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California WaterBlog

Tag: Peter Moyle

  • Resilient California Fishes: Tule Perch

    By Peter B. Moyle and Tom L. Taylor . . . This is the second blog in a series on native California fishes that seem to be doing well despite multiple threats. They are still common and widely distributed, despite major changes to their habitats. The Tule Perch (Hysterocarpaus traskii) is an interesting species to…

  • Three Generations of Stewardship: Exploring the Legacy of Environmental Protection on Putah Creek

    By Petrea Moyle Marchand . . . This is a cross-post from a blog featured on Consero Solutions. After the indefinite cancellation of school at the start of the Covid-19 quarantine, my Dad, Peter Moyle, offered to teach my kids about Putah Creek. A fish biologist and University of California, Davis professor who started studying the…

  • 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…

  • Day 8 – Haikus

    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…

  • Day 7 – Pickles and Hidden Gems: The UC Davis Fish Collection

    By Rachel Alsheikh . . . 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…

  • Resilient California Fishes: Sacramento Sucker

    By Peter Moyle and Tom Taylor ____________________ The fresh waters of California support a diverse native fish fauna, 130 taxa by our count (Leidy and Moyle 2021). At least 56 of these taxa are on trajectories towards extinction 7 are already extinct; 32 are listed as threatened or endangered by state and federal agencies. Not…

  • 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…

  • Being the Lorax

    By Andrew L. Rypel “Way back in the days when the grass was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean, and the song of the Swomee-Swans rang out in space…one morning, I came to this glorious place. And I first saw the trees! The Truffula Trees! The bright-colored…

  • Change at the Center for Watershed Sciences

    By Karrigan Börk Readers of the California Water Blog (Blog) may have noticed some changes over the past year. The Blog is a product of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS), and after many years of dedicated service, longtime CWS leaders Dr. Andrew Rypel (Director) and Dr. Cathryn Lawrence (Assistant Director) are transitioning…

  • Bull Trout and Other Endemic Fishes: McCloud River 

    By Peter B. Moyle There are about 130 fish species (as defined by the federal Endangered Species Act) native to the fresh waters of California. Most (80%) are arguably on trajectories to extinction. Seven species are already extirpated from the state (Thicktail Chub, Clear Lake Splittail, High Rock Springs Tui Chub, Bull Trout, Tecopa Pupfish,…

  • Anticipating Increases in Flood Risk for Yolo County and its Native Fishes

    by Peter Moyle  Close relatives of mine live in Asheville, North  Carolina.  Retired professors, they chose to move there in part because of its pleasant climate. This quiet community was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, on September 27, 2024. The path the hurricane took through Asheville was unprecedented and heavy rains and flooding resulted in widespread treefalls,…

  • Delta Ecosystem Threatened by Another Nonnative Mollusk

    By Andrew Cohen and Peter Moyle One of the world’s most invasive freshwater mussels has arrived in North America. The Golden Mussel (Limnoperna fortunei), discovered in the California Delta in October, is a voracious plankton feeder and may further reduce the food supply for Delta Smelt and other plankton-feeding fishes in low salinity environments. It…

  • Black Bass Diversity in California

    By Peter B. Moyle and Andrew L. Rypel When both of us began studying the freshwater fishes of California, we independently discovered most fishes found in reservoirs and other highly altered habitats belonged to non-native species. Anglers and many fishery managers had pretty much accepted the reality that freshwater recreational fisheries are focused on non-native…

  • Watching native fishes vanish

    By Andrew L. Rypel and Peter B. Moyle It’s an odd, disturbing feeling – watching populations of native fish species collapse and then disappear. Sometimes it happens quickly, other times it’s a series of slowstep change events. The end result is the same though – smaller populations, extinctions, less biodiversity. We put up a little…

  • Tough Fish in a Harsh Place: Red Hills Roach

    by Peter B. Moyle *This is a repost of a blog originally published in 2019. Red Hills Roach are small (adults are 60-70 mm in total length) bronzy minnows that live in a challenging environment. They survive in a few small streams that start as seeps in a hot dry landscape, the serpentine outcrops of…

  • Amazing Invader: American Shad

    By Peter Moyle The California Fish Commission introduced American Shad into California in 1871 via milk crates shipped on the newly built transcontinental railroad (Dill and Cordone 1997). Shad, apparently the first non-native fish species (of 50) to become established in the state, were so well suited to California that in a few years, shad…

  • Book Review: Seek Higher Ground

    by Peter Moyle Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis, by Tim Palmer. University of California Press 2024.                                             Flooding is a natural phenomenon that we humans keep assuming can be controlled with enough effort and engineering.  But this simply is not possible, as floods across the globe repeatedly demonstrate. People continue to…

  • California water ideas that deserve more attention

    By Peter B. Moyle, Karrigan Börk, Christine A. Parisek, Fabian A. Bombardelli, Jay Lund, and Andrew L. Rypel A panel blog Water systems run on ideas, among many other things. Water ideas are frequently discussed for improving and adapting California management to meet current and future challenges. Some ideas seem to receive too much attention,…

  • 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…

  • Schooling Fish: Behind the Scenes of Putah Creek Fish Sampling

    By Christine A. Parisek, Peter B. Moyle, Joshua Porter, and Andrew L. Rypel It’s a curious thing, teaching a classroom of future fish conservationists about revitalizing degraded ecosystems. Putah Creek was an unconventional place to teach ecology. After the creek turned bad, it stayed that way for decades – deteriorated habitat, nonexistent flow, garbage, rusted cars,…