to crew their ships. |
| • |
In the 1850s, clipper ships brought silks from
China, whale oil from Alaska, coal from England and immigrants
from all around the world to San Francisco. Steam ships brought
silks, tea, rice and opium from Hong Kong. |
| • |
From the 1870s until 1900, steel-hulled sailing
vessels dubbed the "grain fleet" carried enormous
quantities of California wheat to Europe. |
| • |
The square rigger Balclutha, built in Scotland
in 1886, made 17 trips around Cape Horn and survived a ship
wreck off Alaska's coast. Balclutha is docked today at the Hyde
Street Pier. |
| • |
The Embarcadero, a 12,000-foot long bulkhead,
added 800 acres to the city and eighteen miles of usable docking
space to the Port of San Francisco. Construction of the Embarcadero
took 46 years, from 1878 to 1924. |
| • |
The Embarcadero seawall required massive amounts
of fill material. Folklore has it that the city used anything
available — including rubbish, horse manure, even dead
cats! |
| • |
The Ferry Building, constructed in 1898, became
the hub of the Bay Area's transportation system. As many as
50 million passengers a year passed through — more than
any other transit terminal in the nation in those days. |
| • |
San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by
water and has 21 miles of shoreline. |
| • |
During the last half of the 19th century, as
many as 50 ferries at once shuttled people into and out of San
Francisco in a constant stream. |
| • |
The Eureka, built in 1890, was the largest auto
and passenger ferry in the world in her day. She carried 3,000
people per trip across San Francisco Bay during the 1920s, 1930s
and 1940s. She is docked today at the Hyde Street Pier. |
| • |
The Eureka also served as the final leg of the
railroad journey to San Francisco, which earned her the nickname
"tracks across the Bay." |
| • |
Marco J. Fontana created the world's largest
canning operation with methods he devised experimenting at home
in 1899. In 1907 he built the Cannery building near Fisherman's
Wharf at Jefferson and Leavenworth streets, where tons of California
fruits and vegetables were canned for shipping across the country
and around the world, under the Del Monte label. Canning operations
continued there until 1937. Today the Cannery hosts shops, art
galleries, and restaurants. |
| • |
Fisherman's Wharf, Hyde Street Pier boasts the
largest collection of historic ships in the world, by tonnage. |
| • |
During the Civil War, Alcatraz served as a military
prison. |
| • |
Mare Island in Vallejo is the only place on the
West Coast where submarines were built for WWII. |
| • |
Two-thirds of the Liberty and Victory ships in
WWII were built in the Bay Area. |
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|
San
Francisco Bay Fun Facts
| • |
The Golden Gate Strait, the entrance
to San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean, is approximately
three-miles long and one-mile. The strait's currents range from
4.5 knots to 7.5 knots. |
| • |
It is generally accepted that the Golden Gate
Strait was named "Chrysoplae" or Golden Gate by John
C. Fremont, Captain, Topographical Engineers of the U.S. Army
circa 1846. It reminded him of a harbor in Istanbul named Chrysoceras
or "Golden Horn." |
| • |
The Golden Gate Bridge is a flexible bridge,
capable of a 21 foot sway and a 10 foot sag. It can support
the weight of trucks and cars jammed bumper to bumper in all
six lanes, plus pedestrians on every inch of the walkway, even
in gale winds. |
| • |
80,000 miles of wire were used in the Golden
Gate Bridge. |
| • |
The San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge employs
the world's deepest bridge pier, sunk 242 feet below the water
level. |
| • |
The Yerba Buena Tunnel is listed in the Guinness
book of World Records as the largest diameter bore tunnel in
the world. It measures 76 feet wide by 56 feet high. |
| • |
The San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary is a rich
and treasured resource. It's the largest estuarine system on
the west coast of North and South America and includes the waters
of San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay, Suisun Bay and the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta. |
| • |
The San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary encompasses
approximately 1,600 square miles, drains over 40 percent of
California's land, provides drinking water to 20 million Californians
and irrigates 4.5 million acres of farmland and ranches. |
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