“Where are they now” is a series on the California WaterBlog. The series will celebrate the many alumni who got their start at the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS) and have now gone on to bigger and better things. Blog posts from the “Where are they now” series will be peppered throughout our regular blog line up, and they will highlight both former students and past employees of CWS. We hope you enjoy their stories in their own words!
Next up is Dana Myers, who was at CWS from 2017 – 2019.
I was just getting started in college as a bright-eyed college sophomore, ready to get hands-on experience in research, when I started working at CWS in January of 2017.
Dana Myers posing with a rainbow trout after participating in her first field work trip tagging these fish to track their migration throughout the Delta.
Working as an Undergraduate Researcher at the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS), I got up close and personal with juvenile Chinook Salmon, extracting their gut contents to understand what they’re really eating. My job included being a part of the Bug Lab, the unofficial name of the lab created by Dr. Rachel Johnson and Dr. Carson Jeffres (JJ Lab), placing me diligently behind a dissection microscope squeezing out gut contents of juvenile Chinook Salmon. This research was led by Dr. Anna Sturrock (now back in the UK) and supported by Mollie Ogaz (now at Cramer Fish Sciences). In the end, this work culminated into a published paper on floodplain foodscapes and their influence on Chinook Salmon sustainability in the Delta. In addition to this research, at the end of my senior year, I teamed up with another researcher, Miranda Bell Tilcock, to present isotope research at the 2019 Interagency Ecological Program’s Conference.
Throughout my time at CWS, I worked full time at CWS every summer, which also meant that I was biking miles in the wonderful 100+ degree weather. As a southern California native, this heat was way outside the normal for me and I felt it every time I stepped into the sunlight. Whenever I arrived at the lab, I would be drenched in sweat. Miranda and Mollie would take one look at me and send me to the walk-in freezer (where we kept our samples) to cool off. Honestly, I wish for every job I have to have a walk-in the freezer; it was a game-changer.
Dana Myers posing with her first lead author poster at the 2019 IEP Conference in Folsom, CA.
Now I am a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, studying Physical Oceanography as a part of the Coastal Oceanography and Autonomous Systems (COAST) Lab. You can find me putting instruments out in marshes to measure water flow, flying drones over kelp forests to monitor their abundance, and teaching students about oceanography as both a teaching assistant at UCSB and as a naturalist for Santa Barbara youth through various outreach programs.
My current research takes me back to the Delta and close to my CWS family! I am a 2025 Delta Fellow, studying saltwater intrusion in the San Francisco Bay-Delta using satellite remote sensing technologies. The Delta is a crucial part of California’s water system, but it has been heavily modified. Dams now control much of the freshwater release in the Delta to counter the saltier ocean water that enters the system from the San Francisco Bay. This balance of fresh and saltwater mixing influences water quality, habitat suitability, and freshwater management, yet comprehensive observations of its dynamics remains limited. This project uses a novel approach to bridge this gap in knowledge: examining satellite photos to track where fresh river and salty ocean waters meet. In particular, I’m focused on a zone known as the “estuarine turbidity maximum,” a cloudy band of muddy river water mixed with salty ocean water that is visible to modern satellites. This turbidity signature also tends to align with the “low salinity zone” used by regulatory agencies to mark the extent of saltwater intrusion. By relating turbidity and salinity in the Delta, I can assess whether the estuarine turbidity maximum can be used to indicate the extent of saltwater intrusion, offering a new tool for assessing freshwater outflow requirements from dam releases and ecological habitat extent under changing climate and water operations
Dana Myers and fellow 2025 Delta Science Fellow recipients at the Delta Early Career Workshop in Sacramento, CA. From left to right: Nishar Chhatiawala (RAND School of Public Policy), Sebastian Gonzales (UC Davis), Rebecca VanArnam (UC Davis), Shahin Islam (UC Davis), Dana Myers (UC Santa Barbara), Abhinav Sharma (UC Santa Cruz)
CWS was vital in getting me to where I am today. My first time in a research lab was at CWS, and I have held every subsequent research position I have had since to the standards that CWS set. I want a work place that is a fun place to walk into every day, fosters a friendly environment where coworkers are uplifting about your work and interested in your well-being, all the while being dedicated to performing meaningful research.
I still use Rachel and Carson as my job references, and I think it’s an attestament to their investment in my career (professional, as well as, personal) that they can still speak on my character and work ethic even 6 years later.
About the Author
Dana Myers and fellow researcher Jordan Snyder (UC Santa Barbara) hand launching a large drone off the coast of Santa Barbara to study giant kelp abundance.
Dana Myers grew up in Long Beach, California and completed her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Management with a minor in Geographic Information Systems at the University of California, Davis. On top of working for the CWS, she also interned for Dr. Amelia Munson at the Center for Aquatic Biology and Aquaculture studying fish metabolisms; Dr. Lauren Yamane in the Department of Ecology researching red urchin fishing pressures; and Dr. Sarah Yarnell at CWS demonstrating the benefits of beaver dams for carbon sequestration in meadows. She rounded off her time at UC Davis by studying abroad at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia in Brisbane, Australia taking terrestrial ecology and marine biology courses. This sparked her passion for marine science and she has since gone on to work for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in their Marine Division, obtained a summer fellowship with the NASA DEVELOP program researching wetland inundation, and most recently, works as a Marine Science Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. When she is not diligently working on her dissertation, you can find her teaching children about marine science as an instructor at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum or strolling through thrift stores and yard sales around Goleta, CA, or improving her art skills outside of cafes in the area.
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If this story resonated with you, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs. Want to support the specific experience featured here? You can do that too, by supporting CWS Fishes, Floodplains, and Springs Research.
Dana Myers and fellow researcher Jordan Snyder (UCSB) calibrating drone equipment in preparation for field work off the coast of Santa Barbara.
Smoky sunset over Eagle Lake, Lassen County, CA – home of endemic Eagle Lake rainbow trout and other endemic fishes and invertebrates. Sept 23, 2014. Will this terminal lake and its unique ecosystem survive global warming? This will be discussed in a future blog.
* This is a re-post of a blog originally published 09/17/2023.
The Challenge
We are living in the Anthropocene, an era being defined by global mass extinctions caused by humanity. While on-going and impending extinctions of birds and other terrestrial vertebrates gain the most attention, the situation with freshwater fishes (and other freshwater organisms) is as bad or worse, partly because many freshwater extinctions are nearly invisible events, hidden by murky waters (Moyle and Leidy 2023). The extinction threat is especially high for obligatory freshwater fishes including many species endemic to California (Moyle and Leidy 2023). The ultimate cause is competition between people and fish for clean water. People are winning the competition at an accelerated rate, assisted by invasive species and global warming[1] and by the by continued expansion of the human population and its demands (Rypel 2023). The freshwater fish fauna of California is thus already on its way to becoming simplified and homogenized (Moyle and Mount 2007, Leidy and Moyle 2021).
The challenge, then, is how do we save some of the evolutionary lineages of native fishes to become the post-disaster ancestors of future fishes in the near (50-100 years) and long-term (100-1,000+ years)? This essay presents a rough proposal for answering this question. It is based on the assumption that it is desirable to save some evolutionary lineages of California’s native fishes to serve as ancestors of future fish species, for moral, aesthetic, and practical reasons. But volumes have been written about these reasons for saving ‘worthless’ species (see, for example, Marchetti and Moyle 2010, Rypel et al. 2021) so they, so they don’t need to be reiterated here. Suffice to say, the more fish species that are lost, the poorer the world’s freshwater ecosystems will be, as will the people that also depend on them today and in the future.
Extinctions
The Earth has undergone mass extinctions in the past. The best known is the asteroid-driven extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, which may have coincided in part with massive volcanic eruptions. Interest in these events stems in part because they are regarded as the cause of extinction of the dinosaurs, allowing mammals, our ancestors, to dominate the world’s megafauna. Not much thought has been given to freshwater fishes that survived this disaster, even though streams in much of the world would likely have run high and muddy for hundreds if not thousands of years, until the stabilizing influence of trees and other terrestrial vegetation was renewed. Thus, the ancestors of most abundant and diverse group of freshwater fishes today, the Ostariophysi (carps, catfishes, characins) presumably survived the Cretaceous extinctions because of pre-adaptations for living in the murky waters flowing through a devastated landscape.
Mass extinctions have been caused by people in the past as well. The idea that people wiped out the megafauna of the lands they invaded as they moved from their ancestral home in Africa across the globe is now widely accepted. For example, Flannery (1994, 2015) described humanity’s ancestors as ‘Future Eaters’ because their consumption to extinction of large native mammals and birds resulted in major cascading changes to every ecosystem. This extinction seriously altered the native flora and fauna. In a way, modern extinctions are just a continuation of this human impact.
Now we are faced with increased frequency of disasters affecting humans and ecosystems resulting from, or exacerbated by, global warming. This reality has gripped the attention of many people, including scientists, politicians, and policy makers. But denial of global warming and its effects remains common, and despite climate disasters growing larger, more frequent, and more diverse. Millions of refugees worldwide are already seeking to survive outside their homelands, as their home areas become unlivable and/or dangerous due to droughts, floods, wars, disease, and a host of other problems. Such disasters are tragic symptoms of the declining planetary suitability of habitat for people, due in part, to population pressure exacerbated by global warming. This loss of habitat for people bodes poorly for fishes, especially those that require fresh water.
Characteristics of future ancestors
So, what freshwater fishes in California are likely to be good future ancestor material? What fishes can survive under the more likely and more pessimistic (realistic?) scenarios of a future in which most native freshwater fishes have been eliminated or close to it. Below are some examples, good and bad, of future ancestors. I assume here that large-scale moving of fishes of native fishes to new water bodies is neither practical nor desirable. I base the answer to the question on quantitative studies of characteristics of successful invasive fishes (Moyle and Marchetti 2006) and on vulnerability of California freshwater fishes to global warming (Moyle et al. 2013).
Ostariophysi. The Superorder Ostariophysi has major lineages worldwide in fresh water including carps, minnows (cyprinoids), catfishes, and characins. The fish of this superorder are usually among the most abundant fishes where found, with 11000+ species. They apparently were a minor part of the freshwater fauna at the time of the Cretaceous extinction event but survived to become dominant. There are many reasons for this but among them are likely a keen sense of hearing (Weberian ossicles), wide range of adult sizes, high fecundity, omnivory, high mobility, and high tolerance of poor water quality. These are all characters that would allow small populations to survive in devastated landscapes and to colonize new or recovering areas rapidly. So fishes such as common carp, various minnows, and catfishes could be likely ancestors for future freshwater fishes, worldwide. In California, sucker species (Catostomidae) and diverse cyprinoid fishes (Leuciscidae), such as Sacramento pikeminnow, hitch, chubs (Gila, Siphatales), and roach (Hesperoleucus) have the ostariophysan characteristics which may increase survival chances of at least some of the species.
Speckled dace in Lassen Creek, a tributary to Goose Lake, Modoc County. When Goose Lake has water, it develops large populations of dace and other native fishes. Photo by Thomas L. Taylor
Speckled Daces. The speckled daces are a lineage of ostariophysan native fishes (genus Rhinichthys) that seem ideally suited to become future ancestors. They were, until recently, regarded as one species, living in diverse habitats from British Columbia to Southern California and Mexico. In fact, “speckled dace” represents 15-20 isolated lineages (species and subspecies). Moyle et al. (2023) showed there are seven such lineages in California alone. They are remarkable because while genomics indicated that species-level populations have been separated for a million years or so, the separate populations are recognizably “speckled dace”; individuals from divergent populations cannot be readily told apart by people. Clearly the basic features of dace morphology and behavior are very conservative genetically and remained consistent over the 6+ million year history of this fish group. To achieve this broad distribution and diversity, these fish had to survive and thrive during long periods of changing conditions and dynamic geologic events, including periods of extreme drought and flood during the Pleistocene. Features that contribute to the survival all dace species, besides the basic ostariophysan characteristics, include (a) broad physiological tolerance, (b) small body size so large populations can continue in small waters, (c) flexible habitat requirements, and (d) ability to quickly colonize new or recovered waters. But even speckled dace may have a hard time persisting in isolated environments that are highly altered (e.g., Santa Ana speckled dace in the Los Angeles region).
Unlikely future ancestors. Some of today’s fishes, have a poor chance of being ancestors of future California fishes, if present trends continue. Many of these fishes are migratory species important in fisheries that that require large habitats (i.e., rivers, large lakes, estuaries) with relatively cold water (maximums <20° C for critical life stages). California fishes that qualify are sturgeons, all species of salmon and smelt, and most species currently listed as threatened or endangered under ESAs.
White and green sturgeon are fishes whose ancestors survived the Cretaceous extinction event(s) but presumably in ways opposite those of the Ostariophysans, by being large and highly mobile and by living for 100 years or more, with high fecundity. They also had a refuge in ocean waters. But both species are in danger of extinction in California, from multiple causes, as shown by the recent die-off in the San Francisco Estuary (Schreier et al. 2022). This reflects their increasing inability to live in human-dominated ecosystems. Their large size is no longer an advantage, unless northern rivers become more habitable for them.
Coho and Chinook salmon now depend on hatcheries for their survival in California; their future therefore is not secure. This is true for salmon in general at the southern end of their ranges; they are unlikely to make it to 2100 without human assistance (Lackey et al. 2006, Franks and Lackey 2015). Without a major change in human behavior, the future of salmon, at least as wild populations, is in Canada, Alaska, and Siberia (Rypel and Moyle 2023).
Endangered species. ESA-listed species already require intense care by people to persist, such as reproduction in hatcheries. Pupfishes, Colorado pikeminnow, and other desert fishes will survive without continual human assistance only if water is provided for them during extreme droughts, which is unlikely given water supply stresses in desert areas. Each listed species has its own challenges; the difficulty in overcoming these challenges is generally why they are listed and mostly not recovering. The challenges are only becoming harder to overcome.
Caveat. A problem I have largely ignored in this essay is that some of the most likely future ancestors in California waters are non-native fishes. Many are abundant and widespread, and have displaced native fishes. So they have already passed a suitability test of sorts, an ability to thrive in new, highly altered environments and an ability to become widely dispersed in their new homes, assisted by people. To make matters worse, invasive non-native fishes are often on the forefront as drivers of extinctions, a one-two punch with global warming (Moyle 2020, 2021). Examples of likely ancestors of future California fishes include Mississippi silverside, common carp, western mosquitofish, largemouth bass, and tilapia species.
Taking Action
People have had short but highly damaging impacts on most of this planet’s inhabitants, and the immediate future looks to be one in which effective collective action seems unlikely. We can therefore expect the current global extinction event to only accelerate; fishes will disappear as fast or faster than terrestrial vertebrates. The event will be recorded geologically as having taking place in the blink of an eye. But some animals and plants will survive. These will be the future ancestors. How can we maximize the pool of future ancestors in California, under the supposition that the more lineages that survive, the more diverse future lineages will be available to adapt to the changed world? This would seem to be desirable if more people choose to become a benign part of the Earth’s ecosystems and that diverse fishes are part of those ecosystems. While unlikely, in California, a start in this direction would be to establish Freshwater Protected Areas under the state’s 30×30 Initiative. See also Moyle 2002, Moyle et al. 2020, Rypel 2023.
Establishing a system of Freshwater Protected Areas now, as part of the 30×30 Initiative, would be a major step for aquatic conservation in California. Such a system should encompass California freshwater fish fauna, and other endemic aquatic biota. There will be tendency, of course, to give habitat for ESA-listed species a priority. But many of these species are or will become conservation dependent, requiring interventions of various sorts (e.g. hatcheries) even if habitat is provided (e.g., delta smelt). They have a low probability of surviving under most likely scenarios described previously. A preponderance of native fishes already are listed under ESAs or considered to be in decline (species of special concern). These fishes have an increasingly high probability of going extinct as long habitat alteration continues and severe droughts alternate with extreme floods, driven by global warming and human unwillingness to make sacrifices necessary to reverse global warming.
Deer Creek, Tehama County, showing middle (left) and lower (right) reaches . This entire watershed is a good candidate for a Freshwater Protected Area that supports potential future ancestors of native fishes. Photos by author.
The best chance for listed species is probably to be part of clusters of species that have high potential for future ancestor-hood. These species would have to be managed as a unit within their natural habitat. In the Sacramento River watershed the ancestor species, all unlisted, could include: tule perch, prickly sculpin, hardhead, speckled dace, California roach, Sacramento sucker, Sacramento pikeminnow, and rainbow trout. The ideal place to conserve these fish could be undammed streams and their watersheds, such as Deer, Mill and Antelope creeks in Tehama County or the Fall River in Shasta County. In the Klamath region, special status and protection of habitat could be given to the combined Shasta, Scott, and Salmon rivers, as well as the connecting Klamath River in the region. Other possibilities include Goose Lake and its watershed, the Eel River and its watershed, the San Gabriel River and adjoining watersheds in Southern California, and the Owens-Death Valley region including Owens Lake.
While moving fish to other watersheds (assisted migration) is usually not a good idea, the Eel River is an intriguing example of where it seems to be working because the Eel now supports populations of Sacramento pikeminnow, coastal roach, and Klamath speckled dace, introduced from adjacent watersheds. However, the negative effects of these ‘native’ introduce d species on Eel River native fishes, especially salmonids, and invertebrates may outweigh the positive effects of establishing new populations. But the three species do have an increased probability of becoming future ancestors as a result.
The initial steps for future ancestor conservation would be to improve the habitat where needed and make selected watersheds as disaster-proof as possible. This could be done, for example, by intense forest and fire management, by reducing road impacts, by improving floodable areas (e.g., bypasses and wetlands) and by generally creating a system that provides habitats that can persist though decades of droughts and floods. Ideally, there would be monitoring and management by local people who are committed to protecting the watershed and its biota.
Essentially, the idea is to treat Freshwater Protected Areas as habitat for future ancestors much as you would critical habitat for ESA-listed species, only for multiple species. However, if the global climate disaster becomes as severe as some speculate, refuges for future ancestors should be able to persist on their own, with little or no human management, for a long time: decades, perhaps hundreds of years.
Conclusions
If you think the idea selecting and protecting future ancestors is laughable, think of what the world will be like in the next 50-100 years if present trends continue, including increasing temperatures. If changes in climate are denied, then it seems silly to deny related changes in ecosystems that are affected by global warming. Currently, most sacrifices needed to reduce the impact of global warming are being rejected, ignored, or minimized. The oceans will be much warmer, so coral reefs and other marine ecosystems will likely be reduced or eliminated, as will most oceanic fisheries. Warmer oceans will be tied to floods and droughts at a world scale, with larger storms, challenging infrastructure such as levees and dams. More people will become climate refugees, with fewer safe places to go. In such scenarios, future ancestors of any creature but humans will receive little consideration. Species will survive to become ancestors mostly by chance, being lucky enough to survive in an unplanned refuge or being capable of surviving in a devastated landscape (cockroaches, rats, and maybe mosquitofish). But perhaps we can increase chances of survival for diverse lineages, including fishes, by creating some refuges now, as a gift to the future.
I hope this vision of the future is overly pessimistic and that California’s leadership in combating global warming, protecting natural areas, and saving endangered fishes (and other species) will continue. We need to keep working to protect California’s amazing natural heritage on the assumption that the global community will come to its senses and take the actions needed to halt, then reverse global warming.
Peter B. Moyle is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis and is Associate Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences.
Further Reading:
Flannery, T.F. 1994. The Future Eaters: an Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People. Reed: New Holland.
Flannery, T.F. 2015. The Eternal Frontier: an Ecological History of North America and its Peoples. Grove Press.
Franks, S.E. and R. T. Lackey. 2015. Forecasting the most likely status of wild salmon in the California Central Valley in 2100. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, 13(1).
Grantham, T. E., and 10 others. 2017. Missing the boat on freshwater fish conservation in California. Conservation Letters 10:77-85. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12249
Howard, J.K, and 12 others. 2018. A freshwater conservation blueprint for California: prioritizing watersheds for freshwater biodiversity. Freshwater Science 37(2):417-431. https://doi.org/10.1086/697996
Kirsch, A. 2023.The End of Us. The Atlantic(January-February): 58-65.
Lackey, R.T., D. H. Lach. and S.I. Duncan. 2006. Salmon 2100:The Future of Wild Pacific Salmon. American Fisheries Society , Bethesda MD.
Leidy, R. L. and P. B. Moyle. 2021. Keeping up with the status of freshwater fishes: a California (USA) perspective. Conservation Science and Practice 3(8), e474. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.474. 10 pages.
Marchetti, M.P.and P.B. Moyle. 2010. Protecting Life on Earth: an Introduction to the Science of Conservation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Moyle, P. B. 2002. Inland Fishes of California. Revised and Expanded. Berkeley: University of California Press. 502 pp.
Moyle, P.B., 2020. Living with aliens: nonnative fishes in the American Southwest. Pages 69-78 In D.L. Propst, J.E. Williams, K.R. Bestgen, and C.W. Hoagstrom, eds., Standing Between Life and Extinction: Ethics and Ecology of Conserving Aquatic Species in North American Deserts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moyle, P.B. and J. Mount. 2007. Homogenous rivers, homogenous faunas. Proceedings, National Academy of Sciences 104: 5711-5712. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.
Moyle, P.B., J. D. Kiernan, P. K. Crain, and R. M. Quiñones. 2013.Climate change vulnerability of native and alien freshwater fishes of California: a systematic assessment approach. PLoS One. http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0063883
Moyle, P.B., N. Buckmaster, N. and Su, Y. 2023. Taxonomy of the Speckled Dace species complex (Cypriniformes: Leuciscidae, Rhinichthys) in California, USA. Zootaxa 5249(5):501-539. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5249.5.1
Moyle, P.B. and R.L. Leidy. 2023. Freshwater fishes: threatened species and threatened waters on a global scale. In N. Maclean, editor. The Living Planet: The Present State of the World’s Wildlife. Cambridge University Press.
Tickner, D. et al. 2020. Bending the curve of global freshwater biodiversity loss: an emergency recovery plan. Bioscience 70(4): 330-342.
[1] Alternate labels are climate change, global harming, or global disaster creation. Global warming is preferred because it is the driver of other disasters lumped under the innocuous “climate change.”
Yolo bybass at sunset. Photo by Karrigan Börk, 2024.
California is full of gifts that keep on giving.
California water provides for a bounty of social, environmental, economic, and cultural benefits. Water is the lifeblood of California farms, which have created one of the world’s great agricultural economies. Water carves our state’s beautiful landscapes and floats our boats and our bodies through some of the most magnificent places on Earth. Water and the many benefits it brings lie at the heart of what it means to be a Californian, past, present, and future from indigenous tribes, to farmers and ranchers, to outdoor recreationists, to people who drink water.
California water also provides an eternal bounty of problems (e.g., scientific, policy, and operational) that we eternally study to ensure that the benefits of California’s water keep on flowing toward its people, species, and ecosystems. Weathering floods and droughts; ensuring efficient and effective operations of California’s water infrastructure; making decisions on how best to allocate water; understanding the impacts of past decisions; figuring out how to reconcile water use and infrastructure with our native and not-so-native species; even understanding how much water we’re using in which places… There’s no limit to the challenges of studying, understanding, and managing California water.
In both scholarly and practical senses, UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences has benefitted from the challenges of California water. It would be great if California water was easy to manage, with plenty of water for all. But since it’s not, we at the Center embrace these diverse eternal problems as “gifts” to an inter-disciplinary organization of scholars and researchers excited for research in search of solutions. We are thankful for California water’s many gifts to us, and the support we receive from the people of California through direct gifts, funding agencies, and the University of California. Thank you to all!
Happy Holidays!
We wish everyone a happy and resilient new year.
The 2025 Ecogeomorphology class rafting the Salmon River in Idaho. Photo credit: Alexandra Chu.
* To celebrate 15 years of the California WaterBlog during this season of giving, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs.
About the Authors
Karrigan Börk is a UC Davis Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences. His publications run the gamut from California minimum streamflow requirements to a hatchery and genetic management plan for the reintroduction of spring-run Chinook salmon in the San Joaquin River. Prof. Börk graduated with Distinction and Pro Bono Distinction from Stanford Law School in 2009 and completed his Ph.D. dissertation in Ecology at UC Davis in September 2011. His current work focuses on Western water law.
Jay Lund is a UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geography, and Hydrologic Science and a has-been Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences. He has worked on many aspects of water management and policy since arriving at US Davis in 1987. He continues to work on water, infrastructure, and environmental problems in California and elsewhere, in addition to a lifelong passion for all aspects of multi-phase fluid flow and transport (sailing). Everything is about water.
* If you missed any of this month’s “12 Days of CWS” posts, check them out here!
You might think that teaching the same thing again every year would get old, or that taking field trips to the same location year after year would be repetitive. And, sure, gearing up to teach landlord-tenant law for the nth time can be a bit daunting.
Sketch of shelf fungi from a student’s Cases and Places field notebook.
But I’ve found that the students make every class unique. Each year, another cohort of students brings something different to the table and makes the experience new. They notice new things about the cases we read in class or the places we visit. They bring different sets of values and fresh perspectives, which lead them to question the doctrines I teach in different ways. Never knowing exactly where a class conversation is going to go means that teaching the same classes year after year is never really the same. Seeing students seize on new ideas and pursue them with a passion makes it exciting for me, as a teacher, to walk into class every day. Working with students on writing projects or other independent studies provides an opportunity to learn how someone else thinks, to see familiar problems through someone else’s eyes, and those opportunities are endlessly surprising (and rewarding). Students’ passion, anger, frustration, sadness, engagement, and growth are gifts that help me believe a better world is possible.
Students listed to a presentation at the Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River, a few short months before the dam was breached and removed. Photo by Karrigan Börk, 2023
This is all especially true in field classes. As a graduate student, the UC Davis Ecogeomorphology class changed my life and my approach to teaching. The expeditionary education class, created by the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS) founders and taught by CWS affiliates, inspired me to get myself, my family, and my students out in the field. Working with Dr. Kurtis Burmeister, I learned about all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into a safe and successful field trip. In cooperation with Outdoor Adventures, the UC Davis Fire Department, great volunteers, and supportive donors, we’ve been able to bring law students out into the field through the law school’s California Environmental Cases and Places class. Many of the students are first-time campers, and many have never spent significant chunks of time in the field, so the trip can be challenging for students. But being in the places we’ve discussed in class and interacting with the resources and the people who rely on them brings conflicts to life in a way that classrooms just can’t.
UC Davis Law students preparing dinner on the last night of the California Environmental Cases and Places field trip. Photo by Karrigan Börk, 2024.
The course is aimed, in part, at affective student outcomes – getting students engaged in caring and thinking about the issues presented in the course. Not telling them what to think, but showing them why they should care and should think deeply about the conflicts (and conflicting values) they encounter in environmental and water law. And field courses excel at that. One student noted, “I want the issues to be easily solvable. But you can’t tackle one thing without affecting another. How do you return water/land to people without impacting millions of lives?” Another reflected, “I met new people, made close friends, went to new places, and learned things about myself. Looking out the window as the land flies by makes me think about the history of this land – cultural, geological, ecological, etc. Every piece of this earth has been cared for (and cared about) by someone at some point. A detachment from place can make us forget the deeply ingrained connection and appreciation we all carry for place.” Watching students give up on knee-jerk, easy answers and instead wrestle with the hard water and land management challenges California faces makes the hard part of trip planning worthwhile. We may go on similar Cases and Places trips year after year, but with the students, it’s always a different journey.
Sketch from another student’s Cases and Places field notebook.
A final student note: “Knowing the scientific, historical, and legal context of the place you are in makes life more magical.” This holiday season, I’m grateful for the magic that students bring into my life and the lives of everyone at UC Davis.
UC Davis Law Students on a viewpoint above Mono Lake. Photo by Karrigan Börk, 2022.
About the Author Karrigan Börk is a UC Davis Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences. His publications run the gamut from California minimum streamflow requirements to a hatchery and genetic management plan for the reintroduction of spring-run Chinook salmon in the San Joaquin River. Prof. Börk graduated with Distinction and Pro Bono Distinction from Stanford Law School in 2009 and completed his Ph.D. dissertation in Ecology at UC Davis in September 2011. His current work focuses on Western water law.
Sketch from a student’s Cases and Places field notebook.
UC Davis Law students on the last night of the California Environmental Cases and Places field trip. Photo by Karrigan Bork, 2024.
Student sketch from a student’s Cases and Places field notebook.
* To celebrate 15 years of the California WaterBlog during this season of giving, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs.
A juvenile water penny beetle (Eubrianax edwardsii). Photo credit: Christine Parisek.
By Christine A. Parisek
Imagine a time you were standing at the edge of a creek – perhaps small pebbles and cobblestone were stacked along the shallow water edge, aquatic vegetation pushed its way in between, and a light breeze rustled the trees around you as the water swirled and lapped playfully at your feet.
Some people might think fishing would be the best way to enjoy a quiet, picturesque scene like this. But if you’ve never paused to turn a couple of cobblestones over, you could be missing out. If you have, you might have spotted something clinging to the underside of the rock – perhaps a tiny, round, brown “coin”. That’s Eubrianax edwardsii, a water penny beetle larva (lucky pennies, I call them), and they are by far one of my favorite things to find when I’m exploring streams.
An adult water penny beetle (Eubrianax edwardsii). Photo credit: Merav Vonshak on iNaturalist, CC BY-NC.
Water pennies are aquatic insects that spend their juvenile stage (i.e., larval) seemingly suction-cupped to rocks underwater, moving slowly and deliberately like a tank tread, with measured determination, all the while bracing against the current as they munch and scrape off the algae. When they’re present, you know the water is clean and healthy. As adults, they are terrestrial (like most aquatic insects), and they flaunt an admirable pair of antennae.
I first encountered water pennies while surveying lakes in the Lakes Basin (Plumas–Tahoe National Forest) for my Master’s research, and I was fortunate to continue encountering them for my PhD research in surveying Sierra Nevada lake food webs. I’ve come to really appreciate them, especially as I’ve moved from working solely on aquatic insects toward being an aquatic food web ecologist.
A juvenile dragonfly found on the side of our inflatable field packraft. Photo credit: Christine Parisek.
Aquatic insects live in most freshwater environments and inhabit all manner of places, depending on the particular species. That could be the water’s surface (water striders, riffle bugs), the water column (predaceous diving beetles), bottom sediments (stonefly nymphs), or on different microhabitats such as vegetation (damselfly and dragonfly nymphs), mud (burrowing mayfly nymphs, midge larvae), or rocks (clinging mayfly nymphs, case-making caddisfly larvae, water penny beetles). As with different fish taxa, each aquatic insect species has morphology adapted to live in lentic (slow-moving water, e.g., wetland, lake, reservoir) or lotic (flowing water, e.g., streams, rivers) habitats – though not always! That’s actually what spurred my interest in working with water pennies for my Master’s research in the first place – water pennies (adapted to streams) were also in lakes (Parisek 2018; Parisek et al. 2023).
So next time you’re bugging out to visit a lake or stream, consider pausing at the edge and taking a closer look!
About the Author
Christine A. Parisek is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of California Davis, a Science Communications Fellow at the Center for Watershed Sciences, and Managing Editor of the California WaterBlog.
Collecting food web data at mountain lakes. Upper Sardine Lake, Lakes Basin, Sierra Nevada, California, USA. Photo credit: Christine Parisek.
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Juvenile caddisfly from a mountain lake. PC Christine Parisek.Empty juvenile caddisfly cases on the edge of a boat. PC Christine Parisek.
Our view of the Suisun Marsh when the weather becomes chilly, including Kimberly’s (top right, that’s me!) dazzling tule perch, Abigale’s wondrous starry flounder (middle left), Lynette’s swift Sacramento splittail (middle right), Kyle’s voracious common carp (bottom left), and Alex’s humble shokihaze goby (bottom right).
‘Twas a morning of field work, when all through our van Not a researcher was sleeping, and to Suisun Marsh we ran; Our waders and boots folded, all tucked in with care, In hopes that bountiful fish, in our seines, would be there;
The researchers were nestled all snug on our boat ‘Junior,’ With visions of the otter trawl dancing on the slough floor; Abigale Deen in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap, Sipped on cucumber lime Gatorade, alert in a snap,
When out in the slough there arose such a clatter, I leapt up from the stern to see what was the matter. Up to the boat’s bow I flew like a flash, Stared down at the water, curious of the splash.
The westerly wind on the water did blow, Gave the illusion of movement to objects below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But the winter seasonals and resident fishes all here,
With a slender old swimmer, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be Splittail (ST) Nick. More rapid than eagles other fishes they came, And he swished, and splashed, and called them by name;
“Now, tule perch! Now, common carp! Now, stickleback and threadie! On, sucker! On, sculpin! On, yellowfin goby!
To the top of the waterways! To the cod end of the trawl! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”
…
But I heard him exclaim, ere he swam out of sight, “Happy fish-mas to all, and to all a good night!”
About the Author
Kimberly Evans is a Master’s student in the Graduate Group in Ecology. As a member of the Aquatic Research Collective (ARC) in the Center for Watershed Sciences, she studies long-term trends in the fishes of Suisun Marsh, focusing on the Sacramento Splittail.
Further Reading
Moyle, P. B., Baxter, R. D., Sommer, T., Foin, T. C., & Matern, S. A. (2004). Biology and population dynamics of sacramento splittail (Pogonichthys macrolepidotus) in the San Francisco Estuary: A review. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.15447/sfews.2004v2iss2art3
Moyle, P. B., Manfree, A. D., & Fiedler, P. L. (Eds.). (2019). Suisun marsh: Ecological history and possible futures. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520957329
* To celebrate 15 years of the California WaterBlog during this season of giving, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs.
We invited haiku submissions from CWS members and friends to be a part of the 8th day of our California WaterBlog series, “12 Days of CWS“. A haiku is a traditional Japanese three-line poem (5-7-5 syllables) that focuses on capturing a moment, feeling, or image. We hope you enjoy… and leave us your own haiku in the comments section below!
It seeps through the ground Replenishing aquifers Groundwater recharge
Creeping and Crawling California Invasive Water Hyacinth
Toils All Day Long An Indoor Ecologist Will I go Outside
Danube River, Dürnstein, Austria. PC Christine Parisek 2025.
Valley fog lifts up Feathers flutter through orchards Sigh for the promise
Mosquitos floating Mosquitos dancing for my blood We hate you so much
Blinded by blood lust Seeking me incessantly The spray does nothing
[Anonymously dedicated to anyone who has done meadow work, stream work, or just any field work with mosquitos present… probably everyone. It is just something to deal with, and part of the fun of field work. :)]
Flows, feast or famine, Flora, fauna, farms, and friends: California.
Aerial view of wetlands. PC Ken James, CA DWR, 2025.
Watershed Building Interdisciplinary Full of Scientists
Water falls from high River begins to wander Floodplain comes alive
Putah Creek along the UC Davis campus (i.e., Pedrick Road). PC Peter B. Moyle, January 2011.
New rain is falling, Thirsty grounds long for storing. Can floods bring new hope? – By Helen E. Dahlke
Through a microscope Pearl shining, a fish’s lens sits History in layers – By Danhong Ally Li
Adult Chinook Salmon Lens. Photo Credit: Alexandra Chu.
Founded CWS Jeff Mount and Peter Moyle The Visionaries
Keys click, code won’t run Outside, salmon spawn in streams Life of a modeler
Putah Creek Salmon. PC Ken Davis, December 2013.
How do salmon From distant valley rivers Find our small creek?
Looking for salmon I see swirling yellow leaves And a patch of clean gravel
On Valentine’s Day Suckers were splashing and spawning Not knowing I was watching.
Fishing smallmouth bass We catch native pikeminnows. A happy result.
On bright summer mornings Fish dapple the creek’s surface Grabbing small mayflies.
– Haikus about Putah Creek, By Peter Moyle
Putah Creek below Pedrick Road. PC Peter B. Moyle.
* To celebrate 15 years of the California WaterBlog during this season of giving, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs.
Dr. Peter Moyle and Rachel Alsheikh in the Ichthyology Collection room.
On the UC Davis campus, past the Watershed Sciences Building, past the cows and the Arboretum, there’s a nondescript building with a locked room. It’s a secret treasure trove: shelves upon shelves stacked with more than 8,000 jars of fish specimens preserved in ethanol. At over 30,000 fishes, it’s the fourth largest ichthyological research collection in the state, and it belongs to the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology (MWFB). If you’ve studied fish at UC Davis, you’ve almost certainly encountered the MWFB’s teaching specimens before, in a class like WFC120L or at an event like Picnic Day. A museum’s selected teaching specimens and its specimens on display get to meet the public that way, but few people have the opportunity to appreciate full behind-the-scenes research collections. Today, we’ll give you a sneak peek inside.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Center for Watershed Sciences co-founder, Dr. Peter Moyle established the Ichthyology Collection in 1972. It has been a time capsule for research ever since, spanning not only Dr. Moyle’s career but also those of many of his students. The resulting collection is one of the most modern representations of California freshwater and estuarine species at any institution, an important resource in the keeping of natural history. Part of the Fish Collection also consists of orphaned collections from other institutions, including the large San Jose State University collection of nearshore marine fishes, which was started by Professor Emeritus Dr. Jerry Smith, one of Peter Moyle’s first graduate students. And the Fish Collection doesn’t end there, with specimens from across the country, Hawaii to Alaska, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Antarctica, and more.
A handful of “pickled” specimens in lots: (left to right) frogfish, white-spotted puffer, guineafowl puffer, stout moray, trunkfish.
These specimens don’t sit idle, they actively contribute to research. They have helped scientists reassess fish taxonomy, clarify species phylogenies, and determine changing distributions. Their tissues have been used for genomic analysis. Some of them have even been featured on the WaterBlog for their importance as type specimens, the permanent vouchers used to describe a new species or subspecies. The oldest museum fish collections are nearly two centuries old (see the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History’s archive of the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1942): it’s impossible to predict everything collections-based research will discover in the future. Needless to say, we’ll be working with this collection to help find out.
You can follow the MWFB on Instagram @museumofwfb.
If you’re interested in supporting the Fish Collection, you can contact us or do so here.
About the Author
Rachel Alsheikh is a Museum Specialist at the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology. She has been working at the MWFB since she was an undergraduate student. When she graduated in 2020, she also began working as the Project Manager for the Center for Watershed Sciences. She loves museums and museum specimens.
The Lost Species: Great Expeditions in the Collections of Natural History Museums by Christopher Kemp, Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey, Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums by Lance Grande.
* To celebrate 15 years of the California WaterBlog during this season of giving, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs.
Intro to Water Science (ESM 100) students exploring UC Davis’ water systems through field visits – where curiosity, community, and on-the-ground learning helped transform questions into purpose. Photos by Kira Zalis Waldman and Ethan Xie.
Teaching hydrology means teaching in a world where climate awareness, and inherently climate grief, often walk into the classroom before I do. Our lectures revisit now familiar concerns: shrinking snowpack, overdrafted aquifers, and the uneven and unjust burdens so many California communities carry. The weight of that knowledge is real. As land subsides and floods deluge, young people at pivotal moments in their early adulthood are asked to absorb the unsettling truths of a human-altered water cycle. It can feel overwhelming, for them and for me, especially as they begin imagining their place in the water world. (It’s Time to Talk about Climate Anxiety, “This Book Is the Cure for Climate Anxiety”)
This fall, while serving as a teaching assistant for the Intro to Water Science (ESM 100), taught by Dr. Helen E. Dahlke, I observed how curiosity repeatedly broke through climate grief in the classroom and on field visits. The heaviness of the daily lessons (increased evapotranspiration, water-quality degradation, soil moisture decline, etc.) was met with voices and questions that inspired me – that recharged my resilience. On field visits to the climate station, the groundwater pump facility, and the arboretum waterway, students asked sharp, joyful questions: How does this sensor work? Why is that pump humming? Where does our campus water actually come from? What happens to our resources after floods? During droughts? Standing there in the sun or the rain, surrounded by the tools and people who keep water systems functioning, something softened. The problems felt big, yes – but the solutions felt tangible.
These moments reminded me that purpose grows where grief and curiosity meet. Students and instructors who show up with openness, humor, and wonder tend to thrive. Field-based learning helps all of us reconnect to what is still possible. It turns abstract worry into grounded understanding, and at least in our class this fall, it turns that understanding into resilience.
About the Author
Kira Zalis Waldman (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Hydrologic Sciences Graduate Group at UC Davis, where she studies how geogenic contaminants like arsenic and uranium respond to managed aquifer recharge. She’s passionate about teaching hydrology through place-based, field-centered learning and helping students navigate curiosity and purpose in the water world. When she’s not thinking about groundwater, you can usually find her rafting rivers, backpacking in the mountains, or plotting her next living laboratory in an outside classroom.
Further Reading
A slide I share with my students before giving a climate change lecture.
* To celebrate 15 years of the California WaterBlog during this season of giving, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs.
Many ecologists spend substantial time conducting research in the field – but for some of us, our skillsets (e.g., statistics, mathematical models, data science) lend themselves to a different, more indoor career. Here’s what a typical workday might look like:
6:00 AM: Start the day with coffee on the couch. Gaze longingly at my green sturgeon art; wonder if I’ll ever see one in the wild.
Green sturgeon stained glass, created by Dr. Rosemary Hart of “Rosie’s Colored Glasses” on Etsy. Rosie is an Environmental Program Manager at the Department of Water Resources.
7:00 AM: Get dressed. Glance at my hiking boots collecting dust as I reach for my wing-tips.
8:00 AM: Arrive at the Center for Watershed Sciences. Wave at Carson as he is loading nets and hip waders into the back of a pickup truck, getting ready for the field as I walk into the building. Grumble to myself about the air conditioning being set too low.
8:05 AM: Park myself in front of my extra-large monitor and tile my (computer) desktop windows so I’m ready to code.
9:17 AM: Peek at the narrow triangle of blue gray sky visible out the window between my giant monitor and the adjacent buildings for the nth time.
11:06 AM: Scribble down some fun math to figure out later.
12:00 PM: Lunch time! Eat leftovers on a picnic bench so I can get my vitamin D.
12:59 PM: Back at my desk for a Zoom meeting. Set a picture from a hike as my virtual background – maybe people will think it’s from the field?
Jon’s Zoom background, Sly Park Creek, Sly Park Recreation Area, Pollock Pines, CA. Photo by Jon Walter.
3:30 PM: Math time! Work on tidying up the stuff I scribbled down earlier (writing in LaTeX of course). Continue endless internal monologue about whether the assumptions that make the math simple enough to be do-able are actually reasonable.
5:00 PM: Shut down the computer and head home. Hope there’s a good hockey game on TV!
About the Author
Jonathan Walter is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Watershed Sciences. A (jokingly) self-described “indoor ecologist,” Jon specializes in developing and applying statistics and mathematical models to study the dynamics of aquatic organisms and ecosystems.
* To celebrate 15 years of the California WaterBlog during this season of giving, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs.
