Johnson Pier

(AP) Dianne Feinstein issued a statement late Friday saying Trump’s veto has ensured that more whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other marine species will be needlessly killed, even as we have a proven alternative available.

We're seeing this everyday at Pillar Point Harbor. Discarded masks are strewn about littering streets, sidewalks and parks. They're blown and washed into stormwater drains, creeks and the ocean.

Ten thousand coho salmon swim free.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

(Mercury News) Commercial crabbers in the Monterey Bay area and beyond will have to wait until December to set their pots the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has delayed the opening of Dungeness crab season from Nov. 15, to Dec. 1, citing a risk of whale entanglements occurring. Humpbacks are still actively feeding in the Monterey Bay, and north into Santa Cruz waters, according to Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientist for the California Department of F...ish and Wildlife Marine Region. The agency has been conducting aerial and ship surveys from the Humboldt coast, to the California-Mexico border. There are a large number of humpback whales still foraging off our coast, Bartling said. If we were to allow the fishery to proceed as planned, there’s conceivably a great risk of entanglement. Even still, there are potentials for further delays in the season. In mid-November, the agency will reassess whale entanglement risk and evaluate if the now scheduled Dec. 1 opening date is feasible.

Sign the petition! Tom Mattusch is a candidate for San Mateo County Harbor District in the Nov 3, 2020 election. He’s also an incumbent Harbor Commissioner with a terrible track record that includes killing an elephant for sport and emailing pornography to over 40 people including a fellow board member. Tom Mattusch lobbies to increase trophy hunting on six continents. Since 2011, Tom Mattusch has served as a director on the Safari Club International board and he’s the former... president of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. Tom’s description of a two-mile chase: We were finding a good blood trail with bits of bone occasionally. The African buffalo made it about two miles before we found it and had our way with it. Reasons NOT to vote for Tom: Tom Mattusch killed a Rhinoceros for fun. Tom Mattusch killed an Elephant for fun. Tom Mattusch killed a Hippopotamus for bait and fun. Tom Mattusch killed a Zebra for bait and fun. Tom Mattusch killed a Livingstone Eland for bait and fun. Tom Mattusch killed a ton of Baboons for bait. Tom Mattusch killed a Cape Buffalo for fun. Chased it for two miles before having his way with it. Tom Mattusch killed a Mountain Lion for fun. Tom Mattusch killed an Ibex for fun. Tom Mattusch killed a Caribou for fun. People paid by Tom Mattusch intentionally set wildfires (in the U.S. we call that arson) to deprive the animals he was hunting of their natural cover. Please sign the petition! https://www.change.org/p/don-horsley-remove-harbor-commissi #TomMattusch

Half Moon Bay Review In a tense vote last week, the San Mateo County Harbor Commissioners moved to change their regular evening meetings to 1 p.m. Critics say that will make it harder for working constituents to keep tabs on the special taxation district. The move also makes the Harbor District the exception every other special district and public agency in the county, except for the Board of Supervisors, holds regular meetings in the evening or late afternoon. One speaker..., Dave Olson, urged the board to keep the meeting time the same. This is a meeting that is often heavily attended and if it is during the day when people are working, even during COVID, people have set schedules and people will not be able to attend this meeting who might otherwise, Olson said. It is the height of entitlement to do that to people, said Commissioner Edmundo Larenas, who voted against the move. Larenas was joined by Commissioner Sabrina Brennan in opposing the time change. Each spoke more than once on the issue, referring to the proposal as disappointing and embarrassing. This is really harkening back to the old days of no videotaped meetings, when people used every possible trick in the book to squelch public participation. It doesn’t reflect well on the district to make it so challenging for the public to attend, Brennan said.

(NYT) This month, a team of private wave engineers and scientists with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Southern California Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering determined the wave Maya Gabeira rode that day was 73.5 feet, smashing her own previous record by more than five feet. It wasn’t just the biggest wave ever ridden by a woman. It was the biggest wave surfed by anyone during the 2019-20 winter season, a first for women in professional surfing. Gabeira’s run beat out the 70-foot wave surfed by the Nazaré Tow Challenge champion Kai Lenny, also on Feb. 11. It was a Danica Patrick moment for big wave surfing.

(NYT) Ray Dalio is one of a growing number of billionaire philanthropists seeking to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research. According to Forbes, he has an estimated net worth of $16.9 billion, making him one of the world’s richest individuals. His firm, Bridgewater Associates, is regularly described as the world’s largest hedge fund. In 2016, he bought a lightly used oil drilling ship at a very attractive price and transformed it into his ...dream a vessel for big science, big technology and big storytelling. Mr. Dalio’s aim is to help Homo sapiens connect more intimately with the ocean, with what he calls our world’s greatest asset. OceanXplorer is now making its operational debut, after years of rebuilding, upgrading and outfitting. So is Mr. Dalio, 71, as a new kind of entrepreneur. He sees his glistening, high-tech ship as a superstar not only of oceanic research but of video production, nature television shows and livestreaming events that will open the abyss to an unusually wide audience. It’s going to change things, in part by inspiring a new generation of ocean explorers, Mr. Dalio said. Schoolchildren in classrooms will be able to guide the ship’s undersea robot through the primal darkness, uncovering riots of life.

(Mercury News) Saturday is supposed to be Coastal Cleanup Day. But the coronavirus pandemic has turned the largest volunteer event in California upside down, just as it has with so many other facets of life. The event isn’t cancelled, but it’s different. For the first time in the 36-year history of Coastal Cleanup Day there will be no organized groups handing people bags and helping them record what they found on the third Saturday of September. Instead, the California Coasta...l Commission, which organizes the event every year, is asking people to fly solo. Volunteers have been asked to bring their own bags to beaches, creeks and even their own neighborhoods over the month, especially on Saturday mornings. They should wear gloves and also masks if they are going to be near other people. And they are being asked to record what they find on a free app called Clean Swell that they can download to their phones, so that organizers can continue to track litter trends across the state.

(Washington Post) In a recently published study, the researchers unveiled a simple method to evaluate the effectiveness of various types of masks, analyzing more than a dozen different facial coverings ranging from hospital-grade N95 respirators to bandanas. Of the 14 masks and other coverings tested, the study found that some easily accessible cotton cloth masks are about as effective as standard surgical masks, while popular alternatives such as neck gaiters made of thin, stretchy material may be worse than not wearing a mask at all.

(Mercury News) San Mateo County stands alone in the greater Bay Area, an island surrounded by others whose surging coronavirus cases landed them on California’s COVID-19 monitoring list that requires closure of everything from indoor classrooms, offices and shopping malls to gyms, churches, hair salons and barbershops. Not San Mateo County. As of Monday, you could still go inside for a haircut from East Palo Alto to Pacifica or even workout inside a fitness center in Redwood ...City. And for the moment, San Mateo County stands as the only place in the region that can welcome students back to classrooms without special permission. But there is little cause for celebration. Local officials and businesses expect they may land on the list any day now. San Mateo County’s rate of disease transmission has appeared to exceed the state’s benchmark since early July, but mysteriously it has escaped the state’s ominous designation. San Mateo County is the only coastal California county between Mendocino and the Mexican border not on the state watchlist, after neighboring Santa Cruz County to the south joined it Sunday. But San Mateo County Health Chief Louise F. Rogers acknowledged her county’s 14-day rolling average has topped the state’s benchmark of 100 coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents, which will likely put us on the list soon. In San Mateo County, some schools have clung to hope they can welcome kids back to class with distancing and hygiene protocols. The Archdiocese of San Francisco announced last week that since San Mateo is not currently on the California COVID-19 Watch List, all elementary schools in San Mateo County will reopen with in-person instruction following their approved Reopening Plans on their first scheduled day of school. But the archdiocese noted that they will be required to move to a distance learning program if San Mateo is placed on the California COVID-19 Watch List between now and the first day of school.

(KPIX) California set an alarming new record on Wednesday with nearly 13,000 new coronavirus cases, surpassing New York for the most in the country. Now, a Bay Area health expert is making a grim prediction that COVID-19 may impact our communities for up to ten years. Dr. Jeff Smith is the executive officer in Santa Clara County. Two weeks ago, he predicted the virus will spiral out of control again and now he is even more concerned about the Fall. We’re not even near the ...end of the problem, said Dr. Smith. On Wednesday, Smith made an announcement that he knew, he would eventually have to make. I just told all county employees, not to expect to come back to work or anything near normal until at least the end of February and not even then, he said. Dr. Smith sees a dangerous combination in the Fall. He predicts a big spike of COVID-19 along with the flu. Smith adds, There will never be a vaccine that will be effective. We’ve never been able to develop a vaccine against the common cold or any other coronavirus. Smith said the best-case scenario is to completely shut down for 6 weeks to reduce the number of cases. The worst-case scenario is to stay on the course we are on now. Doing what is equivalent to spot fire treatment and struggling for the next ten years with the same problem, he said.

The Harbor District owes two Pillar Point Harbor fish buyers an apology for taking unnecessary and unethical action against their small family owned businesses. Sadly, Harbor Commissioners Tom Mattusch, Virginia Chang Kiraly and Robert Bernardo voted to economically disadvantaging two of their best tenants.

(Sac Bee) California’s air pollution agency this week is poised to pass a rule that would require truck manufacturers to cut their production of gas-powered vehicles by more than half over the next 15 years and instead sell battery- and hydrogen-powered machines.

(HMB Review, by Libby Leyden) The executive director of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Activities League resigned this month after being placed on administrative leave in February. Barbara Bonilla was placed on administrative leave after a bookkeeper noticed irregularities in financial records related to the group’s account, according to San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Lt. Stephanie Josephson. There is an active investigation underway by the California Attorney ...General Office to determine if there is any criminal activity, she said. Since being placed on administrative leave on Feb. 10, Bonilla has resigned and is no longer affiliated with the Activities League, county sources say. It is not clear whether she is the focus of the Attorney General’s investigation. The Activities League is a nonprofit organization started in 1997 when former Sheriff and current county Supervisor Don Horsley aimed to start a program to strengthen the relationships between youth, communities and law enforcement. The program started serving 1,000 kids a year in the North Fair Oaks area near Redwood City. It’s since expanded to 12 locations, including the Coastside, and serves more than 11,000 youth per year countywide, according to SAL’s website. The SAL is active on the Coastside, sponsoring reading groups, academic tutoring, women’s empowerment groups and gentlemen mentoring groups among other activities. The Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber of Commerce and Visitors’ Bureau recently honored one of the deputies who run the programming for SAL in Half Moon Bay as Role Model of the Year. San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe is among 15 people on the group’s board of directors. He said that he is aware the Attorney General’s investigation but did not comment further. He recused himself from participating in any investigation because of his affiliation with the Activities League. Horsley said he was only aware that Bonilla was on administrative leave. He said she did a remarkable job serving as executive director. I think the SAL program run by the Sheriff’s Office is one of the best groups for young people in the county, he said. Bonilla is a member of the Redwood City Rotary Club and also served as Sheriff Carlos Bolanos campaign manager in 2018. Bolanos said he has known Bonilla for years and considered her a friend. He added that he expected the Attorney General to complete its report within three weeks and that it would inform prosecutors on whether charges would be filed in the case. Calls to the Attorney General were not immediately returned.