Be amazed at the Bay Area Science Festival! Photo: Bay Area Science Festival.

The Bay Area Science Festival, a 10-day celebration of science, starts this week. There are over 50 exciting events throughout the Bay Area, including hikes, lectures, and concerts. From a day of hands-on activities with Stanford’s Genetics department to a hawk talk in the Marin Headlands, from an exploration of food at the farmers’ market to a screening of the movie Contact with astronomer Jill Tarter (on whom Jodie Foster’s character was based), there is something for everyone.

Here are some of the highlights: MythBuster Adam Savage will talk with author Mary Roach about her book Packing for Mars. Science writer Carl Zimmer will talk with two UCSF scientists about tiny friends and foes in Gut Check: The Hidden World of Microbes. RadioLab will be live at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall.

Check out Dinosaurs vs. Robots at the Lawrence Hall of Science on Sunday, October 30.

At Dinosaurs vs. Robots at the Lawrence Hall of Science, you can do hands-on activities to see for yourself which is the most awesome: paleontology or engineering. KQED will moderate a discussion, The Challenge and Promise of Artificial Intelligence, with researchers from Microsoft and Google at the Computer History Museum in San Jose. And there are three Discovery Days, packed with free shows, exhibits, and games. The Discovery Days are at Cal State East Bay (10/29), Infineon Raceway (11/5), and AT&T Park (11/6). If you go, keep an eye out for QUEST’s table! Find more fun stuff on the calendar—be sure to click over to see the events in November, too.

The Bay Area Science Festival is part of a growing movement to celebrate science in the community. The festivals bring together different organizations and individuals to engage diverse audiences in science. The Bay Area Science Festival is organized by the Science and Heath Education Partnership at the University of California, San Francisco—along with dozens of partners. Science festivals started in the UK; now there are annual festivals in Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass. And last year the first USA Science and Engineering Festival descended on the National Mall in Washington DC. To find a science festival near you, check out this map.

I’ll be representing the Lawrence Hall of Science at the Discovery Day in AT&T Park on Sunday November 6—the Festival’s finale. Hope to see you there!

From November 12 – 13th, you'll spend 48 hours meeting similar minds, bringing together ideas and trying to show off your new creation at the end of it all. It's fast, furious and nonstop (and should probably be sponsored by Red Bull).

Registration is limited. You can register on its site and check out some of the cool projects being proposed for this year. They include an International Space Station Notify Globe, Hacking your Genome, Geoscience Hardware Hacks and more. Have you got a great science idea to hack on? Contribute it to the Science Hack Day wiki!

NASA embraces science enthusiasts with its Tweetups.

This past Thursday I had the pleasure of being invited to a tweetup at NASA Ames. For the uninitiated, a tweetup is a meetup, where those interested meet and tweet. NASA has embraced social media with a force, and offers tweetups at its various locations to encourage the public to learn more about NASA initiatives.

For 100 space nerds this was a dream come true. While I've been a fan of NASA all my life, this was a unique opportunity to interact with scientists working on Kepler, SOFIA and aeronautics. Fellow tweetup participant, Chris Hammond posted this fun, fast paced video of how to day unfolded. I've also posted photos of NASA Ames on Flickr.

NASA Ames is at the heart of the Kepler mission, NASA's project devoted to finding habitable planets. As you may have read on the QUEST blog, NASA's Kepler mission discovered its first Earth-size planet in a habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. We heard from Natalie Batalha, deputy science team lead for the NASA Kepler mission who explained the challenges facing Kepler and the huge opportunities we may reap from such a mission.

According to Ms. Batalha, the data we are recovering from Kepler will keep scientists busy for decades as they search for habitable planets. She was careful distinguish that Kepler's mission was not about finding life, but about finding planets in ecosystems not dissimilar to our own that could hold the possibility of being habitable. The search for actual life on those planets will likely be up to a future NASA team dedicated to that purpose.

If you'd like to join a future tweetup, the best place to find information is by following @NASATweetup on Twitter. The next event is scheduled for March 19th at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

If you prefer to stay closer to the Bay Area, I would highly recommend going to see Natalie Batalha speak at San Jose State University on February 16th. You can get more information on that speaking engagement here.

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These Chinese students are kicking our butts in science.

New test results confirm what many of us have feared: U.S. students suck at science. These new numbers are not only bad for our reputation, they spell trouble for the future U.S. economy and possibly the world. Maybe President Obama is right and we are in the middle of another “Sputnik” moment.

The most recent test results put us on par with France, the Czech Republic and Hungary and miles away from the likes of China, South Korea, Finland and Australia. The top countries will be producing the best scientists who will drive economies forward. Those of us in the middle of the pack will either fall behind economically or stay competitive either by attracting good scientists from elsewhere or by changing our education system to match the Finns or the Aussies.

Of course this is only true if these results hold for top performing students, too. Since most scientists come from this group, if the top performing students in the U.S. hold their own against their counterparts in other countries, then we may be OK.

The testing folks provide this great tool, the International Data Explorer, that lets you parse the data in lots of different ways. And no matter how I sliced the data, we are in the middle of the pack. If I look at wealthy folks, or students who have educated parents or students that have scientists as parents, each category is still behind lots of different countries.

So we can’t blame the test results on immigrants, the poor or any of our usual convenient scapegoats. We are simply doing a poor job of teaching science. Such a poor job that our economy is going to be in real trouble in the not so distant future.

And it isn’t just our economy that is threatened. A general U.S. public that is not up to snuff scientifically might just put our world at risk too.

A scientifically illiterate public will fear vaccines and GM foods, won’t understand and so won’t believe in global warming and so on. This could mean a spread of disease, starvation and environmental catastrophes just to name a few.

It is important to remember that none of this is inevitable. We can ramp up our science education so that we train the best scientists in the world and maybe even create a scientifically informed and savvy public in the process.

In fact, Massachusetts has done just that in the last 15 or 20 years. If it were a country, Massachusetts would now be in the upper ranks of countries. We need to look to Massachusetts for how to improve other states' failing education systems.

Massachusetts shows that with the will and money to do it, we can turn our educational system around. Sadly, though, I am not sure most of the country will. Sputnik came with the fear of nuclear holocaust. Our current crisis comes with the fear of future irrelevance and a decreased standard of living.

The current risks are not life and death and so it will be much harder to mobilize the government, the public, and the unions to transform our education system. I guess our dominance economically and scientifically was good while it lasted.

A fun interactive that lets you compare math, science and reading scores between states and different countries.

State by state math scores compared to other countries.

Why this crisis will be harder to overcome than the Sputnik crisis.

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Finally a reliable scientific resource on the web.

A really interesting project called Scitable recently came to my attention. This site is sponsored by the same folks who publish Scientific American, Nature, and many other scientific journals and magazines. It is intended to provide students, teachers, professors and the public with easy to read, understandable materials about science.

From a quick look, it looks like a great website for advanced high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, scientists, and the well educated. If this is you, take a look here and let me know what you think.

Below is an email interview I did with the guy who runs the site, Vikram Savkar. It focuses on what Scitable offers and some ways to heal our ailing science education system.

Many of our readers will not have heard of Scitable before. Can you please give a brief history of the group and what you hope to accomplish.

Scitable is an open, high quality science teaching and learning site from Nature Publishing Group, publishers of Nature, Scientific American, and a number of other science journals and magazines. We launched Scitable because we feel strongly that inspiring and enabling today’s students to immerse themselves in science is crucial for the future of the planet. Without dedicated scientific researchers, or at least a science-literate population, we won’t be able to make the progress we need as a global community on sustainability, food security, diseases, and so on. Our goal is to make access to very high quality science education information and compelling scientific experiences a common denominator for students regardless of their socioeconomic or geographic background.

Can you please tell our readers who the sources are for the information on your site and how often information is updated? Do you see it as a more reliable source for people compared to what else is out there on the web (e.g. Wikipedia)?

We actively commission the pieces you see on the site from leading scientists, faculty, or science journalists, depending on the subject matter, and every piece is put through a formal review by other experts in the field. The result is that the information is high quality: current, carefully thought through, scientifically accurate, and designed explicitly for use by teachers and students. We update our pieces on average once a month . . . often when a member of the community points out a topic they think we should have covered but didn’t; we’ll route the opinion to our reviewers and if everyone agrees, we will update the article. Yes, our intention is very much for Scitable to be a marriage of the reliability and quality of information that we’re all familiar with from journals and formal publications with the ease of discovery of use that’s characteristic of sites like Wikipedia.

What is your favorite feature of Scitable? Why?

I sometimes use the search box in the People area of Scitable to figure out whether we have any student or faculty users from far-flung parts of the world . . . and usually find that we do. (Mauritius: yes. Swaziland: no. We’ll have to work on that.) We’re really trying to create a kind of global classroom – a place where students from any part of the world can collaborate with researchers, teachers, and fellow students who are interested in the same subject but potentially thousands of miles away.

Can you tell us a little bit about the resources that are available for the public, students, and/or teachers at your site? How easy is it for these people to access and use these resources?

The heart of Scitable is the extensive (and growing) content library. We have more than 600 readings in genetics, cell biology, and ecology right now, and we’re adding more across the life and physical sciences this year. We have mini-textbooks in the life sciences as well as on special topics like scientific communication and career planning. And our learning paths allow students to progress through “hot” issues like biotechnology at their own pace. We also have a strong set of classroom tools, which teachers can use to run private online research spaces for their students. In just five or ten minutes, a teacher can create a customized reading list (using content from Scitable or from anywhere on the web) and enroll students in discussions, news feeds, and so on. All of this is free. The bulk of the content doesn’t require registration; people do have to register to build or join a classroom or take a learning path. Overall, it’s really easy for people to learn through the site . . . our users are growing rapidly every month, and they come from all walks of life: students, teachers, researchers, parents, veterinarians (yes, I’ve noticed a lot of these!), genetic counselors, and more.

What do you see as the primary problem with science education today? If you had a magic wand and could fix science education, what would you do? Would it differ between K-12 and undergraduate education?

I don’t think there is a primary problem, I think that the overall quality of science education is driven by the convergence of a lot of factors: Do parents encourage kids to tinker with nature and science? Are there enough well trained science teachers, and are they incentivized to stay at tough schools? How widely available are good lab equipment and other learning materials? How successful are college instructors at reminding students of the “magic” behind the memorization? If I had a magic wand, I would wave it at all of these. If I had to pick one . . . that’s tough . . . I would probably work on ensuring that there are highly qualified teachers (which means not only understanding science but having a solid background in teaching methods) in all schools, including and particularly under resourced ones. But, really, the key point for me is that there isn’t just one thing to focus on, we must take a holistic approach.

Who is the primary audience for Scitable? K-12 students, K-12 educators, undergraduates, the general public, graduate students, etc.?

The audience in formal education ranges from advanced high school classes to junior/senior level undergraduate classes . . . we have a broad set of content in the site, so there is much there for everyone within that range. The audience among the general public seems to be encouragingly varied, there are so many different kinds of people whom I have seen find their way to the site. People really do instinctively get excited by science; when we provide a way for them to easily find good answers to their questions, they will take advantage of it.

Do you see Scitable as a resource for that day in the not too distant future when everyone knows their own DNA sequence? Are there any resources available and accessible for the average person at your site? Or is it mostly focused right now on aspiring or actual scientists?

There are many resources for the average person, and we plan to publish more. A good example is our growing collection of Spotlights, which are essentially “home pages” for topics like Alternative Energy and Acoustic Pollution, intended specifically to help general learners go beyond the newspaper headlines and learn the actual science behind hot-button issues. I don’t see us ever helping people to make medical judgments of any kind, but I do see us helping a broad set of citizens to understand something substantial about the fields of research that can lead to a vastly improved quality of life for all of us. And to vote in ways that help make this future a reality.

A previous blog on the difficulties of finding good scientific information on the web.

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Elegant Chilean flamingos help visitors gain a new perspective on our changing environment in the Monterey Bay Aquarium's newest special exhibit: "Hot Pink Flamingos: Stories of Hope in a Changing Sea." ©David Barnhardt/Akron Zoo.

Reported by Marjorie Sun.

The California Academy of Sciences and the Monterey Bay Aquarium have a big advantage that some educational institutions in other parts of the country do not: most of their visitors — who tend to be Californians — believe that climate change is real. That means their global warming exhibits can focus on solutions, for example, rather than laying out the basics of atmospheric science.

Californians’ concern about climate change has translated into political support for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. According to survey results released in July by the Public Policy Institute of California, two-thirds of Californians strongly back the pioneering state law known as AB 32. The law requires a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. And the recent defeat of Proposition 23 by 22 percentage points would appear to affirm that support (though in 15 counties, support for 23 was at least 47%).

Listen to the QUEST radio story When Teaching Climate Gets Controversial.

Californians appear to buck some national trends on climate change issues. A declining number of Americans say there is solid evidence that the world is warming. The number dropped from 71% in April 2008, to 57% in October 2009, according to a study last year by the Pew Research Center. Adults who believe that climate change is a “very serious problem” declined sharply in the same time period.

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer details in a recent, in-depth article that billionaires David and Charles Koch, titans of the oil industry, have been spending millions of dollars waging a covert disinformation campaign to thwart climate change legislation in the United States.

Aboard the Bio-Bus

A local organization has launched a mobile counter-offensive. The Alliance for Climate Education, a non-profit based in Oakland, has created a hip, multimedia presentation spiced with animation and rock music to reach teens. Think "An Inconvenient Truth" goes MTV. The alliance has shown it to more than 420,000 high-schoolers across the nation in the past year. The presentation teaches teens the basics about climate change and urges them to “do one thing” to fight it.

Alliance staffers also have tricked out an old school bus with clean tech, driving it to schools and museums to showcase renewable technology. The blue bio-bus runs on used cooking oil collected from restaurants. Solar panels on the bus charge cell phones and computers on board.

A cow wearing a gas mask created controversy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium's climate change exhibit. Photo Credit: Craig Miller

Unmasking the Cow

Meanwhile, keeping the climate change exhibits up-to-date scientifically is a concern for the museums. At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, outfitting a life-size model cow with a gas mask was prompted in part by a 2006 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization. The FAO study said that industrial production of livestock in general, including cattle, pigs, and poultry, accounts for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions. But another FAO study released in April — about the same time the climate change exhibit opened — examined the GHG emissions for the dairy industry alone, not beef production. It concluded that dairy production contributes just four percent of emissions. The study (PDF download), along with howls of protests from the local dairy industry, helped convince the aquarium to unmask the Holstein.

One last tidbit about interactive exhibits: One of the most popular — common to the Academy and the Monterey Bay Aquarium — is surprisingly low-tech. Thousands of visitors write on comment cards about what they can do to fight climate change and hang them on display boards there. One of them, in a child’s handwriting, read “Reduce, reuse, recycle and homework is bad for the environment."

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The USA Science and Engineering Festival's mission was to “re-invigorate the interest of our nation’s youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by producing and presenting the most compelling, exciting, educational and entertaining science gatherings in the United States”.

This past weekend, I was on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. with a notebook and a very good pair of walking shoes. I spent the weekend exploring the inaugural expo of the USA Science and Engineering Festival. The festival’s mission was to “re-invigorate the interest of our nation’s youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by producing and presenting the most compelling, exciting, educational and entertaining science gatherings in the United States”. It was a great weekend that re-invigorated my passion for science and presenting it to the public.

The Expo encompassed booths from groups around the United States, robotic stations sponsored by Lockheed Martin, mobile museums and medical vans and a variety of stage performances in celebration of science, technology, math and engineering. Booths were spread out over the National Mall in front of the capital as well as the Wilson and Freedom Plazas in downtown DC. There was so much variety of interests, issues and fields represented that I learned about a range of subjects from dark matter to biomes.

There were a few things that I took away from the experience. First off, low-tech is still a tried and true way to convey science. Kids were crowded around the booths that offered a hands-on approach. One station showed the make up of the universe with marbles and it worked great. Another booth conveyed physics by showing how much weight a boat could withstand and still float. Those booths with TV screens and a media approach just didn’t hold attention if the kids but those that had an experiment to work on were packed. The one exception was the robotic stations. Kids were driving robots in arenas playing soccer and were engrossed in the activity.

The Expo also gave me a renewed respect for higher learning institutions. Across the board, some of the best science conveyed was coming out from University science departments and student run science clubs. They did a fantastic job. I was also pleasantly surprised to see so much content directed towards girls and women in the sciences. Overall, I was really inspired by the Expo and more importantly all the kids and family that were engaged throughout the weekend.

One of the swag items I got at the Expo was a button that said “I am a Scientific American” which seemed to sum up my experience at the Expo; I felt truly inspired about the huge numbers of groups that came together to share about science. In the Fall of 2011, UCSF will be presenting an inaugural Bay Area Science Festival in our locale. I can’t wait to see how the festival materializes and conveys the rich science and technology we have right here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I hope there will be a button that reads “I am a Scientific San Franciscan”.

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Fun, ghoulish activities for this Halloween.

Looking for what to do this Halloween weekend? Here are several activities for technology and science enthusiasts that can please both families and adults alike.

For the family

Halloween Afternoon at the Exploratorium
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Noon–4pm

Celebrate Halloween at the Exploratorium where they will have a variety of activities for the family. Creepy crawlies will be on display thanks to The San Francisco Bay Area Tarantula Society. If insects aren't your thing, check out the garden of carnivorous plants or join local artist Irma Ortiz as she demonstrates how to handcraft Calaveras, or sugar skulls, in preparation for Dia de los Muertos.

Lawrence Hall of Science
Weekend, October 30-31
1:30 – 4pm

Visit the Animal Discovery Room and hang out with all the creepy animals LHS has to offer. Touch or hold some of the slimiest, hairiest, creepy-crawliest creatures and learn more about those animals, and why they may not be as creepy as you think.

Academy of Sciences
Saturday, October 30, 9:30 -5:00 pm
Sunday, October 31, 11:00-5:00 pm

Celebrate Halloween with chills and thrills at the Academy. Enjoy ghoulish music, join a costume parade, or take in the performances by Velocity Circus. Check out the live animal demonstrations and get up close with cockroaches, snakes, and other creepy crawly critters.

For the inner child

Instructables
Friday, October 29
6pm

Instructables invites you to come to their headquarters in Downtown SF and join in a costumed show and tell. Bring your own DIY creation to show off and meet other makers. This is a participatory event, so if you're not bringing an item to show, please bring food or drink to share. Costumes are encouraged!

Journey to the End of the Night
Saturday, October 30
7pm, Justin Herman Plaza

While not strictly a science or technology event, this event is definitely worth a mention. Engage in a citywide game of tag, as you run from location to location with Journey to the End of the Night. Players race through San Francisco to a series of checkpoints, while avoiding being caught by chasers. Those who fall will become chasers themselves, out to pursue their former friends and allies.

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Artist's rendering of the LCROSS spacecraft and its upper stage Centaur rocket. Image courtesy of NASA.

Reported for KQEDnews.org.

Last year, NASA scientists in Mountain View made international headlines when they crashed a rocket into a permanently shadowed crater on the moon's south pole and announced they had found water there.

On Thursday, they unveiled new findings about the amount of water on the moon and a "treasure trove" of gases and metals buried within the lunar soil, which along with the water, could be extracted to make rocket fuel on the moon. The research appears in the October 22nd edition of the journal Science.

"If you took the 10 kilometer region around the LCROSS site, that is said to have 5 percent concentration of water, that would be equivalent to a billion gallons of water," said Tony Colaprete, the principal investigator on the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission to search for water on the moon. A billion gallons is enough to fill 1500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The lunar scientists now suspect that there is 50 percent more water than they had previously estimated.

Colaprete also said that given the large number of craters on the moon, which function as "cold traps" that accumulate molecules of water over billions of years, "potentially, you could have 10 to 100 times that total amount of water."

"We found some of the coldest places in the solar system and they’re on our moon. These places have temperatures that are so cold that they can preserve water ice in a vacuum for billions of years," said Michael Wargo, a chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The lunar water is thought to exist in "oases," or deposits, instead of being uniformly distributed across the moon. It also exists mainly in the form of water ice crystals.

"That's good news because water ice is very much a friendly resource to work with. It's easy to extract and turn it into a resource, you don’t have to warm it very much, you can pull it out of the dirt really easy," said Colaprete, who described a process of extraction whereby the ice-bearing lunar soil could be heated to 100 degrees Celsius to collect the water vapor.

During the live NASA teleconference, the scientists said that the amount of other materials they detected on the moon – including mercury, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, sodium and silver – may make up as much as 20 percent of the lunar dust plume kicked up by the impact of the LCROSS rocket.

Both discoveries could be instrumental in one day making it easier to set up a lunar colony, the researchers said, because of the high cost of transporting materials to the moon, which can exceed thousands of dollars per pound.

Last year, NASA shot a Centaur rocket carrying the LCROSS and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and in October, they deliberately crashed the rocket at 6,000 mph into Cabeus, a cold, dark crater on the moon’s south pole that hasn’t seen sunlight in billions of years.

The impact sent up a plume of lunar soil and debris several miles over the crater’s rim, exposing it to sunlight. Meanwhile, the spacecraft collected data for four crucial minutes, allowing scientists to analyze the chemical makeup of the ejected lunar soil, before it too crashed into the crater. Since then, the LCROSS team has been sifting through the information to glean clues about earth’s 4.5 billion year-old neighbor.

So how did the water get there? According to Colaprete, it’s likely a combination of sources. One way it could have arrived is from solar wind depositing hydrogen into the lunar granules which contain oxygen atoms. Another way is from impacts by icy comets slamming into the moon, a theory supported by the observation of these other chemicals and hydrocarbons that also exist in comets.

The last manned lunar mission was Apollo 17 in 1972. In recent years, the U.S., along with Japan, China and India have launched various unmanned lunar mission. NASA is scheduled to launch two other lunar exploratory missions, GRAIL and LADEE in 2011 and 2012, respectively, to map the moon’s interior structure and further analyze the moon’s dust.

Sometime in the next several decades, a new generation of astronauts may return to set up a lunar outpost, setting the stage for future missions to Mars.

“In the next 20 years, next 10 years, you’re going to see the moon continue to expand in its diversity, and its complexity and its interest, among the communities of both laypeople and professionals and that’s going to pull us there,” said Colaprete.

Instruments currently orbiting the moon are allowing the scientists to map in much greater detail hydrogen-rich, lunar "permafrost" regions that may contain deposits of water ice and other compounds that could help support a future lunar colony.

But before that lunar colony can be set up, there has to be a more sophisticated understanding of where exactly the water is and how easy or difficult it will be to mine when it's found.

"The next step is to look at smaller and smaller scales at the lunar surface of the distribution of water as a resource," said Colaprete.

"If I were an astronaut walking along, how far do I have to walk before I find some water and how extensive are these pockets of water?"

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The scientists on the Farallones live in the old lighthouse keepers’ houses, built in the late 1800’s.

The chill of the fog and wind cut through you, the kelp flies swarm, the overpoweringly acrid smell of years-worth of bird guano wafts through the air and loud, incessant cackle of hundreds, even thousands of sea gulls, could drive even the hardiest of souls away from this desolate outcropping of granite in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  The animals wouldn’t want it any other way.  And neither would the researchers and biologists stationed at the Farallones.

While only 27 miles off the coast of San Francisco, for the human inhabitants, life can also seem isolated and lonely.  They have a very small neighborhood.  Only two houses still stand on Southeast Farallon.  Today the old lighthouse keepers’ houses, originally built in the late 1800’s, house the small team of researchers from PRBO Conservation Science.  A bit of Victorian civilization in an otherwise completely wild world.

It is a rare privilege to be able to set foot on the Farallon Islands.  As rugged as this place may seem, it is a fragile and extremely sensitive environment.  As a National Wildlife Refuge, the area is strictly off limits to the public.  Each year only a few dozen people are allowed to be hoisted onto South Farallon Island, and most, if not all, are there specifically to conduct scientific research.  The humans there now tread lightly.  QUEST was invited out to the islands to get an inside look at this living laboratory and meet some of the people doing important scientific research on such wide ranging topics as global climate change to highly specific studies on sea bird breeding rates.

Each day on the Farallones might bring new surprises.  To get an idea what they witnessed on the islands this week, researchers sent back a number of reports.

“October 12th was a fantastic day for whales around the islands – biologists noted the 3 resident Gray Whales, an incredible 15 endangered Blue Whales and 93 Humpback Whales! Even more amazing were the 265 Risso’s Dolphins, 20 Pacific White-sided Dolphins, 12 Northern Right Whale Dolphins, and 5 Dall’s Porpoises –All these marine mammals are attracted to the Gulf of the Farallones to feed on its bountiful food sources, particularly this year’s abundant supply of krill.”

“October 5th – PRBO conducted a weekly island survey of the six species of pinniped on the Farallones. This entailed counting all the seals and sea lions from the lighthouse and walking around to the coves to find elephant seals and other species. This survey yielded 1,939 California Sea Lions, 40 Steller’s Sea Lions, 30 Harbor Seals, 81 Northern Fur Seals, and 116 Northern Elephant Seals. On 1-Oct, we conducted our first survey of at Indian Head Beach and counted 115 fur seal pups and over 160 adults and immature – this is a true success story for conservation on the Farallones!”

“October 3rd – Landbird migration day!  Dropping from the sky, an Evening Grosbeak flew down into the Lavaterra bushes.  Although this species is not super-rare on the coast, here on the Farallones, this was the first Evening Grosbeak seen on the island since 1979!  While observing the grosbeak, the biologists began spotting other birds such as a female Canada Warbler and an Ovenbird from the previous few days.”

To learn more about what it is like to live and work on the Farallones, check out our QUEST Science on the SPOT story, “Life on the Farallones.”  I also encourage you to explore the islands further via QUEST, where we have stories on the seals, birds and sharks – on, above and around the islands, as well as educational materials, an audio slide show, an interactive multimedia map, and historic timeline. Also, you can get more info from KQED's Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Adventures website.

Visit the Science on the SPOT: Life on the Farallones page or watch the video below:

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

In addition, this week a new film about the Farallon Islands opens at California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.  SANCTUARY IN THE SEA: A GULF OF THE FARALLONES EXPERIENCE debuts Saturday, October 16.  Discover the beauty, diversity and history of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, through the eyes of Ron Elliot, a former urchin diver turned wildlife videographer who has spent years in the underwater gardens  beneath the waves around the Farallones.

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