But remnants have become hazards once again to modern, deep-draft container vessels - and a potential source of an oil spill should one happen to rip out the hull of a tanker.īar pilots, who steer the biggest ships inside the Golden Gate, know the locations of these rocks as well as commuters know the exit names and lane changes needed to make it over the Bay Bridge. The rounded peaks were simply blasted away to depths thought safe for the ships of the time. Nineteenth century settlers confronted native bedrock knobs jutting up to just a few feet below the surface. People also have reshaped the bay floor in more direct ways.
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The sediments elevated native mudflats by as much as 3.3 feet in Suisun Bay, the report notes, altering tidal circulation patterns throughout the system and leaving permanent "legacy deposits" of mercury-laden sediment, still a problem in some areas anytime something disturbs the bay bottom. Much of what people have done in this vast watershed has had an effect on the bay's bottom, including an estimated 1.4 billion cubic yards of hydraulic mining debris - eight times the amount of material carved out for the Panama Canal - washed down from the Sierra foothills in Gold Rush days. The report focuses on the marks left on the bay floor in the modern era of population growth and industrial activity. But you see a lot of rocks, rock mounds, sand waves, deep holes and depressions, too."Īll told, the estuary known as San Francisco Bay and the adjoining Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta system cover 1,600 square miles and drain about 40 percent of California. "Most people think of the seafloor and the bay floor as flat - just mud, sand and very little else. "There's a lot more relief and perspective than what most people might think you'd find," Chin said. The results are a revelation, even for some experts who have been studying the bay for decades. "We've never had anything like this before," Chin said, crediting a decade of computer-aided mapmaking at the USGS. Although not as conventionally pretty as the view you may be used to seeing, the maps make a complicated and fascinating portrait of the bay on its own terms.
![spintires maps deep mud spintires maps deep mud](https://static.fandomspot.com/images/10/9762/21-altai-mudrunner-map.jpg)
Even in two dimensions on a computer screen, the report offers a radically different view of the bay.