As you drive, walk, bike, or sail along the San Francisco Bay, have you ever wondered how healthy the Bay is? While working on an upcoming exhibition about the Bay, I find that this thought often comes to my mind.In September of this year, curator Christopher Richard and I went to the State of the San Francisco Estuary conference. While I was overwhelmed at times being surrounded by scientists, it did enlighten me to just how complex the simple question of "How is the Bay doing?" really is.

So, why is it such a tricky question to answer? Primarily it is because while one thing may be doing well, another may be in steep decline. Examples that were brought up were the marshes and tidelands, and fish populations. Marshes and tidelands are doing really well! Native plants and animals are returning faster than expected. However, one scientist talked about how fish population and diversity is on the decline and is virtually gone from Suisun Bay!

In a simple answer, I'd say the Bay isn't doing too badly. But from what I got at this conference, there are still some serious problems. There was a lot of talk about how we are at a point of "designing the Bay," using our own judgment to create what we think the Bay should be. This was a new and interesting concept for me. That leads to an obvious question: what do YOU want the Bay be to be?

Here are some other facts of interest about our Bay that I learned during the conference:• Half of the California coastline is in the Bay.• Two-thirds of the salmon arriving to California enter through the Golden Gate.• Restoring the Delta would be like removing 12 million cars off the road, due to the level of CO2 being released from dried marshes.