Visitors to the Tiburon shoreline may notice a new addition — a 5 ft. tall, bright yellow buoy anchored just offshore San Francisco State University’s Estuary and Ocean Science (EOS) Center. The Bay Ocean Buoy (BOB) and its companion mooring for Marine Acidification Research Inquiry (MARI) represent the first effort to perform long-term scientific monitoring of ocean acidity and carbon dioxide in the waters of the Bay.

Tethering BOB to the Boat
The launch of BOB expands efforts to monitor the effects of ocean acidification and hypoxia in the Bay (photo: Karina Nielson).

Researchers from San Francisco State University and UC Davis as well as other partners will learn how global climate change and changing ocean chemistry are interacting with local habitat restoration and conservation efforts.

The project is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the San Francisco Estuary Partnership and by the Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS), a regional association of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System.

Through a partnership with San Francisco Estuary Partnership, and funded by the EPA’s San Francisco Water Quality Improvement Fund and the County Parks Charter Fund, the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department safely removed over 3,800 cubic yards of toxic pavement from the paved calcine trails within the park and replaced them with new trails. This project implements the Guadalupe River TMDL for mercury by directly removing a significant source of mercury from the watershed.