Talk:San Diego Bay

I'm pretty sure that the airport is no longer maintained by the Port of San Diego and is now maintained by the San Diego Regional Airport Authority. I will check into this though.

How is this Natural Harbor a Lagoon?

? Norcalal 08:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I wondered the same thing. I went to the talk page of the user who added this category and asked him. There were already people there, asking him the same question about Humboldt Bay which he apparently also recently added to the "lagoons of California" category. Feel free to join the discussion. --MelanieN (talk) 15:09, 1 December 2009 (UTC)MelanieN

A sandy bar to seaward is the defining feature of California's coastal lagoons. San Francisco Bay is not on the list of lagoons because it is separated from the sea by rocky headlands. San Diego Bay has not always been suitable for large ships. Harvey M. Beigel's article "The Battle Fleet's Home Port: 1919–1940" in the March, 1985, United States Naval Institute Proceedings Supplement indicates the United States battle fleet moored in San Pedro from 1919 to 1940 because San Diego Bay was not deep enough for battleships. According to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb9/water_issues/programs/wmc/docs/wmchapxa102.pdf San Diego Bay has been extensively modified by dredging and filling to be deeper and narrower than it was during early European settlement. California Department of Mines and Geology Bulletin 200 http://www.archive.org/stream/geologyofsandieg00kennrich/geologyofsandieg00kennrich_djvu.txt describes the San Diego embayment as containing a ten million year sequence of lagoon, beach, and near-shore marine deposits.Thewellman (talk) 23:11, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The fact that there may have been a lagoon here at some point in the past 10 million years does not mean the existing Bay is one.

Yes, it's true the Silver Strand Peninsula is little more than a sand bar, although the ocean has not washed over it in recorded history. But the Bay is actually a modified estuary. The San Diego River used to flow into it, until the flow was altered by engineers in the 19th century. According to this article, "The word 'bay' can be confused with 'estuary' and 'lagoon' because both involve fresh water from the land mixing with seawater. Estuaries are basically the drowned lower portions of rivers. Lagoons are broad, shallow estuarine systems." Got that? SHALLOW. The word "shallow" occurs in virtually every definition of a lagoon. San Diego Bay is not shallow and has not been in recorded history. Even when the first explorers arrived here, 500 years ago, the Bay was deep enough for tall ships to enter it without difficulty.

I await your WP:reliable source referring to San Diego Bay, in the present day, as a lagoon. That's how differences of opinion are decided on Wikipedia - not by one person's interpretation or another person's opinion, but by reliable third-party sources. --MelanieN (talk) 00:37, 2 December 2009 (UTC)MelanieN

I am puzzled by your focus on the present tense for this categorical listing. It seems of comparatively little relevance for a subject with life measured in geologic time. Lagoons go through varying stages of salinity, wetness and dryness with seasonal or longer-term climate change or as sea levels change or local tectonic plate movement occurs. Many, including San Diego Bay, have been recently altered by man. I suggest encyclopedic coverage of the subject of lagoons would benefit from a listing of examples in differing stages of historical variation.Thewellman (talk) 03:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

So in other words, you DON'T have any current source that San Diego Bay is a lagoon? Then I challenge the listing. What is the sense of listing something under a category where it doesn't belong now? Would it make sense to list the Midwest under "category:shallow seas"? Or Manhattan under "category:unpopulated islands"?

BTW there were tall ships sailing into San Diego Bay, sailing right through the year-round-open harbor mouth and into the Bay, long before it was "recently altered by man". --MelanieN (talk) 05:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)MelanieN

I question if use of the term shallow in definitions of lagoons is based on the navigation of ships. Depth of wave action turbulence moving alluvial sediments of the continental shelf is more significant to establishment of the coastal bar forming a lagoon; and factors like light penetration for growth of algae and rooted plants, or mixing versus thermal or salinity gradients are important limnological aspects of the resulting lagoon.Thewellman (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Navigation of ships is the only way we have of estimating the depth of the bay 500 years ago. I repeat: the bay is not shallow and has not been shallow for the past 500 years (which is all that we have any record of). And BTW the bay was not MOSTLY shallow with a tiny shipping channel; historical records show that ships could navigate at least half the length of the bay without difficulty and at any stage of the tide. --MelanieN (talk) 16:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)MelanieN

Although evidence of colonization by various flora and sessile fauna can also provide estimates of water depth, I acknowledge the value of navigation as an estimate of depth. Do you have a citation for the draught of the ships using various parts of San Diego Bay 500 years ago?Thewellman (talk) 19:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

You're quibbling. You keep giving me arguments and opinions, but what I am asking for is SOURCES. If the San Diego Bay is really a lagoon, you can't be the only person who thinks so. (And if you are, then by definition your opinion doesn't belong in Wikipedia; it would be WP:Original research.) If you are correct about this, there must be authoritative sources out there that refer to the Bay, as it now stands, as a lagoon. Basically I have flagged this category with a flag and that is what I am still waiting for.

Here are a couple of dozen organizations that deal with the Bay: San Diego Bay Watersheds - does any of them call it a lagoon? Here's the government agency in charge of managing the Bay: Port of San Diego - does it use the word "lagoon" to refer to the Bay? Here's the geology department at San Diego State University: local geology - anything there? If nobody authoritative uses this terminology, then it should be deleted here for want of a WP:reliable source. --MelanieN (talk) 00:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)MelanieN

As an example, the Wikipedia category California Supreme Court justices appears to list 22 justices, although reliable sources indicate there have never been more than 7 justices on the California Supreme Court. Should some articles be removed from this category?Thewellman (talk) 17:18, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

You posted a reference, and I scanned through the whole thing but found no reference calling San Diego Bay (or embayment if you prefer) as a lagoon. I found a reference to lagoonal (lagunal?) rocks, but that's not the same thing. Maybe I missed it. Please post the actual quote you are relying on, where they said the San Diego Bay is a lagoon. And by the way, if they really did say it, referring to the Bay as it currently is, I will accept it and withdraw my objections. --MelanieN (talk) 01:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)MelanieN

The following text from http://online.sfsu.edu/~caers/documents/CAERS_2007_abstracts.pdf identified San Diego Bay as a coastal lagoon in the present tense in 2007:

"Dissolved nutrient balance and net ecosystem metabolism in a Mediterranean-climate coastal lagoon: San Diego Bay F. Delgadillo-Hinojosa, A. Zirino, O. Holm-Hansen, J. M. Hernández-Ayón, T. J. Boyd, B. Chadwick, I. Rivera-Duarte. Instituto de Investigaciones Oceanológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Apdo. Postal 453, Ensenada, Baja California, México 22830. The temporal and spatial variability of dissolved inorganic phosphate (DIP), nitrogen (DIN), carbon (DIC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) were studied in order to determine the net ecosystem metabolism (NEP) of San Diego Bay, a Mediterranean climate lagoon."

Thewellman (talk) 09:24, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. This is about as obscure a reference as one can imagine and it must have taken you many hours to find it, but I accept it and will restore the category. --15:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)MelanieN

Unreferenced and possibly untrue claim in the article

This information has been tagged as "citation needed" for more than a year: "In the 19th century there was a southern harbor ship entrance by a canal south to the Tijuana River. It was filled in by a great flood in the 1880s." I could find no support for this claim, even in detailed histories of the bay like this one, and I am inclined to delete it. Any comments before I do? --MelanieN (talk) 01:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm surprised it lasted that long.--Jojhutton (talk) 17:40, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

How to describe US Navy presence

The article used to say "Later it served, and continues to serve to this day, as the home of the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet."

Norcalal changed it to say "Later it served, and continues to serve to this day, as a home port of major assets, including several aircraft carriers, of the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet, which is headquartered at Pearl Harbor."

I understand what you are trying to do here, but I think this wording - "home port of major assets" - way understates the importance of San Diego Bay to the U.S. Navy. It's not just the home port of some ships; it is the largest concentration of Navy assets on the West Coast, and one of (or possibly the) largest naval cities in the world. Check out Naval Base San Diego, add Naval Air Station North Island, add Naval Base Point Loma, add the headquarters of the Navy Region Southwest Command which supports shore installations in six states - we have got to find a better way of saying this than "home port of major assets". Suggestions? --MelanieN (talk) 01:47, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I also connected the San Diego Bay to the Pacific Fleet article for the first time that I could see. I was hoping that a "navy" editor from there would head over here and fix it all up. We can think about/adjust it in the meantime. Norcalal (talk) 03:20, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

New Development

"Agrochemical giant Monsanto has been sued by the City of San Diego and the San Diego Unified Port District for selling chemicals the multinational knew were harmful to the ecology, including that of the now heavily polluted San Diego Bay.

According to the San Diego Reader, city agencies filed suit on Monday, alleging Monsanto hid its knowledge of the toxicity of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Despite being aware of these facts, the company peddled its chemical compounds for industrial use, including shipbuilding, electrical component manufacture, food packaging and paint plasticizers."

This text is from RT and it looks like a significant development which should probably be covered. The Monday referred to would be the 16th March 2015. 58.174.224.15 (talk) 11:02, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Where is this from, please - so we can evaluate it? I don't know what you mean by RT. A link would be helpful. --MelanieN (talk) 14:07, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, I found a story in The Reader.[1][2] Monsanto is only the latest target of such a lawsuit. I'll add a paragraph to the article. Thanks for pointing this out. --MelanieN (talk) 14:14, 19 March 2015 (UTC)