Watery victory lap honors bay cleanup
The amazing thing about the 35 people who swam for miles in the San Francisco Bay on Sunday — besides that they swam for miles in the San Francisco Bay — is that they came out of the water soiled only by saltwater. Maybe some seaweed.
No sewage clung to their hair. No oil tarred up their skin. No trash stuck between their toes.
“We’re all thankful that we live in a city that has clean enough water to swim in,” said Wendy Kordesch, 32, who had joined the swimmers and dozens of others who paddled across the bay on kayaks or canoes to celebrate its good health and raise money for San Francisco Baykeeper, the group that helps keep it that way.
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Baykeeper’s fifth annual Bay Parade is expected to raise $100,000 for the organization that sued the federal government and helped rid the bay of 57 defunct and decaying military ships — known as the Ghost Fleet — that for years leached tons of grease and heavy metals into the water.
Baykeeper patrols the bay looking for evidence of illegal polluters. And it regularly persuades those companies — plastics recyclers, auto wreckers, landfill operators, sewagetreatment facilities and others, through lawsuits or gentler means — to stop discharging debris and other industrial waste into the water.
On Sunday, more than 200 people joined the fundraiser and the fun, with at least 60 paddlers, three dozen swimmers, a spraying San Francisco fireboat, and many more people watching it all aboard a festive yacht.
Under the sparkling morning sun, Kordesch, of San Francisco; three fellow swimmers; and two captains began in a boat at the Golden Gate Bridge and swam, relay-style, for nearly two hours until they reached McCovey Cove, where another event was just getting under way at the big brick building by the shore.
Although the Giants game attracted larger crowds than Baykeeper’s after-party at neighboring South Beach Park, as Kordesch emerged dripping from the bay and waited for her turn at the portable showers, she named the real show happening on Sunday.
“We saw porpoises!” she said. And being an oceanographer with the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, Kordesch did not mistake the round-headed cetaceans for dolphins.
Until about 2010, porpoises hadn’t been seen in the bay for 65 years. “The animals are a sign of a healthy bay,” she said.
In another line — for hot dogs and beer — stood Uche Amakiri, 19, who had just paddled to McCovey Cove from Pier 40, his first time in a kayak.
“The Giants game is super fun, but I really wanted to be out on the beautiful open water,” said Amakiri, a neurobiology major at Stanford University who came up from Palo Alto with classmates. “It’s great that (Baykeepers) is putting this in the hands of everyday people, because it helps us hold each other accountable” for a clean bay.
His friend Vincent Busque, 20, who majors in human biology at Stanford, tackled the bay on a stand-up paddle board. As he propelled himself along, Busque noticed no trash in the water. But he did notice that the bay is lot wilder when you’re below the Bay Bridge than when you’re above it.
“The current was pretty strong at one point when I was under the bridge,” he said. “I’m paddling, and 10 minutes later, I’m still under the bridge!”
In the decades before Baykeeper was founded in 1989, “the bay used to be an open sewer,” said the group’s spokeswoman, Judy MacLean. It wasn’t until 1972, she said, when the federal Clean Water Act took effect, that cities were required to build sewage treatment plants, and companies were barred from dumping waste into waterways.
But she said it takes vigilance and occasional lawsuits to ensure that cities and businesses comply. Even Bay Area sewage treatment plants that exist to keep the water clean have to be reminded to stop dumping their excess sewage into the bay and to upgrade their equipment, she said.
On Sunday, though, it was time to celebrate porpoises, saltwater and clean tides. MacLean donned a purple hat with a pink octopus on top and joined the party.