INTRODUCTION TO THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY ESTUARY 
Michael Josselyn 
Paul F. Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies 
San Francisco State University 
It is a pleasure to welcome our audience to a day-long 
presentation on San Francisco Bay, our Nation's second largest 
estuary and perhaps also its youngest in terms of scientific 
research and understanding. As we shall hear today, San 
Francisco Bay is a key region in the management of California's 
water, and we greatly appreciate the Congressional interest 
given to this important national resource. Currently, the House 
of Representatives has passed an amendment to the Clean Water 
Act which designates a greater role for the U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency in managing our Nation's estuaries, and we 
look forward to working with Congress to ensure the San 
Francisco Bay estuary is included in that effort. 
Before I begin my introduction to the San Francisco Bay 
estuary, I would like to acknowledge the support and assistance 
provided by Dr. James Thomas, Acting Director, and the staff of 
the Estuarine Programs Office. We are pleased to be the sixth 
in what is an excellent series of seminars on the Nation's 
estuaries. In addition, I wish to acknowledge the support of 
the agencies of the individual speakers, especially the U.S. 
Geological Survey, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and 
the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9. 
My role is to set the stage for the following speakers. 
Many of the audience may have seen the San Francisco Bay region 
previously; others may have only limited knowledge of its 
history, geomorphology, and the problems. We, as estuarine 
scientists, are not as fortunate as our colleagues along the 
eastern and Gulf coasts of the United States, in that large 
estuaries are a rare phenomena along the precipitous coastline 
of the western United States. More typical are small coastal 
rivers and streams entering the ocean over sand bars with narrow 
coastals marshes behind the dunes. Larger rivers such as the 
Columbia support more extensive estuarine habitats within the 
confines of the river valley. However, only in a few areas have 
the coastal mountains opened to a broad semi-enclosed basin 
which supports typical habitats associated with the estuaries 
environment: tidal marshes, mudflats, and protected open 
water. Coupled with the freshwater inflow from the Sacramento 
and San Joaquin Rivers, the San Francisco Bay basin provides a 
unique physical environment which supports a great number of 
9 
