IN THIS ISSUE

Successes of the Sanctuary: The Luckenbach

Celebrating 25 years of protecting our ocean wilderness beyond the Golden Gate

Volunteer Spotlight:
Sandcrab Monitor Francisca Hamilton

In the News: The Oldest and Fattest Females Produce the Best Babies

Wildlife Spotlight:
Gray Whale (Eschrichtius robustus)

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Sage Tezak and Joe Mortenson attended the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego, December 12-1, 2005. Conference presentations consisted of a variety of cutting-edge research, and a special highlight was information on The Tagging of Pacific Pelagic (TOPP) research project which uses animals from the Pacific to gather data about their ecosystem. TOPP scientists have tagged 2,000 animals in order to obtain an"organism's eye" view of their world.

The San Francisco Ocean Film Festival made a huge splash this past weekend, January 13th-15th with independent cinematic marine masterpieces. Don't miss this film festival next year!

Successes of the Sanctuary: The Luckenbach

In the pre-dawn hours of July 14, 1953, in a dense fog, the freighter SS Jacob Luckenbach collided with its inbound sister ship, the SS Hawaiian Pilot. By the time the vessels noticed each other’s fog signals and lights it was too late; the shuddering impact convulsed the ships. The Jacob Luckenbach, its hull torn open, began to sink and the crippled Hawaiian Pilot rescued the entire Luckenbach crew with only minor injuries. The 469-foot Luckenbach, laden with heavy machinery and 475,000 gallons of fuel oil, sank in just over 170 feet of water 17 miles west-southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. For decades the wreck sat, silently leaking its lethal cargo of oil until Beachwatch volunteers found an unprecedented number of oiled birds. Continued >>

Celebrating 25 years of protecting our ocean wilderness beyond the Golden Gate

Happy New Year, Ocean Stewards! 2006 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. In upcoming months, our newsletter will feature anecdotes and reminisces from those who were involved in the Sanctuary’s 1981 designation and the nascent environmental movement.

In 1969, an environmental disaster of unprecedented proportion occurred off California’s coast and sparked the movement to protect our ocean waters. Continued >>

Volunteer Spotlight: Sandcrab Monitor Francisca Hamilton

Interviewed by Amy Dean

Francisca is a California Academy of Sciences Intern and FMSA Student Monitoring Volunteer, where she is one of several students who monitor the distribution and abundance of the Pacific mole crab (Emerita analoga) at Sanctuary beaches.

What kinds of thing do you do as a Careers in Science Intern at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS)? I’ve done so many things. But, we have three main responsibilities as interns. We teach science on the main floor, we help another scientist with his/her research, and the last thing that I do is program administration. Continued >>

In the News: The Oldest and Fattest Females Produce the Best Babies

Do we assume incorrectly that only the young reproduce the best?

Once again, the public has decided to say no to overfishing by supporting National Standard 1, but are fisheries management practices enough to protect fish populations? New evidence suggests it isn't. This is the assumption: take the biggest animals out of a population, because they are the oldest, they’ve already bred and contributed successfully to their population’s success. We assume that this protects fish populations, but recent studies suggest the oldest, fattest, biggest females also produce the best larvae and the best chance for survival for their young. Continued >>

Wildlife Spotlight: Gray Whale (Eschrichtius robustus)

These majestic gray whales make an annual trek of 12,000 miles roundtrip from their summer feeding grounds in the arctic seas to their breeding grounds in the lagoons of Baja California, Mexico, where they are known as la ballena gris. Cruising at 3 to 6 miles per hour, these large baleen whales hug the shoreline closely as they travel past the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary this winter, offering us superb opportunities to view their mottled gray finless bodies as the southbound migration continues in full swing this month. The State of California Tourism Office predicts January 21st as the peak migration time.  Continued >>