Kayaking Tomales Bay, California

The pristine beauty of Tomales Bay in Marin County, California struck me as I kayaked there recently. You know the waters are pure when oysters can be farmed there.

I traveled with Blue Waters Kayaking, leaving out of Nick’s Cove, which is four miles north of Marshall along Highway 1. Marshall is on the east side of Tomales Bay, a coastal inlet protected from the sea by the Point Reyes Peninsula.

My guide was Chris Starbird, who had a thorough knowledge of the environment and of the oyster industry.

The weather was ideal, a cool but sunny morning with a light breeze. There could have been a killer wind, which would have made this an ordeal. The skies could have been foggy and overcast because the month was June, but they were clear. Everyone came prepared with foul weather gear, which was prudent, and then rejoiced at the mildness of the day.

I glided over the eel grass, full of fish life. Large concentrations of birds, including one raft of brown pelicans, white pelicans, and cormorants, testified to the presence of large fish schools. In the eelgrass I could see jellyfish too.

The cormorants were so numerous on the trees at Hog Island that the trees were dying, due to the intense urine secreted by the birds.

An occasional harbor seal made a cameo appearance in this maritime drama.

We passed stationary rafts where oysters are grown from seedlings to edible size. One restaurant in the San Francisco Ferry Building, called Hog Island, serves as an outlet for much of this oyster production.

We paddled north on the bay for a couple of hours, with Chris stopping for our group of eight double kayaks every once in a while for a discussion of some aspect of the environment or of oyster production.

Then we paused for lunch at a beach on the Point Reyes side and paddled south along Point Reyes, scanning the hillsides for the tule elk that flourish here. This is a remnant herd of the large population of elk that flourished in the 19th century, nearly went extinct, and then was brought back by careful management and distributed to several locations around Northern California, including Point Reyes. California Kayakers at Tomales Bay, Point Reyes

Blue Waters leads tours both here and for whale watching in Baja, Mexico.

Blue Waters Kayaking is at POB 983, Inverness, CA 94937-0983, 415-669-2600, www.bwkayak.com.

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