San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow estuary in the U.S. state of California. It is surrounded by a contiguous region known as the San Francisco Bay Area (often simply "the Bay Area"), dominated by the large cities San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.San Francisco Bay drains water from approximately 40 percent of California. Water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and from the Sierra Nevada mountains, flow into Suisun Bay, which then travels through the Carquinez Strait to meet with the Napa River at the entrance to San Pablo Bay, which connects at its south end to San Francisco Bay. It then connects to the Pacific Ocean via the Golden Gate strait. However, this entire group of interconnected bays is often called the San Francisco Bay.The bay was designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on February 2, 2013.SizeThe bay covers somewhere between 400and, depending on which sub-bays, estuaries, wetlands, and so on are included in the measurement. The main part of the bay measures 3to wide east-to-west and somewhere between 48mi1 and 60mi2 north-to-south. It is the largest Pacific estuary in the Americas.