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Health & Fitness

Pacifica Beach Coalition Heads Out To Sea

The Farallon Islands hosts the largest seabird breeding colony in the US and an amazing marine mammal sanctuary. PBC's whale watching trip to the Farallon's & Ano Nueva is a tale of two ships!

By: Amanda Jacobson and Sharron Walker

The Pacifica Beach Coalition (PBC) had a very successful day of whale / leatherback sea turtle watching, sun, and good company off our local coast in early September.  A clear sky was over-head as PBC members, friends, and family boarded the two ships, The New Captain Pete and the Huli Cat, at Pillar Point Harbor in Princeton.  PBC’s president, Lynn Adams and Dr. Chris Pincetich of the Turtle Island Restoration Network organized the trip with the hope of learning about and seeing the spectacular marine life that our ocean harbors. 

The PBC sponsored several junior high students, Amelia Rickson, a sixth grader at Cabrillo School and Reed Blount and Paxton Christner both from IBL school. These students have been cleaning Pacifica's beaches and helping the PBC for years.  Also on board, were naturalists; local Pacifican marine biologist Izzie Szczepaniak and Ellen Gartside of the Gulf of the Farallons National Marine Sanctuary. 

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The New Captain Pete headed out to the isolated Farallon Islands, about 30 miles off shore.  En route, the ship came across harbor porpoises, one humpback whale, a leatherback sea turtle dining on jellyfish, the very strange mola mola, and numerous sea birds.  Once at the Farallons, the members of The New Captain Pete observed numerous harbor seals and sea lions basking in the sun on the island.  Several grey whales surfaced to join the group as they stopped for lunch.  The Farallon Islands are something to see.  Isolated and uninviting, these islands sit amid one of the most productive marine food webs, are home to thousands of marine mammals and birds, and are one of the largest seabird breeding grounds in the Continental U.S.  The island also hosts several biologists studying the birds, great white sharks, and other marine mammals that make the Farallon islands their home. 

The second ship, the Huli Cat, headed in the opposite direction towards Ano Nuevo.  The crew and members of the Huli Cat were escorted out of the harbor by numerous sooty shearwaters.  These dark bodied long distant migrant birds visit our area from September to November.  As the Huli Cat headed south, they spotted a small pod of about 7 humpback whales and were treated to a near 40-minute performance of spouts, breeches and fluke flipping that were accompanied by haunting sounds as the whales rose up from the water.   One of the whales surfaced close enough to the boat to see the barnacles crusted around its blowhole.  Another noteworthy sighting was the Marbled Murrelet.  Naturalist Ellen Gartside usually sees them in the redwoods where they nest, so it was quite a treat to see them on the water. The shearwaters and murrelets were just two of the 13 bird species that were sighted.

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Seeing the ocean animals up-close and in their natural habitat of the great Pacific ocean left members of both ships in awe and continuously inspired to keep working towards conservation efforts and cleaner beaches. The PBC is open to all and welcomes you to join in helping preserve our coastal environment, and they hope you will join them on the next whale-watching trip! The next Pacifica Beach Coalition meeting is Tuesday, October 9th at the Pacifica Library at 6.15pm.  All are invited.  Upcoming cleanups are slated for Rockaway on October 6th, Sharp Park Beach on October 13th, Linda Mar State Beach on October 20th, and Mussel Rock on October 27th.  Habitat restoration at Linda Mar State Beach is scheduled for Sunday, October 28th.  For more information please go to www.pacificabeachcoalition.org

By: Amanda Jacobson and Sharron Walker

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