Four years ago, 86-year-old Michael Herz and his wife Kate Josephs were living in Maine when, in the clear-eyed aftermath of a powerful psychedelic mushroom trip, they decided to upend their lives, move aboard a boat in the East Bay, and start producing a podcast on the history of the San Francisco Bay. Neither of them had any journalistic experience. “Suddenly moving across the country and living on a boat half the year sounded like a totally reasonable thing to do,” says Josephs, motioning around The Office, their boat, which gently bobs.

The idea, Herz says, had been encouraged by Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books and co-founder of Bay Nature. Margolin had sent a letter to Herz, an old friend and fellow environmentalist, detailing the concept for an expansive book he wanted to write about the San Francisco Bay. “There are so many ways of seeing the Bay, so many stories to tell: stories of natural history, human history, built environments, industry, recreation transportation, diverse cultures, the arts,” Margolin wrote. “I see views of the Bay that range from satellite photos to microscopic close-ups of the 40,000 living organisms that can be found in one cubic inch of the tidal mud.”

Margolin died in 2025 before he could write that book, but his idea excited Herz, who envisioned an opportunity to recruit the next generation of activists. Herz and Josephs decided a podcast would be the ideal medium to pursue this vast topic. So they bought some audio equipment, dug into researching, recruited a neighbor to help with sound design—and, earlier this year, launched Once Upon a Bay. “The Bay needs as many advocates as it can get,” Herz says. “Our job is to tell interesting stories, so that people who aren’t connected to the Bay get connected, and those that are connected get more connected.”

Herz has been protecting the Bay since the early 1970s, when he co-founded San Francisco’s chapter of the Oceanic Society, “America’s oldest nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation.” At a time when mainstream environmental organizations were primarily interested in wilderness protection, Herz was zipping around on his 16-foot runabout coordinating operations for a group of adventurous eco-warriors whom San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen dubbed “the wet Sierra Club.” Describing the team of pilots, boat owners, and scientists Herz recruited to monitor water quality and marine life, he says, “The Oceanic Society had a navy and an air force. We had 45 volunteers who were flying missions over the Bay, looking for polluters. We even had a Farallon Islands patrol.” 

At 89, Herz’s days of tracking down polluters are behind him, but his life once again revolves around his favorite body of water. His podcast studio, The Office, is a 37-foot Tollycraft trawler built in 1979, on which he lives with Josephs and their gopher-eating foxhound mix, Holly, in one of the region’s quirkiest marinas.

On a hazy summer morning, I drive past the abandoned structures and rusted storage tanks lining Richmond’s northern shoreline, passing through a narrow tunnel of gnarled oaks to emerge at Point San Pablo Harbor. Stepping out of my car, I’m greeted by massive Burning Man art installations, including a tiled alligator, a gigantic bee, and a towering black metal phonograph, arranged throughout the secluded cove. As it turns out, these surreal surroundings provide a perfect entry into the world of Michael Herz and his larger-than-life tales of the sea.

Take, for example, this yarn about how a young mother carrying an infant in a backpack nearly lost her child during one of the whale-watching trips that Herz operated in the 1970s to raise funds for the Oceanic Society. “When she ran to the rail to see a hopping whale, her babe popped out into the water,” he says with a laugh, as my stomach drops. “The whale gods must have been with us that day. A quick-thinking crewman grabbed a salmon net, scooped up the kid and saved our asses!”

Michael Herz on The Office, his and Josephs’ summer home and podcast studio. Amir Aziz / Bay Nature

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Herz came to boat life by way of the Land of 10,000 Lakes. In rural Minnesota he was surrounded by fresh water, and his birdwatcher parents encouraged him to get outside. He got obsessed with sailing as a 12-year-old at YMCA camp, and took up SCUBA as a teenager, fascinated by all the aquatic life teeming in the lakes. While attending Reed College in the mid-1950s, Herz visited San Francisco Bay and fell in love with its natural beauty. After graduation, he moved south from Portland and became a Californian. His first experience with living on a boat was at Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon, where he moved in order to stay close to his kids following a divorce. For the 20 years before moving back to the Bay Area, Herz and Josephs spent many happy seasons sailing up and down the East Coast of the U.S. and Canada, but this is Josephs’ first time as a semipermanent liveaboard (they still spend winters in Maine). “When you live on a boat, you always know where the moon is, you know when the sun rises, you’re aware of the tides, the weather,” Josephs says. “We both just feel much more alive because we’re so in touch with the elements.”

Herz and Josephs have recorded dozens of interviews on the Bay—its shipwrecks, gold mining, real estate, tides—plus yarns from Herz’s ample supply. Amir Aziz / Bay Nature

Although Herz’s personal stories could easily fill multiple seasons, Herz and Josephs have chosen to zoom out, exploring major themes related to history and development. One episode features Gray Brechin, author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, explaining how hydraulic mining in the Sierra Nevada during the Gold Rush forever changed downstream ecosystems by inundating them with loose sediment and tons of mercury. In another episode, maritime archaeologist James P. Delgado introduces readers to notable sunken vessels, describing the Bay’s remaining shipwrecks as “unread books” waiting to be opened. Herz and Josephs have already recorded dozens of interviews, building a trove of oral histories that can be woven into future podcasts. Currently, Once Upon a Bay is entirely self-funded, but the couple are hoping to find funders, perhaps from Herz’ extensive local network, to help support production costs.

Full disclosure: When they were planning their first season, Herz and Josephs reached out to me for podcasting advice. For the past decade, I’ve been making a local history program called East Bay Yesterday. I gladly shared a few tips in exchange for a plate of fish and chips and a cold beer. I could tell from our initial meeting that their show would be a delight, and I have not been disappointed. The stories are gripping without being overly dramatic, educational but not boring, and the chemistry between Herz and Josephs is sweetly endearing. 

During our interview, the couple tells me upcoming episodes will cover topics ranging from the shadowy tale of a ship used by the CIA to hunt for a lost Soviet submarine in the mid-1970s, to the famous 1985 saga of Humphrey “the wayward whale.” One particularly personal episode covers the history of their current home, which Josephs describes as “an improbable oasis in the middle of an industrial wasteland.”

Point San Pablo Harbor was created in 1939 by Raymond Clarke, a former ferry boat captain. Drawn by good fishing in the area, Clarke constructed the harbor’s makeshift breakwater by partially sinking several old vessels, including two decommissioned infantry landing craft, into a U-shaped barrier perpendicular to the shallow shoreline. In the midcentury golden era, hundreds of eager anglers descended on the harbor to rent boats every weekend. Later, as overfishing, pollution, and the ravages of the decaying breakwater ships took their toll, the location’s popularity declined. “In 1965, the sunken ships were burned to the waterline and the jetties were built up by adding concrete blocks and dredged soils,” the harbor association’s official history says. But Point San Pablo didn’t become a day-trip destination again until new owners bought it in 2016 and invested in revitalization efforts, like replacing a pile of old tires with a vegetable garden. “Our harbor master called it ‘the place that time forgot,’ ” Josephs says.

Holly the boat dog. Amir Aziz / Bay Nature

These days, the harbor hosts a popular restaurant, outdoor musical performances, hillside yurts, and an osprey nest. Disembarking from The Office, I ask Herz if he ever plans to retire. He grins and shakes his head. “No matter how successful you are,” he says, “the battle’s never over, right?” But it’s come a long way. He looks out over the stern at the water beyond. “When I first started coming to the Bay, it stank,” he says. “It smelled like rotten eggs and crap.” Point San Pablo Harbor’s recovery is a microcosm of what’s happened in the Bay in the five decades since Herz devoted his life to protecting this place. Dolphins have returned. Thousands of acres of wetlands have been restored. And the smell has improved significantly. “The nose knows,” Herz adds. “Now you can smell the eelgrass.”