Tomales Point Photograph courtesy of Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary
	Location Along the coast of California north and west of San Francisco Protected Area 1,255 square miles (3,250 square kilometers) Date Designated January 1981 Habitats • Coastal beaches • Rocky shores • Mudflats and tidal flats • Salt marsh • Estuaries • Pelagic, or open, ocean • Deep benthos, continental shelf and slope Key Species • Dungeness crab • Gray whale • Steller sea lion • Common murre • Ashy storm-petrel Cultural Resources • Shipwrecks • Fossil beds

Every spring the cries of hundreds of thousands of cormorants, common murres, and other seabirds rise up from the craggy islets of the Gulf of the Farallones sanctuary, an expanse larger than the state of Rhode Island that lies north and west of San Francisco. In addition to hosting the largest concentration of breeding seabirds in the continental United States, the sanctuary lures thousands of seals and sea lions to its fish-laden waters.

The large marine mammal population means that the great white shark is often on the prowl, making diving a dangerous proposition. Less fearsome forms of marine life abound in the coastal mudflats, beaches, estuaries, and rocky intertidal zones that also make up this geologically and biologically diverse refuge. The sanctuary’s gently sloping seafloor is strewn with over 100 shipwrecks, of which the oldest is a 16th-century Spanish galleon.

For more information,
check out NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones profile:
http://www.sanctuaries.nos.noaa.gov/oms/
omsfarallones/omsfarallones.html

Address
Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary
Fort Mason
Building #201
San Francisco, CA 94123

Communication
Tel: +1 415 561 6622
Fax: +1 415 561 6616
E-mail: farallones@nms.noaa.gov
Sanctuary Web site: http://www.gfnms.nos.noaa.gov/