The Pittsburg Marina was basking in the sunshine on April 17 when my wife and I boarded the 65-foot Discovery Cruise boat, called Island Serenade. Steve and Heather Ingram have been operating Delta Discovery Cruise dinner cruises and educational trips out of Pittsburg since 2008. About 60 of us gathered for a two-hour lunch cruise on a tour up the Sacramento River, past some islands and sloughs, with numerous sightings of Delta plants and denizens. Steve and Heather are one of the fortunate couples who have found a way to meld profession with passion. They love their lives afloat; their favorite between cruise pastime is boating aboard one or another of their fleet of seven boats that includes sailboats plus a 34-foot trawler. The Ingrams began their business by offering boating excursions on the Great Salt Lake, but two years ago moved the business — as well as their cruise boat -to their present Pittsburg location... Heather recalls with a smile about how tough things were at the beginning when the two of them were trying to launch their new business and conducting the cruises as a two-person operation. But now, she says, they have been able to hire a few more staff and have been joined by some family members who are assisting in the business. Heather’s dad, Darrell, who is the chef for their cruise business, created the tasty box lunches that we were eating that day. Heather said that he prepares the meals from fresh “Farm to Table” ingredients. Smith Family Farm and Dwelley Farms are the source for fresh fruit and vegetables; Darrell purchases fresh bread daily from Anderson Bakery. Steve and Heather told us that their business is helping make downtown Pittsburg into a destination, because they are attracting cruise customers from San Jose, Fremont, and even as far away as Canada.

Learning About Nature After departing the harbor, we motored across the broad San Joaquin, past Brown’s Island and eventually followed the Broad Slough back into the Sacramento River. Two naturalists from the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), Mike Moran and Kevin Damstra, accompanied us as guides on the trip. They spent the two hours describing the geographical features that we were passing, and pointing out various plants, birds, and animals that were living along the nearby shorelines and on the levees. Just after we cleared the jetty in front of the Pittsburg Marina, we saw California sea lions hauled out on a buoy marking the channel just beyond the breakwater. Mike could tell that the seals were both mature males because, while females can reach 200 pounds in weight, males grow to more than 600 pounds. The other identifying mark showing that they were males, Mike noted, was a large “sagittal crest,” which is a ridge of bone running from the animals’ foreheads along the top of the skull above and behind their eyes. A sagittal crest can be found on other species including gorillas and orangutangs. Mike added that the crest provides a visual cue for female seals, since the feature is only found on animals that have reached sexual maturity. The seals were just hanging out on that buoy, Mike said, because there are very few females in our areas. The major breeding grounds are in the area of the Channel Islands of the Southern California coast, although they are apparently beginning to develop breeding grounds in Northern California. Mike said that the sea lions have a diet of salmon and bass — plus whatever pieces of bread or potato chips that people throw to them from passing boats. We learned that sea lions have aggressive eating habits. Mike said that when they grab a salmon they stick their heads out of the water and whip the fish back and forth in their mouths, shredding the salmon into eatable-size bites and unintentionally providing a dim sum type eating experience for any other fish that happen to be swimming by. We passed by Brown’s Island and learned that it is the only island on the Delta that was never surrounded by a levee. As a result, the low island is full of meandering waterways. According to Mike, the place has a colorful history as the former site of a famous house of ill repute. It is now the site of a duck hunting club. Passing further up the Sacramento we saw in the distance a truly enormous flock of birds. As soon as he saw them, Mike said they were geese. I wondered at the swift designation of birds at such a distance. Mike said they couldn’t be gulls because of the way they were flocking. He could see wings flapping so he knew they weren’t ducks. He knew from experience that they were, in fact, Snow Geese and Greater White Fronted Geese flocking together. I asked about the flocking instinct and Mike said that there was protection in numbers; a large flock is a sign of safety so individuals will continue to join it. Another reason for the flocking, Mike said, was the cooperative effort in searching for food that a large flock represented. The California Delta is a labyrinth of islands and waterways created in the nineteenth century by a system of levees that converted a region of marshland peat into a million acres of some of the world’s richest farmland. The Delta is home to a number of species of fish and provides first-rate fishing opportunities.

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