For years, Baykeeper founder Mike Herz patrolled San Francisco Bay by boat to fight to preserve it from pollution.
Now, decades later, Herz and his wife, Kate Josephs, devote their days on their boat, The Office, to a different kind of preservation project: a podcast about the body of water he loves so much titled “Once Upon a Bay.”
The almost 90-year-old Herz, who is originally from Minnesota, told Richmondside he spent his childhood sailing inland freshwater lakes. He first set eyes on the Pacific and San Francisco Bay as an 18-year-old sailor and said that moment changed his life forever. He was in love.
“I’ve been advocating for the bay for over 50 years. The bay is like one of my kids.,” Herz said, sitting aboard the boat they call home part of the year on a recent calm day. “I have felt this is a magical place.”
As their vessel gently sways, the couple, married for about three decades, can’t help but ping-pong potential podcast ideas between themselves.
While discussing a recently reported small Chevron-related oil spill, Herz recalled when two Standard Oil tankers collided on a foggy day in 1971 near the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Well, we need to do that story!” Josephs replied with excitement.
When Josephs poses a question, Herz responds, delving into tangents of characters and events from years past. She admitted assembling podcast episodes can be challenging.
Meet Your Neighbor: Mike Herz and Kate Josephs
Who: Mike Hertz and Kate Josephs, founders of the podcast “Once Upon a Bay”
Neighborhood: San Pablo Harbor (half of the year) and Maine.
Residents of Richmond: Since 2023
He/she said: “This is a really interesting place to be concerned about nature.” — Mike Herz
“The through line is him teaching me how to love the bay the way he does.” — Kate Josephs
“We ramble a bit,” Herz said, chuckling.
Beneath the deck of their small boat-turned-home, Josephs, in her late-60s, edits recorded clips on her laptop, a quilt-like audio tapestry based on memories, stories and long-time relationships from Herz’s life.
Josephs enjoys diving into the podcasting process while their boat dog, an American foxhound named Holly, sits within nearby.
“When you’re living on a boat, you’re never more than 10 to 15 feet apart,” Herz said. “It’s a perpetual interaction. You gotta love your partner. I think we work incredibly well together.”
Josephs first records Herz telling a story. Then they interview people related to that topic. Finally she records Herz one last time and pieces it all together for the final product.
So far they’ve posted six episodes, and Josephs said they have a couple dozen more in production. They’ve garnered about 1,400 downloads since it launched in February. Episodes have discussed the sunken boats at Yerba Buena Cove, the history of Baykeeper and, most recently, how San Pablo Harbor came to be.
The couple never thought that, at their age, podcasting would become their hobby.
“We have to be the oldest podcasters,” Josephs joked, adding that the extent of their marketing has been giving away postcards at the nearby Sailing Goat restaurant.
The Baykeeper connection led to marriage
Josephs, a lifelong New Englander, first learned about the man who would become her husband while reading a New York Times article on a coffee break at the World Trade Center in 1989. They had written about his founding of the first Baykeeper group in San Francisco.
“Keeper,” in this sense, refers to a person who dedicates their time and their voice to a particular body of water. They patrol via boat to look out for pollution and work to hold those responsible for it legally accountable. In one instance, Herz was part of a lawsuit against the U.S. Navy for some 363,000 violations of the Clean Water Act.
Herz’s work with San Francisco Baykeeper inspired more than 350 similar organizations nationwide, some of which he helped get started.
Within a few years of reading that New York Times article, Herz and Josephs eventually both ended up in Maine.
Herz had taken a leave of absence from the Baykeeper and moved east with his family while Josephs had quit her job to relocate there with her family around the same time.
After a year of living in Maine, both Herz and Josephs, who ended up single, were introduced to each other by Herz’s ex-wife, who encouraged them to date each other. The two have been together ever since.
Herz, however, never stopped working or advocating for the preservation of the bay. He continued participating in Baykeeper’s Science and Technical Advisory Board and the two annually visited the Bay Area.
Josephs, a 15th-generation New Englander, admitted she didn’t “get it” about Herz’s love of San Francisco Bay. But it was through Herz’s stories that she learned to love it in her own way.
Then, in 2022, while drinking beer with legendary San Francisco documentary filmmaker Judy Irving in Maine, Herz said he dreamed of moving back to live on the bay and “collect stories.” Irving challenged him to do it and the couple bought “The Office” in 2023.
Herz and Joseph say that conversation with Irving, and a little openness prompted by a guided psychedelic mushroom session the day before, launched their journey to settle in San Pablo Harbor. They now spend half of the year in Maine and the rest of the year on their boat in the harbor.
“Most people don’t move across the country and start a new venture at that age doing something that they don’t know how to do when they start,” Josephs said. “But Mike has these stories and he opens doors. I mean, when he calls up these people they’re like, ‘Mike Herz, how are you doing?’ I just follow along with a microphone, record it and put it together.”
She admits that she doesn’t know whether people will respond to the episodes but feels that the two, at this point in life, don’t have time to waste.
“There’s a window of time that we have to do this,” she said. “That’s one disadvantage of (Herz) being 90 (years old).”
In some instances, they have discovered that Herz’s past connections, who they’ve reached out to for interviews, had either died or weren’t healthy enough to be interviewed. Another person who they interviewed died shortly after they spoke.
Herz hopes to record some of the movement to preserve the bay and its history for the next generation of advocates.
“There’s this battle that I think has existed forever in the nonprofit world that you don’t want to have the same people on the board of directors of a nonprofit organization forever. You want to bring in new blood,” Herz said. “But you have to maintain at least one or two people who are the collective memory of the past of the organization. And sometimes, some of the people who are enthusiastic about having new blood throw out the old blood and they don’t have the continuity to tell the story.”
In environmental circles, Herz said, the problem he has seen is a lack of leadership diversity in those spaces in the last 40 years.
“It’s a combination of being white and old farts,” he said. “I think that’s changed a bit and I think we have a generation of young people who are much more involved than what they were 15, 20 years ago.”
The couple are hoping to release a number of Richmond-related episodes featuring stories on a nearby decommissioned former CIA boat, the whaling industry’s ties to San Pablo Bay and the history of ferries. They also said they are interested in following the development of Point Molate Park.
“This is a really interesting place to be concerned about nature,” Herz said, pointing to Richmond’s environmental struggles at the foot of the Chevron refinery.
“A lot of our stories are going to end up being around us because we’re here now,” Josephs said.
