Estero de Limantour State Marine Reserve & Drakes Estero State Marine Conservation Area
Estero de Limantour State Marine Reserve and Drakes Estero State Marine Conservation Area are two adjoining marine protected areas along the Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County on California’s north central coast. These marine protected areas cover a combined 4.04 square miles, with 1.49 square miles in the SMR and 2.55 square miles in the SMCA. Drakes Estero SMCA prohibits the take of all living marine resources from Drakes Estero except the recreational take of clams and the commercial aquaculture of shellfish pursuant to a disputed state water bottom lease and permit, the subject of ongoing legal proceedings since 2012, when the lease was allowed to expire. Estero de Limantour State Marine Reserve SMR and Drakes Estero State Marine Conservation Area SMCA are two of 22 marine protected areas adopted by the California Department of Fish and Game in August 2009 during the second phase of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative; the MLPAI is a collaborative public process to create a statewide network of protected areas along California’s coastline.
The north central coast’s new marine protected areas were designed by local divers, fishermen,conservationists and scientists who comprised the North Central Coast Regional Stakeholder Group. Their job was to design a network of protected areas that would preserve sensitive sea life and habitats while enhancing recreation and education opportunities; the north central coast marine protected areas took effect May 1, 2010. Estero de Limantour SMR and Drakes Estero SMCA are two adjoining marine protected areas along the Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County on California’s north central coast. Estero de Limantour SMR is contiguous to Point Reyes state marine reserve. Point Reyes is a spectacular and biologically diverse peninsula, designated a National Seashore. Estero de Limantour SMR consists of waters below the mean high tide line within Estero de Limantour and Drakes Estero southward of a line connecting 38°2.66′N 122°56.89′W with 38°2.66′N 122°56.15′W and northward of a line connecting 38°1.783′N 122°55.286′W with 38°1.954′N 122°56.451′W.
Drakes Estero SMCA includes the waters below the mean high tide line within Drakes Estero northward of a line connecting 38°2.66′N 122°56.89′W with 38°2.66′N 122°56.15′W. Estero de Limantour and Drakes Estero serve as nurseries for Dungeness crab and various fish species, as well as seal pupping areas and haul-out sites for marine mammals and major foraging areas for leopard sharks, bat rays, many bird species. Estero de Limantour SMR and Drakes Estero SMCA protect complex estuarine habitats, including eelgrass beds and mudflat ecosystems, reduce disturbances to major mainland seabird colonies and elephant seal rookeries. Through a haze of salty fog, visitors can see, hear and feel the thunderous ocean breakers washing over long sandy beaches and crashing into rocky cliffs. Point Reyes National Seashore covers over 100 square miles and includes 33,300 acres of coastal wilderness area; the undeveloped coastline stretches for 80 miles. Extensive recreational activities include hiking, kayaking and wildlife viewing.
There are extensive ranger-led programs. Estero de Limantour SMR prohibits the take of all living marine resources. Drakes Estero SMCA prohibits the take of all living marine resources except the recreational take of clams and the commercial aquaculture of shellfish pursuant to a valid state water bottom lease and permit. However, California’s marine protected areas encourage recreational and educational uses of the ocean. Activities such as kayaking, diving and swimming are allowed unless otherwise restricted; as specified by the Marine Life Protection Act, select marine protected areas along California’s central coast are being monitored by scientists to track their effectiveness and learn more about ocean health. Similar studies in marine protected areas located off of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands have detected gradual improvements in fish size and number. Marine Life Protection Act Initiative CalOceans Point Reyes National Seashore
Geographic coordinate system
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection; the invention of a geographic coordinate system is credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who composed his now-lost Geography at the Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. A century Hipparchus of Nicaea improved on this system by determining latitude from stellar measurements rather than solar altitude and determining longitude by timings of lunar eclipses, rather than dead reckoning. In the 1st or 2nd century, Marinus of Tyre compiled an extensive gazetteer and mathematically-plotted world map using coordinates measured east from a prime meridian at the westernmost known land, designated the Fortunate Isles, off the coast of western Africa around the Canary or Cape Verde Islands, measured north or south of the island of Rhodes off Asia Minor.
Ptolemy credited him with the full adoption of longitude and latitude, rather than measuring latitude in terms of the length of the midsummer day. Ptolemy's 2nd-century Geography used the same prime meridian but measured latitude from the Equator instead. After their work was translated into Arabic in the 9th century, Al-Khwārizmī's Book of the Description of the Earth corrected Marinus' and Ptolemy's errors regarding the length of the Mediterranean Sea, causing medieval Arabic cartography to use a prime meridian around 10° east of Ptolemy's line. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes' recovery of Ptolemy's text a little before 1300. In 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England as the zero-reference line; the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911.
In order to be unambiguous about the direction of "vertical" and the "horizontal" surface above which they are measuring, map-makers choose a reference ellipsoid with a given origin and orientation that best fits their need for the area they are mapping. They choose the most appropriate mapping of the spherical coordinate system onto that ellipsoid, called a terrestrial reference system or geodetic datum. Datums may be global, meaning that they represent the whole Earth, or they may be local, meaning that they represent an ellipsoid best-fit to only a portion of the Earth. Points on the Earth's surface move relative to each other due to continental plate motion and diurnal Earth tidal movement caused by the Moon and the Sun; this daily movement can be as much as a metre. Continental movement can be up to 10 m in a century. A weather system high-pressure area can cause a sinking of 5 mm. Scandinavia is rising by 1 cm a year as a result of the melting of the ice sheets of the last ice age, but neighbouring Scotland is rising by only 0.2 cm.
These changes are insignificant if a local datum is used, but are statistically significant if a global datum is used. Examples of global datums include World Geodetic System, the default datum used for the Global Positioning System, the International Terrestrial Reference Frame, used for estimating continental drift and crustal deformation; the distance to Earth's center can be used both for deep positions and for positions in space. Local datums chosen by a national cartographical organisation include the North American Datum, the European ED50, the British OSGB36. Given a location, the datum provides the latitude ϕ and longitude λ. In the United Kingdom there are three common latitude and height systems in use. WGS 84 differs at Greenwich from the one used on published maps OSGB36 by 112 m; the military system ED50, used by NATO, differs from about 120 m to 180 m. The latitude and longitude on a map made against a local datum may not be the same as one obtained from a GPS receiver. Coordinates from the mapping system can sometimes be changed into another datum using a simple translation.
For example, to convert from ETRF89 to the Irish Grid add 49 metres to the east, subtract 23.4 metres from the north. More one datum is changed into any other datum using a process called Helmert transformations; this involves converting the spherical coordinates into Cartesian coordinates and applying a seven parameter transformation, converting back. In popular GIS software, data projected in latitude/longitude is represented as a Geographic Coordinate System. For example, data in latitude/longitude if the datum is the North American Datum of 1983 is denoted by'GCS North American 1983'; the "latitude" of a point on Earth's surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the Equator and to each other; the North Pole is 90° N. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the Equator, the fun
Tomales Bay
Tomales Bay is a long, narrow inlet of the Pacific Ocean in Marin County in northern California in the United States. It is 15 miles long and averages nearly 1.0 miles wide separating the Point Reyes Peninsula from the mainland of Marin County. It is located 30 miles northwest of San Francisco; the bay forms the eastern boundary of Point Reyes National Seashore. Tomales Bay is recognized for protection by the California Bays and Estuaries Policy. On its northern end it opens out onto Bodega Bay, which shelters it from the direct current of the Pacific; the bay is formed along a submerged portion of the San Andreas Fault. Oyster farming is a major industry on the bay; the two largest producers are Tomales Bay Oyster Company and Hog Island Oyster Company, both of which retail oysters to the public and have picnic grounds on the east shore. Hillsides east of Tomales Bay are grazed by cows belonging to local dairies. There is grazing land west of the bay, on farms and ranches leased from Point Reyes National Seashore.
The bay sees significant amounts of water sports including sailing, kayaking and motor boating. Watercraft may be launched on Tomales Bay from the public boat ramp at Nick's Cove, north of Marshall. There is a $5 fee; the sand bar at the mouth of Tomales Bay is notoriously dangerous, with a long history of small-boat accidents. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has developed a safe eating advisory for fish caught here, based on levels of mercury or PCBs found in local species. Of special interest is the bioluminescence that can be seen from June to November. Towns bordering Tomales Bay include Inverness, Inverness Park, Point Reyes Station, Marshall. Additional hamlets include Nick's Cove, Duck Cove, Shallow Beach, Vilicichs. Dillon Beach lies just to the north of the mouth of the bay, Tomales just to the east; the area was once Coast Miwok territory. Documented villages in the area included Echa-kolum, Shotommo-wi, Utumia. Francis Drake is thought to have landed in nearby Drakes Estero in 1579.
Members of the Vizcaíno Expedition found the Bay in 1603, thinking it a river, named it Rio Grande de San Sebastian. Early 19th-century settlements constituted the southernmost Russian colony in North America and were spread over an area stretching from Point Arena to Tomales Bay; the narrow gauge North Pacific Coast Railroad from Sausalito was constructed along the east side of the bay in 1874 and extended to the Russian River until it was dismantled in 1930. Tomales Bay State Park was formed to preserve some of the bay shore. Popular units of the park include Millerton Point; the Ramsar Convention, signed in 1971, listed Tomales Bay as a wetland of international importance. The Giacomini Wetland Restoration Project, completed in 2008, returned to wetland several hundred acres at the south end of the bay, drained for grazing during the 1940s; the Marconi Conference Center State Historical Park preserves a small hotel built by Guglielmo Marconi in 1913 to house personnel who staffed his transpacific radio station nearby.
The hotel and the associated operations building and employee cottages were built by the J. G. White Engineering Corp under contract to Marconi. RCA purchased the station from Marconi in 1920; the station was closed in 1939, though other nearby radio stations on the Point Reyes Peninsula still operate today. Synanon, a drug rehabilitation organization, owned it from the early 1960s until 1980, when it was purchased by a private foundation and given to the state in 1984 to operate as a conference center. Hog Island Drakes Bay — adjacent to the north Nova Albion Pacific herring Tomales Bay SP Marconi Conference Center SHP Marconi Conference Center
Nicasio Creek
Nicasio Creek is an 11.9-mile-long stream in Marin County, United States and is the primary tributary of Lagunitas Creek, which flows, in turn, into Tomales Bay, the Pacific Ocean. The Nicasio Reservoir, formed in 1961 by Seeger Dam, is located on this stream. Nicasio Creek and the Rancho Nicasio are named for a Coast Miwok named "Nicasio" by the Spanish missionaries; the original diseno for the 1835 and 1844 land grants shows Arroyo de Nicasio, Casa de los Indios de Nicasio, Roblar de Nicasio for Nicasio Creek, the house of the Nicasio Indians, the oaks of Nicasio. In the mid-1830s, General Mariano Vallejo promised 80,000 acres to the Marin County Coast Miwok Indians and asked them to choose the lands, since their original lands had been co-opted by the Mission San Rafael. In 1835, the land was granted by Mexican Governor José Figueroa, however the Indians were subsequently swindled out of the land by General Vallejo and Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. By the time the scheme was discovered in 1843, the disputed lands were granted to Pablo de la Guerra, an aristocratic Spaniard, John B. R. Cooper, an Irishman who owned the Rancho Punta de Quentin near San Rafael.
In 1855, the Miwok claim was rejected by the Public Land Commission. Subsequently, de la Guerra sold his land in 1850 to Henry Wager Halleck. Halleck had arrived in California in 1847 as a lieutenant in the United States Engineers, accompanied by his friend, Lt. William Tecumseh Sherman. Halleck was a partner in the San Francisco law firm, Peachy & Billings, in the Civil War was promoted by President Abraham Lincoln to general-in-chief of the armies of the United States. Halleck hunted and fished at Rancho Nicasio, built a house on the creek near Nicasio, now called Halleck Creek; the Nicasio Creek watershed drains 36 square miles of coastal area of California. This creek is the primary tributary of Lagunitas Creek which enters the Pacific Ocean at the head of Tomales Bay. Originating on Big Rock Ridge west of the city of Novato, Nicasio Creek descends to the south. Approaching Lucas Valley Road, it turns and follows the road as it winds westward, passing south of Skywalker Ranch to the town of Nicasio.
North of Nicasio, it feeds into Nicasio Reservoir. The reservoir drains through a gap in Bolinas Ridge. Seeger Dam is located 1 mile upstream from the confluence of Nicasio and Lagunitas Creeks; the dam was constructed in 1960 by the Marin Municipal Water District to store water for cities in southern Marin County. From the dam, Nicasio Creek parallels Point Reyes-Petaluma Road westward until it empties into Lagunitas Creek. Before Seeger Dam presented an impassable barrier to anadromous fish passage, Nicasio Creek supported half of the steelhead trout and coho salmon spawning populations in the Lagunitas Creek watershed. By blockage and inundation the dam reduced by 50 percent of the salmon and steelhead populations entering Lagunitas Creek watershed. Author and landscape artist Russell Chatham wrote, "One of the most tragic sights I beheld was the year after Nicasio Dam blocked that critical watershed. An uncountable number of silvers, between 10,000 and 15,000, crowded into the mile from the gravel company to the base of the dam.
They were so thick that many were forced out onto the banks, where they died without spawning." For mitigation the Marin Municipal Water District initialled trapped inbound coho below the dam and transported them above the dam, but by 1991 only 20 pairs of coho returned to spawn and none reached the trapping site below the dam. In addition, because the dam blocks sediment transport, there is a lack of suitable spawning gravel in the lower mile below the dam for spawning. Most spawning in the Lagunitas Creek watershed now takes place in San Geronimo Creek, an unregulated tributary, the region downstream of its confluence with Lagunitas Creek. A river otter was collected by the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the southwest corner of Nicasio Reservoir in January, 2008. There are at least two bridges spanning Nicasio Creek. Point Reyes-Petaluma Road crosses the creek in two places: once 3.47 miles east of State Route 1 on a 133-foot concrete continuous tee beam constructed in 1960, again 3.2 miles east of State Route 1 on a 102-foot concrete tee beam built in 1937.
List of watercourses in the San Francisco Bay Area
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake was an English sea captain, slave trader, naval officer and explorer of the Elizabethan era. Drake carried out the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580, was the first to complete the voyage as captain while leading the expedition throughout the entire circumnavigation. With his incursion into the Pacific Ocean, he claimed what is now California for the English and inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish on the western coast of the Americas, an area, unexplored by western shipping. Elizabeth I awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581; as a Vice Admiral, he was second-in-command of the English fleet in the battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of dysentery after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico. Drake's exploits made him a hero to the English, but his privateering led the Spanish to brand him a pirate, known to them as El Draque. King Philip II offered a reward for his capture or death of 20,000 ducats, about £6 million in modern currency.
Francis Drake was born in Tavistock, England. Although his birth date is not formally recorded, it is known that he was born while the Six Articles were in force, his birth date is estimated from contemporary sources such as: "Drake was two and twenty when he obtained the command of the Judith". This would date his birth to 1544. A date of c.1540 is suggested from two portraits: one a miniature painted by Nicholas Hilliard in 1581 when he was 42, so born circa 1539, while the other, painted in 1594 when he was said to be 53, would give a birth year of around 1541. He was the oldest of the twelve sons of Edmund Drake, a Protestant farmer, his wife Mary Mylwaye; the first son was alleged to have been named after his godfather Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford. Because of religious persecution during the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549, the Drake family fled from Devon to Kent. There Drake's father obtained an appointment to minister the men in the King's Navy, he was made vicar of Upnor Church on the Medway.
Drake's father apprenticed him to his neighbour, the master of a barque used for coastal trade transporting merchandise to France. The ship's master was so satisfied with the young Drake's conduct that, being unmarried and childless at his death, he bequeathed the barque to Drake. Francis Drake married Mary Newman at St. Budeaux church, Plymouth, in July 1569, she died 12 years in 1581. In 1585, Drake married Elizabeth Sydenham—born circa 1562, the only child of Sir George Sydenham, of Combe Sydenham, the High Sheriff of Somerset. After Drake's death, the widow Elizabeth married Sir William Courtenay of Powderham. At the age of eighteen he was purser of a ship. At twenty he made a voyage to the coast of Guinea. In 1563, aged 23, made his first voyage to the Americas, sailing with his second cousin, Sir John Hawkins, on one of a fleet of ships owned by his relatives, the Hawkins family of Plymouth, he made three voyages with this fleet, attacking Portuguese towns and ships on the coast of West Africa.
They sailed to the Americas and sold the captured cargoes of slaves to Spanish plantations. John Hawkins is considered to have been the first English slave-trader. Hawkins made three such expeditions, the first in 1563, second in 1564 and the third expedition ending in the ill-fated 1568 incident at San Juan de Ulúa. In 1568, Drake was on his third expedition with the Hawkins fleet when, whilst negotiating to resupply and repair at a Spanish port in Mexico, the fleet was attacked by Spanish warships, with all but two of the English ships lost, he escaped along with John Hawkins. Drake's hostility towards the Spanish is said to have started with this incident. Following the defeat at San Juan de Ulúa, Drake vowed revenge. In 1570, his reputation enabled him to proceed to the West Indies with two vessels under his command, he renewed his visit the next year for the sole purpose of obtaining information. In 1572, he embarked on his first major independent enterprise, he planned an attack on the Isthmus of Panama, known to the Spanish as Tierra Firme and the English as the Spanish Main.
This was the point at which the silver and gold treasure of Peru had to be landed and sent overland to the Caribbean Sea, where galleons from Spain would pick it up at the town of Nombre de Dios. Drake left Plymouth on 24 May 1572, with a crew of 73 men in two small vessels, the Pascha and the Swan, to capture Nombre de Dios, his first raid was late in July 1572. Drake and his men captured its treasure; when his men noticed that Drake was bleeding profusely from a wound, they insisted on withdrawing to save his life and left the treasure. Drake stayed in the area for a year, raiding Spanish shipping and attempting to capture a treasure shipment; the most celebrated of Drake's adventures along the Spanish Main was his capture of the Spanish Silver Train at Nombre de Dios in March 1573. He raided the waters around Darien with a crew including many French privateers including Guillaume Le Testu, a French buccaneer, African slaves who had escaped the Spanish. Drake tracked the Silver Train to the nearby port of Nombre de Dios.
After their attack on the richly laden mule train and his party found that they had captured around 20 tons of silver and gold. They buried much of the treasure, as it was too much for their party to carry, made off with a fortune in gold. Wounded, Le Testu w
Audubon Canyon
Audubon Canyon is a coastal valley in Marin County, United States, associated with a small stream. The canyon provides habitat for a variety of plants. Notably, its redwoods provide nesting sites for great blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets; the stream descends the western slope of Bolinas Ridge, crosses State Route 1, drains into Bolinas Lagoon about 3 miles north of Stinson Beach, California. Audubon Canyon Ranch, a private land preservation organization based in the North Bay, has preserved much of the canyon as part of its Martin Griffin Preserve, named after L. Martin Griffin, Jr. an environmentalist who helped save the area in the 1960s and founded the organization. The canyon was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1968. Several local chapters of the National Audubon Society, Marin Audubon Society and Golden Gate Audubon Society of the East Bay and San Francisco, organized to purchase property for the protection of heron and egret nesting sites. Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve List of watercourses in the San Francisco Bay Area Pike County Gulch Stinson Gulch Official website
Manila galleon
The Manila Galleons were Spanish trading ships which for two and a half centuries linked the Philippines with Mexico across the Pacific Ocean, making one or two round-trip voyages per year between the ports of Acapulco and Manila, which were both part of New Spain. The name of the galleon changed to reflect the city; the term Manila Galleons is used to refer to the trade route itself between Acapulco and Manila, which lasted from 1565 to 1815. The Manila Galleons were known in New Spain as "La Nao de la China" on their return voyage from the Philippines because they carried Chinese goods, shipped from Manila; the Manila Galleon trade route was inaugurated in 1565 after Augustinian friar and navigator Andrés de Urdaneta discovered the tornaviaje or return route from the Philippines to Mexico. The first successful round trips were made by Alonso de Arellano that year; the route lasted until 1815. The Manila galleons sailed the Pacific for 250 years, bringing to the Americas cargoes of luxury goods such as spices and porcelain, in exchange for silver.
The route created a cultural exchange that shaped the identities and culture of the countries involved. In 2015, the Philippines and Mexico began preparations for the nomination of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade Route in the UNESCO World Heritage List, with backing from Spain. Spain has suggested the tri-national nomination of the Archives on the Manila-Acapulco Galleons in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. In 1521, a Spanish expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan sailed west across the Pacific using the westward trade winds; the expedition claimed them for Spain. Although Magellan died there, one of his ships, the Victoria, made it back to Spain by continuing westward. In order to settle and trade with these islands from the Americas, an eastward maritime return path was necessary; the first ship to try this a few years failed. In 1529, Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón tried sailing east from the Philippines, but could not find the eastward winds across the Pacific. In 1543, Bernardo de la Torre failed.
In 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo helped pave the way by sailing north from Mexico to explore the Pacific coast, reaching as far north as the Russian River, just north of the 38th parallel. The Manila-Acapulco galleon trade began when Spanish navigators Alonso de Arellano and Andrés de Urdaneta discovered the eastward return route in 1565. Sailing as part of the expedition commanded by Miguel López de Legazpi to conquer the Philippines in 1565, Arellano and Urdaneta were given the task of finding a return route. Reasoning that the trade winds of the Pacific might move in a gyre as the Atlantic winds did, they had to sail north to the 38th parallel north, off the east coast of Japan, before catching the eastward-blowing winds that would take them back across the Pacific. Reaching the west coast of North America, Urdaneta's ship the San Pedro hit the coast near Cape Mendocino, California followed the coast south to San Blas and to Acapulco, arriving on October 8, 1565. Most of his crew died on the long initial voyage.
Arellano, who had taken a more southerly route, had arrived. The English privateer Francis Drake reached the California coast, in 1579. After capturing a Spanish ship heading for Manila, Drake turned north, hoping to meet another Spanish treasure ship coming south on its return from Manila to Acapulco, he staked an English claim somewhere on the northern California coast. Although the ship's log and other records were lost, the accepted location is now called Drakes Bay, on Point Reyes south of Cape Mendocino. By the 18th century, it was understood that a less northerly track was sufficient when nearing the North American coast, galleon navigators steered well clear of the rocky and fogbound northern and central California coast. According to historian William Lytle Schurz, "They made their landfall well down the coast, somewhere between Point Conception and Cape San Lucas... After all, these were preeminently merchant ships, the business of exploration lay outside their field, though chance discoveries were welcomed".
The first motivation for land exploration of present-day California was to scout out possible way-stations for the seaworn Manila galleons on the last leg of their journey. Early proposals came to little, but in 1769, the Portola expedition established ports at San Diego and Monterey, providing safe harbors for returning Manila galleons. In Manila, the safety of ocean crossings was commended to the virgin Nuestra Señora de la Soledad de Porta Vaga in masses held by the Archbishop of Manila. If the expedition was successful the voyagers would go to the La Ermita to pay homage, offer gold and other precious gems or jewelries from Hispanic countries, to the image of the virgin. So it came to be that the Virgin was named the "Queen of the Galleons". Trade with Ming China via Manila served a major source of revenue for the Spanish Empire and as a fundamental source of income for Spanish colonists in the Philippine Islands; until 1593, two or more ships would set sail annually from each port. The Manila trade became so lucrative that Seville merchants petitioned king Philip II of Spain to protect the monopoly of the Casa de Contratación based in Seville.
This led to the passing of a decree in 1593 that set a limit of two ships sailing each year from either port, with one kept in reserve in Acapulco and one in
Media related to Drakes Bay Historic and Archeological District at Wikimedia Commons
