Kayak trips offer chance to see bioluminescence on Tomales Bay

Spots fill up fast, but guided public or private kayak tours to view the bioluminescence in Tomales Bay are offered on moonless nights, including kayaks and full gear, by:

It’s fall, and while pumpkin hunters and spooky celebrations filled up much of October and November between Halloween and Day of the Dead, there’s a different kind of supernatural event underway now that attracts a somewhat more adventurous crowd.

They gather in small groups on the banks of Tomales Bay in Marin, strapping on layers of gear as the sun sets behind the Point Reyes headland. In the orange glow of twilight they’re preparing to paddle sea kayaks into the moonless night to experience an otherworldly scene: black waters teeming with sparkling, faint clouds of glowing life.

They’re setting out to see the wild bioluminescent display (bioluminescent means ‘living light’) that appears between July and early November in the 15-mile-long waterway.

The tiny creatures who do the glowing grow in numbers all summer long, and reach peak density at the start of fall. On calm nights in darkened coves, they put on a magical show for those willing to come out onto the water to meet them.

Several local outfitters stay busy guiding handfuls of kayakers into the Bay from the Marin County boat launch near Marshall to experience one of nature’s more stunning and delicate displays.

As the sun sets, the guides coach their kayakers — a mix of novices, never-beens, and the more experienced — on the finer points of squeezing into the oval cockpits of the sleek, low two-seat watercraft, handling the twin bladed oar, and donning the necessary gear. After some limbering stretches, we pull waterproof parkas over our layered warm clothes, slip on a splash skirt that will seal water out of the cockpit opening, and buckle a life vest on top.

Down on the boat ramp the sun has gone, the sea air is chill, and the last warm tones of twilight are fading in the sky. We push off with a steady pull on the oars, into still waters, with the distant sound of breaking surf.

Tomales Bay is a narrow, long channel between wooded ridges. One end opens to the wild swells of the Pacific; at the other end is a tidal marsh, fed by the fresh water of the Lagunitas River.

The sheltered bay is a nursery and home for marine life, from harbor seals to sharks and anchovies, as well as tens of thousands of migrating sea birds, oysters and waving beds of long bright green eelgrass in the shallows. Wild coho salmon still find their way back here from the open sea, swimming far upriver to spawn.

It’s an ancient place, sitting astride the San Andreas fault whose rock-grinding movement over tens of millions of years have opened the crack in the crust that’s now filled with the seawater we float on.

Our guide, Liz Wilhelm from Blue Waters Kayaking, sets a steady pace west and we stroke and steer behind her, following the tiny orange light on her kayak’s back deck as the night closes in. About a half mile in, she gathers our four kayaks into a ‘raft’, and as we hold each other’s lines and drift, she describes details of the Bay and its inhabitants. She has us look up at the Milky Way emerging overhead, and at the tall silhouettes of trees on Hog Island – our first destination. The wind is nearly dead calm, and the setting bright sliver of moon leaves a trail on the remarkably still black water.