Common Murres on the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge. Photo courtesy of Point Blue.

Point Blue Conservation Science: Protecting the Farallon Islands

By Linda Ewing

Rising from the Pacific some 30 miles west of San Francisco, the Farallon Islands are a world apart. Only rarely—some 30 or 40 days a year—can their rocky outcroppings be glimpsed from the mainland; the rest of the time they are cloaked in fog and mystery.

Aerial view of the east side of the Farallon Islands. Photo by John Warzybok.

They are also populated by an astounding number and diversity of birds and other wildlife. The Farallones are home to the largest seabird nesting colony in the contiguous United States, with roughly half a million individuals of 13 species. Five species of seals and sea lions also call the islands home, including elephant seals, which haul their massive, four-ton bodies onto beaches and rock shelves. At the other end of the size spectrum is the Farallon subspecies of the California-endemic Arboreal Salamander; in the absence of trees, it thrives in the dark and damp of seabird burrows and rock crevices. Tiniest of all is the Farallon Cave Cricket, found nowhere else on earth. Offshore, a dizzying variety of whales, dolphins, sea turtles and sharks ply the waters of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

Not for nothing have the Farallones been described as “California’s Galapagos.” Like that other, more famous archipelago, these isolated islands have developed an ecosystem as unique as it is fragile.

Protecting this ecosystem is a passion for Lishka Arata, a native San Franciscan who manages communications at Point Blue Conservation Science. “The Farallon Islands are an ecological treasure in the Bay area,” she says. “They’re unique not just in our region, but in the world.” Point Blue’s involvement with the Farallones, as Arata tells it, is almost as old as the organization. Founded in 1965 as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, its scientists were keenly aware of the islands that lay out at sea from their Palomarin station. Through its relationship with the Coast Guard, which maintained a small station on Southeast Farallon Island, Point Blue began to survey the islands’ birds and other wildlife. In 1968, it established a full-time research presence there. The island became part of the larger Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge in 1969, shifting management to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). In 1971, USFWS and Point Blue cemented a long-term research and conservation partnership that continues to this day.

Common Murres and Brandt's Cormorants. Photos courtesy of Point Blue Conservation Science.

Arata describes the human history of the Farallon Islands as “rich and interesting,” as well as destructive. Early Spanish explorers may have seen the islands as they sailed the California coast, but they left no records and seem not to have stopped. The first person widely credited to have lingered there was the English privateer Sir Francis Drake, believed to have anchored in the Farallones in 1579 to replenish his ships’ food stores from the abundant wildlife.

Drake’s expedition began a centuries-long collision between human beings and the islands’ wild inhabitants. Hunters and fur traders slaughtered elephant seals for their blubber and eventually wiped out the fur seal population. During California’s gold rush era, when the booming population of the Bay Area exceeded the resources of its agricultural hinterland, a combination of desperation and greed led men to risk the turbulent seas and treacherous rocks—not to mention the bullets of competing gangs—to gather murre eggs for sale in the city. Contemporary photographs show rough, mustachioed men flanked by great piles of eggs. A public outcry led to a ban on egg collecting and eventually President Teddy Roosevelt’s designation of the northernmost islands as a protected reservation. By then, the Common Murre nesting colony had fallen from an estimated million birds to just 6,000. Even the more benign 20th century presence of lighthouse keepers, Navy radio operators and Coast Guard personnel on Southeast Farallon Island left its mark, introducing terrestrial mammals like rabbits, house cats, mules and goats that upset the island’s delicate ecological balance.

Lishka Arata, Point Blue Communications Manager, scanning the Farallones with binoculars. Photo by Brian Haven.

Researchers get on and off the island by crane and boat. Photo courtesy of Maps for Good/Point Blue/USFWS.

Victorian cottages that serve as housing and offices for researchers, with cart for supplies. Photo courtesy of Maps for Good/Point Blue/USFWS.

Today, the entire archipelago is off-limits to visitors. The Farallon Islands are a wildlife refuge in the truest and most literal sense of the word: a haven where wildlife can find safety, free from human disturbance. And slowly, species once killed off or driven away have returned. It took more than a century, but fur seals are back on the islands. The Common Murre colony now measures in the hundreds of thousands. The breeding population of Rhinoceros Auklets, which had all but disappeared by the late 19th century, is also recovering.

Rhinocerous Auklet. Photo by Mario Balitbit.

The only human presence is the small group of field scientists who live and work on Southeast Farallon Island under the terms of the USFWS-Point Blue partnership. One of them is Pete Warzybok, nicknamed “Old Man Farallon” by his colleagues. Warzybok leads Point Blue’s Farallon program, and after 25 years studying the islands, with a cumulative eight years of residence there, he holds the undisputed distinction of having spent more time on the Farallones than any other human being.

Island life, as described by Warzybok, has its own rhythm. He and his colleagues live in a pair of Victorian cottages, built in the late 19th century to house lighthouse keepers and their families. Supplies are brought in every few weeks; 21st century technology allows the team to place their grocery orders online, but deliveries still require Point Blue’s intrepid staff and volunteers, a boat, and decent weather. Days begin early. Warzybok gets up before dawn to make the first of several daily weather observations, returns for a quick breakfast, then heads out again to do wildlife surveys. Evening meals are communal, with the scientists taking turns cooking and cleaning. After dinner, the group compiles its experiences of the day into a journal. Entries might describe weather conditions, set down observations of birds and animals, or comment on anything else that struck the group as noteworthy. The content varies, but the ritual does not. The journal opens in 1967, and there are entries detailing every day since 1968.

Left: Farallon Program Leader Pete Warzybok (front) and Biologist Mike Johns placing a numbered tracking band on the leg of a Common Murre. 
Right:  Common Murre with egg.

But the continuity that undergirds these achievements is under threat. In 2023, USFWS informed Point Blue that because of budget shortfalls, it could no longer support its year-round residence on the island. As things now stand, Point Blue’s team will need to leave at the end of the summer, pausing its Farallon work from September to March.

If that happens, no one will be there this fall, 2025, to observe the feeding behavior of white sharks when they return from their annual migration. Nor will anyone be there through the winter, documenting the ways in which rising sea levels and more intense storms are affecting elephant seals and other wildlife. All those continuous datasets, gathered over more than half a century, will suddenly be riddled with seasonal gaps.

To prevent this, Point Blue is trying to identify between $200,000 and $500,000 in support for 2025 to maintain its year-round presence on Southeast Farallon Island. Repairing the island’s deteriorating infrastructure, much of which dates to its Navy and Coast Guard days, will require several million more. Arata remains guardedly optimistic. “We’re making some strides,” she says. “A lot of folks are coming out to say, ‘We care about this and we want to help.’”

Even before the notice from USFWS, Point Blue recognized that the Farallon program would be stronger with more diverse sources of funding. The government’s budget cut is a reminder, she says, that “this work doesn’t happen by itself. We need support.”

Point Blue Biologists heading home after an intertidal survey. Photo courtesy of Maps for Good/Point Blue/USFWS.

The case for that support is both global and intensely local. The Farallon Islands are a bellwether, Arata notes; Point Blue’s work there has broad implications for understanding marine ecosystems in a changing climate and offers lessons for restoring other wild areas damaged by human activity.

But the Farallones are also special precisely because of their apartness. Asked for one image that sums them up, Warzybok hesitates. “I’ve been going there for 25 years, so it’s hard to pick one thing.” He pauses. “But there’s the feeling when you first set foot there or even go around the islands on a boat . . . you get out there and see the densely packed seabirds, and it’s a spectacle of life.”

“You realize,” he says, “that these islands belong to nature.”

Pelagic Cormorant. Photo by Mario Balitbit.

Tufted Puffin flying with nesting material. Photo by Mike Johns.

Elephant Seals. Photo courtesy of Point Blue.

To learn more about Point Blue Conservation Science, as well as to contribute directly, please visit their website.

Bird Collective celebrates Point Blue Conservation Science, a nonprofit organization that monitors the marine ecosystem of California’s Farallon Islands, an important site for breeding seabirds and other species.