Strawberry Lagoon is an inlet

Inlet

An inlet is a narrow body of water between islands or leading inland from a larger body of water, often leading to an enclosed body of water, such as a sound, bay, lagoon or marsh. In sea coasts an inlet usually refers to the actual connection between a bay and the ocean and is often called an...

 within Richardson Bay

Richardson Bay

Richardson Bay is a shallow, ecologically rich arm of San Francisco Bay, managed under a Joint Powers Agency of four Northern California cities. The Richardson Bay Sanctuary was acquired in the early 1960s by the National Audubon Society. The bay was named for William A...

, Marin County, California

Marin County, California

Marin County is a county located in the North San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. As of 2010, the population was 252,409. The county seat is San Rafael and the largest employer is the county government. Marin County is well...

, USA. This location, particularly on Strawberry Spit

Strawberry Spit

Strawberry Spit is a small artificial island in the San Francisco Bay's Richardson's Bay embayment of Strawberry Lagoon. It is also referred to as Strawberry Spit, although it no longer is technically a spit....

, is a winter haul-out

Hauling-out

Hauling-out is the behaviour associated with pinnipeds , of temporarily leaving the water between periods of foraging activity for sites on land or ice...

 area for the Harbor Seal

Harbor Seal

The harbor seal , also known as the common seal, is a true seal found along temperate and Arctic marine coastlines of the Northern Hemisphere...

. Pressures of urban development at Strawberry Point along with increases in small boat traffic have diminished the use of this lagoon for seal haul out, noted as early as 1990.

Harbor seal presence

The entire Harbor seal population of the San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

 has been estimated at approximately 500 individuals, of which up to 100 animals have been observed within Strawberry Lagoon, hauling out at Strawberry Spit. Typically Harbor seals in California do not congregate in haul outs in numbers exceeding 100.(Orr, 1972) In the 1980s a channel was created to sever the spit from the mainland creating a more secure haulout for the seals known as Sanctuary Island. An Earth Metrics Inc. study of 1990 provided for more protection of the seals by constructing an earthen berm on the southern part of Sanctuary Island and landscaping this area with shrubby native grasses to provide enhanced privacy for the Harbor seals. The Harbor seal is protected in the USA under the Marine Mammal Protection Act

Marine Mammal Protection Act

The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 was the first article of legislation to call specifically for an ecosystem approach to natural resource management and conservation. MMPA prohibits the taking of marine mammals, and enacts a moratorium on the import, export, and sale of any marine mammal,...

 of 1972. (U.S. Congress, 1972)

Geography and natural history

The higher ground above the lagoon is dominated by Ring Mountain, the location of certain extant Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 petroglyph

Petroglyph

Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...

s and a considerable diversity of native flora, including several rare and endangered species. (Hogan, 2008)