Alcatraz Island is a small island 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison. In 1934, the island was converted into a federal prison, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape nearly impossible, and the prison became one of the most notorious in American history. The prison closed in 1963, and the island is now a major tourist attraction.
Guillemot is the common name for several species of seabird in the Alcidae or auk family. In Europe, the term covers two genera: Uria and Cepphus. In North America the Uria species are called murres and only the Cepphus species are called "guillemots". This word of French origin derives from a form of the name William, cf. French: Guillaume.
The pigeon guillemot is a species of bird in the auk family, Alcidae. One of three species in the genus Cepphus, it is most closely related to the spectacled guillemot. There are five subspecies of the pigeon guillemot; all subspecies, when in breeding plumage, are dark brown with a black iridescent sheen and a distinctive wing patch broken by a brown-black wedge. Its non-breeding plumage has mottled grey and black upperparts and white underparts. The long bill is black, as are the claws. The legs, feet, and inside of the mouth are red. It closely resembles the black guillemot, which is slightly smaller and lacks the dark wing wedge present in the pigeon guillemot.
The common murre, also called the common guillemot or foolish guillemot, is a large auk. It has a circumpolar distribution, occurring in low-Arctic and boreal waters in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. It spends most of its time at sea, only coming to land to breed on rocky cliff shores or islands.
San Miguel Island is the westernmost of California's Channel Islands, located across the Santa Barbara Channel in the Pacific Ocean, within Santa Barbara County, California. San Miguel is the sixth-largest of the eight Channel Islands at 9,325 acres (3,774 ha), including offshore islands and rocks. Prince Island, 700 m (2,300 ft) off the northeastern coast, measures 35 acres (14 ha) in area. The island, at its farthest extent, is 8 miles (13 km) long and 3.7 miles (6.0 km) wide.
The western gull is a large white-headed gull that lives on the west coast of North America and the Pacific Ocean. The western gull ranges from British Columbia, Canada, to Baja California, Mexico.
The Farallon Islands, or Farallones, are a group of islands and sea stacks in the Gulf of the Farallones, off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States. The islands are also sometimes referred to by mariners as the Devil's Teeth Islands, in reference to the many treacherous underwater shoals in their vicinity. The islands lie 30 miles (48 km) outside the Golden Gate and 20 miles (32 km) south of Point Reyes, and are visible from the mainland on clear days.The islands are part of the City and County of San Francisco. The only inhabited portion of the islands is on Southeast Farallon Island (SEFI), where researchers from Point Blue Conservation Science and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stay. The islands are closed to the public.
USS Massachusetts was a steamer built in 1845 and acquired by the U.S. War Department in 1847. She was used by the U.S. Army as a transport during the Mexican–American War before being transferred to U.S. Navy Department in 1849. She traveled widely, including transiting Cape Horn several times as part of her official duties on both sides of the Americas. During her years of service she spent most of her time on the west coast of North America.
Funk Island is a small, barren, isolated, uninhabited island approximately 65 kilometres (40 mi) northeast of Musgrave Harbour, Newfoundland, Canada.
The Farallon Steamship Disaster was the wreck of a wooden Alaska Steamship Company passenger liner, SS Farallon, that hit Black Reef in Cook Inlet in the Territory of Alaska on 5 January 1910. All on board evacuated to a nearby island, where most had to survive for a month in a mid-winter climate before they were rescued. Six other survivors survived an attempt to row across Shelikof Strait in search of rescue for the stranded men.
The maritime history of California can be divided into several periods: the Native American period; European exploration period from 1542 to 1769; the Spanish colonial period, 1769 to 1821; the Mexican period, 1821 to 1847; and United States statehood period, which continues to the present day. In the history of the California coast, the use of ships and the Pacific Ocean has historically included water craft, fisheries, shipbuilding, Gold Rush shipping, ports, shipwrecks, naval ships and installations, and lighthouses.
USS Rankin (AKA-103/LKA-103) was a Tolland-class attack cargo ship in service with the United States Navy from 1945 to 1947 and again from 1952 to 1971. She was finally sunk as an artificial reef in 1988.
Alcatraz Island Lighthouse is a lighthouse—the first one built on the U.S. West Coast—located on Alcatraz Island in California's San Francisco Bay. It is located at the southern end of the island near the entrance to the prison. The first light house on the island was completed in 1854, and served the bay during its time as a Citadel and military prison. It was replaced by a taller concrete tower built in 1909 to the south of the original one which was demolished after it was damaged due to earthquake in 1906. The automation of the lighthouse with a modern beacon took place in 1963, the year Alcatraz closed as the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. It is the oldest light station on the island with a modern beacon and is part of the museum on the island. Although when viewed from afar it easily looks the tallest structure on Alcatraz, it is actually shorter than the Alcatraz Water Tower, but as it lies on higher ground it looks much taller.
The Red Triangle is the colloquial name of a roughly triangle-shaped region off the coast of northern California, extending from Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco, out slightly beyond the Farallon Islands, and down to the Big Sur region, south of Monterey. The area has a very large population of marine mammals, such as elephant seals, harbor seals, sea otters and sea lions, which are favored prey of great white sharks. Around thirty-eight percent of recorded great white shark attacks on humans in the United States have occurred within the Red Triangle—eleven percent of the worldwide total. The area encompasses the beaches of the heavily populated San Francisco Bay Area, and many people enjoy surfing, windsurfing, swimming and diving in these waters.
Farallon Island Light is a lighthouse on Southeast Farallon Island, California. One of the highest lights in California, it was constructed in 1855 to warn ships approaching San Francisco from the west away from the rocky islands. In later years it was shorn of its lantern, but it remains in use.
The Gull Rocks Light was a lighthouse at the entrance to Newport harbor northwest of Rose Island. A unique A-frame structure, it was supplemented with a skeleton tower in 1928.
Castle Rock National Wildlife Refuge is 0.5 miles (0.80 km) offshore from Crescent City in northern California. This coastal rock covers approximately 14 acres (57,000 m2), and rises steeply 335 feet (102 m) above sea level. The refuge provides an important sanctuary for the Aleutian cackling goose and nesting seabirds.
The Lighthouse is a 2019 film directed and produced by Robert Eggers, from a screenplay he wrote with his brother Max Eggers. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as nineteenth-century lighthouse keepers in turmoil after being marooned at a remote New England outpost by a wild storm. The film has defied categorization in media, and interpretations of it range among horror film, psychological thriller, or character study, among others.
Gull eggs, gathered in spring from the nests of wild gulls, are a source or form of eggs as food. Gulls' eggs tend to have speckled shells, a flavor variously described as fishy or salty that is reminiscent of the birds' marine environment, an especially white or even opalescent albumen when cooked, and almost-red orange yolks. Gull eggs are usually larger than any size of chicken egg; for example, a herring-gull egg typically weighs about 85 g (3.0 oz). One source states that a generalized gull's egg is approximately twice the size of a chicken's egg.
