Bay Nature cleaned up nicely at the 2025 Society of Professional Journalists Northern California, winning two awards for four stories on science and the environment. Here’s a little backstory on our winners.

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In January 2025, Lisa M. Krieger reported for Bay Nature on a historic settlement between Point Reyes ranchers and environmentalists that—if it comes to pass—will largely end the ranching era there. Then, we asked her to report out a story other media seemed to have overlooked: What was the plan for the landscape?

The reporting wasn’t easy, with the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy basically mum on the subject. Krieger relied on her deep sourcing and long experience in the area, meticulously distilled the available science, and carefully balanced the voices. It’s a masterly piece, and one to return to as the tussling over this special place continues.

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Here, we win for a trio of stories on coastal discoveries. We are so proud to say they are all by our early-career journalism fellows, into whom we editors pour everything we know about journalism. By the way, we already knew they were stars. Now we have a plaque that says so!

Tanvi Dutta Gupta wrote a lyrical feature about sperm whales, which spend a surprising amount of time in the Monterey Bay area. Scientists have been eavesdropping on them and are starting to figure out what they are saying, thanks to new computational technology and an explosion of new science.

Tanvi signed up for a second year with us and is now our senior reporting fellow. Her motto seems to be “always be wrangling a boat trip.”

After a battery plant fire at Moss Landing, Jillian Magtoto found a researcher who, incredibly, had already been collecting baseline data on soils at Elkhorn Slough. That gave him a baseline to compare with the heavy metals he found in the area after the fire—the first step in understanding (and proving) its impacts on sea otters and other wildlife.

Jillian is now covering the environment at the Savannah Morning News, in Georgia.

I actually snorted when Guananí Gómez–Van Cortright first filed this story about researchers who are trying to save kelp forests by raising sunflower sea stars. It was full of classic Guananí-isms: “tiny, translucent larvae twirl like flecks of snot”; sea stars as “many-armed roombas.” She has a special way with metaphor. And this is not only a beautifully written story but a hopeful one.