San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay, and the Golden Gate

San Francisco Bay is a shallow bay in northern California, along the Pacific Ocean. It is an estuary because salt water from the ocean mixes with fresh water from rivers, especially the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. These rivers carry water from the Sierra Nevada mountains through the Central Valley. Water from about forty percent of California enters the bay.

The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers enter the Suisun Bay. There water flows through the Carquinez Strait to meet with the Napa River at the entrance to San Pablo Bay. This connects at its south end to the San Francisco Bay. The San Francisco Bay is connected to the Pacific by a strait called the Golden Gate. However, this entire group of interconnected bays is often called "the San Francisco Bay".

San Francisco Bay lies in the US state of California and is surrounded by a region known as the San Francisco Bay Area, that includes the big cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.

The Bay covers somewhere between 400 [1] and 1,600 [2] square miles (1,040 to 4,160 square kilometres), depending on which sub-bays (such as San Pablo Bay), estuaries, wetlands, and so on are included in the measurement.

Photography

The city of Berkeley, the Bay and Marin County in the background as seen from the Claremont Canyon reserve
Mount Tamalpais view across San Pablo Bay at Point Pinole Regional Shoreline in Richmond

San Francisco Bay Media

Aerial panorama of the northern Bay, the Bay Bridge, Golden Gate, and Marin Headlands on a clear morning. November 2014 photo by Doc Searls.
Population density and low elevation coastal zones in San Francisco Bay (2010). The San Francisco Bay is especially vulnerable to sea level rise.
Cañizares Map of San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay Shoreline Tablet
Camera location37° 29′ 51″ N, 122° 06′ 35″ W
Duck hunting on the Bay, 1915
Mallard II, a clamshell dredge built in 1936 and used into the 21st century to dredge levees for Cargill's salt ponds in the bay
San Francisco Bay c. 1770–1820
South Bay salt ponds and wildlife refuges, aerial view from the southeast
San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, looking southeast towards the City and East Bay. Alcatraz is the small islet in the upper-middle left.