Tag: fish
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Future Ancestors of Freshwater Fishes in California
By Peter B. Moyle . . . * 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…
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California’s Amazing Terminal Lakes
By Peter B. Moyle * This is a re-post of a blog originally published 11/26/2023. When Californians talk of lakes, they usually mean reservoirs, the 1500 or so artificial bodies of water behind dams. Alternately, they may be referring to the 4,000 or so natural lakes in the Sierra Nevada or to one of the…
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Growing food for ducks and fish in seasonally flooded managed wetlands
By Kyle Phillips, Alice Tung, Teejay O’Rear, John Durand In a recent publication in Freshwater Biology, UC Davis researchers found that waterfowl food-plants in managed wetlands of Suisun Marsh can boost plankton production by an order of magnitude compared to plants in open tidal habitats. Suisun Marsh is one of the largest tidal wetlands on the west coast…
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Ash in the Rivers: The Unexplored Consequences of Post-Wildfire Runoff on Freshwater Fish
By Garfield Kwan & Christine Parisek Wildfires have become a hot topic. Although wildfires are a natural part of some ecosystems (e.g. the chaparral biome), megafires (fires that burn >100,000 acres of land) are becoming increasingly common as the climate continues to warm and droughts intensify. As of late, California’s fourth largest wildfire, the 2024 Park fire, charred…
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Roaches of California: Hidden Biodiversity in a Native Minnow
by Peter B. Moyle *This is a repost of a blog originally published in 2019. If you inspect small streams in northern California, including those that seem too small or warm for any fish, you will often see minnows swimming in the clear water. Chances are you are seeing a very distinctive native Californian, usually…
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California’s Amazing Terminal Lakes
By Peter B. Moyle When Californians talk of lakes, they usually mean reservoirs, the 1500 or so artificial bodies of water behind dams. Alternately, they may be referring to the 4,000 or so natural lakes in the Sierra Nevada or to one of the few large natural lakes in the state, such as Lake Tahoe…
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Future Ancestors of Freshwater Fishes in California
By Peter B. Moyle 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…
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Monster Fish: Lessons for Sturgeon Management in California
By Peter B. Moyle & Andrew L. Rypel If you ever watched National Geographic television and are interested fishes and rivers, you likely have some familiarity with Dr. Zeb Hogan. He hosted a series of shows on giant freshwater fishes, called Monster Fish. He and a colleague also recently published a fascinating book (Hogan and…
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Hatcheries alone cannot save species and fisheries
By Andrew L. Rypel and Peter B. Moyle The photo is a common one (Fig 1). Large numbers of fish are being released into a river, stream or estuary – products of a fish hatchery. A politician or government leader looks on, or even participates in the release, says a few words, and then grabs…
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Will more wildfire and precipitation extremes mussel-out California’s freshwater streams?
By Andrew J. Lawrence and Andrew L. Rypel Apocalyptic scenes of wildfires and floods are now familiar to Californians. However, the ecological impacts from these events remain understudied in California and across the world. Gaps in awareness and understanding on the issue are especially intense for freshwater mussels, whose cryptic and sedentary life-histories belie their…
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Green Sturgeon in California: Hidden Lives Revealed From Long-Term Tracking
By Scott F. Colborne, Lawrence W. Sheppard, Daniel R. O’Donnell, Daniel C. Reuman, Jonathan A. Walter, Gabriel P. Singer, John T. Kelly, Michael J. Thomas, and Andrew L. Rypel You gotta respect fishes that have been around since the dinosaurs, such as the 27 described sturgeon species. Unfortunately, the majority of these fishes currently face…
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Nature’s gift to nature in early winter storms
By Jeffrey Mount, Peter B. Moyle, Andrew L. Rypel, and Carson Jeffres The current wet spell, made up of a parade of atmospheric rivers, is a welcome change from the last three years of record dry and warm conditions. For very good reasons, the focus during these big, early winter storms is first and foremost…
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White sturgeon: is an ancient survivor facing extinction in California?
by Andrea Schreier, Peter B. Moyle, Nicholas J. Demetras, Sarah Baird, Dennis Cocherell, Nann A. Fangue, Kirsten Sellheim, Jonathan Walter, Myfanwy Johnston, Scott Colborne, Levi S. Lewis, and Andrew L. Rypel Sturgeons belong to an ancient family of fishes that once lived alongside dinosaurs. This resilient group of fishes survived a meteor strike, shifting seas and continents,…
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A Swiss Cheese Model for Fish Conservation in California
by Andrew L. Rypel, Peter B. Moyle, and Jay Lund We read with great interest Nicholas Chistakis’s piece outlining a “Swiss Cheese Model For Combating Covid-19” in the Wall Street Journal. Christakis presents a model for considering the individual steps needed to achieve a larger goal, and how each step should fit into a larger…