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The Bay is a significant biological community that supports a diversity of habitats, including; eelgrass beds, intertidal sand and mud flats, and salt and freshwater marshes. Large subtidal meadows of eelgrass grow in the northern half of Tomales Bay between Pelican Point and Tom's Point where temperatures, salinities, and tidal exchange resemble those in the Pacific.
Thousands of species of birds, invertebrates and plants, and numerous threatened and endangered species inhabit the watershed, such as Brown Pelicans, Coho Salmon, Steelhead Trout, Red-legged Frogs, Western Snowy Plover, Northern Spotted Owl, Tidewater Goby, Steller Sea Lions, and the Point Reyes Jumping Mouse. The watershed is especially important to approximately 20,000 wintering shorebird, seabirds, and waterbirds, among many other bird species that occur both seasonally and year-round (Kelly, 1998). The waters of the Bay are also important to many fish species, including salmon, eels, sturgeon, halibut, endangered Coho Salmon, and the commercially important Pacific Herring that rely, respectively, on its creeks and extensive eelgrass beds to spawn. Several species of marine mammals have been documented in the Bay and there is a resident harbor seal population that breeds there. The seal population ranges between 500 and 800 seals depending on the time of year.
Now available: December 7, 2006 presentation by Suzanne Olyarnik of the Bodega Marine Lab, Seagrass Beds in Tomales Bay: The Unsung Heroes of Habitat. (20.9MB PDF)
