Tag: salmon
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Salmon finding a home in my backyard – Could it be?
By Peter Moyle The sound of splashing drew me to the stream. A dark finned back cut the surface. Salmon? The fish came into view and its snout was a giveaway, maroon-hued and curved like a hook. This was a spawning male Chinook salmon. It alternated between chasing another hooknose and two jacks, small males…
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Aquatic plants: unsung but prime salmon habitat
By Robert Lusardi and Ann Willis For decades, California’s management and restoration of salmon and trout populations have focused on principles rooted in coastal redwood streams, mostly fed by rainfall runoff. These concepts portray ideal salmonid habitat as deep pools, shallow riffles and “large woody debris,” such as fallen trees and limbs. Recent studies on…
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Saving California’s salmon during a severe drought
By Peter Moyle California is in one of the most severe droughts in recent years. This means water agencies are under great pressure to sacrifice river flows meant to sustain fish and wildlife for increased water delivery to farms and cities. Here are some questions decision-makers should consider in the tradeoff. Why save native fish?…
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Halloween horrors and machetes on the Butte
By Chris Bowman Photos by Bill Husa, Chico Enterprise-Record They spook the faint-of-heart every Halloween. Ghoulish, hollow-eyed creatures stumble about like they’re half-dead. Their skin is mottled from open sores. Rotting lips peel back to reveal horrific grins. But enough about California’s spring-run Chinook salmon. Come autumn, these fish become the real-life living dead. Human…
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How to save salmon: location, location, location
By Robert Lusardi Spring-fed waters are luxurious places for salmon and trout. They provide ideal flows and temperatures year-round and jungles of aquatic plants teeming with insects for easy snacking. In real estate, the saying goes, three things matter: “location, location, location.” Can the same be said for native fish? Are fish that reside near…
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When Good Fish Make Bad Decisions
Carson Jeffres, Staff Research Associate, Center for Watershed Sciences Restoration of degraded habitat is generally considered to be a no-brainer. But, what if by “restoring” the habitat, you inadvertently create a habitat that causes either the target species or other important non-target species to spiral towards extinction—that is, a place that looks good on the…
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Wanted: An integrated strategy for recovery of Central Valley salmon
Jacob Katz, Ph.D. Candidate, Center for Watershed Sciences Peter Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, University of California – Davis Historically, the rivers of the Central Valley had seasonally variable stream flows and diverse habitats. Rivers tended to flood in winter, with low flows in summer. Salmon used in-channel gravel beds for spawning, deep in-channel pools…
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Have our salmon and eat them too: Re-thinking Central Valley salmon hatcheries
By Jacob Katz and Peter Moyle In the previous blog, Jay Lund argued that wide-scale, integrated management of California’s water system will better balance water needs of the environment and water demands by humans. Here we expand on the need for fundamental shifts in policy to recover populations of Central Valley salmon using integrated management…
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Sex, lies and videotape: Premature maturation of Chinook salmon on Shasta River
Carson Jeffres, Senior Research Associate, Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California – Davis Migration to and from the sea (anadromy) is the iconic pattern we associate with Pacific salmon. They spend most of their life in the ocean, taking advantage of its productivity to grow and mature. These adults return upstream to spawn in…
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The UnDammed
Jeffrey F. Mount, Founding Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California – Davis I had the great pleasure of being up in the Olympic Peninsula for the Elwha Dam removal ceremonies a few weeks ago. With the Native American tribes singing songs to welcome the salmon back, and innumerable dignitaries pontificating and…
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Coho in Crisis, Part 1: The decline toward extinction in California
By Peter Moyle In case you hadn’t noticed, one of California’s most spectacular fish is leaving us. The coho salmon, silvery favorites of fishermen and essential components of our coastal rainforest ecosystems, are headed for extinction in the state. This projection was made abundantly clear, at least to me, in a recent (August 16) State…
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Conserving fish, conserving water, conserving California
Peter Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, UC Davis California has a remarkable collection of native freshwater fishes, many of them found only in the state. To me, these native fishes define the unique regions of the California mosaic. Southern steelhead persist in the face of extreme urbanization in southern California. Various pupfish species thrive in…
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Suction dredging is bad for fish
Peter B. Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, UC Davis Suction dredging seems like a fairly innocent pastime. A few folks go to a stream on a nice summer day with a portable device to suck tiny amounts of gold out of a stream bottom. The device basically is a floating sluice box equipped with a…
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Striped bass control: cure worse than disease?
By Peter B. Moyle and William A. Bennett Seven species of fish in the Delta are listed as threatened or endangered, including Delta smelt, salmon and steelhead. Although the ultimate cause of decline in these species is adverse water management throughout the Central Valley, there is a constant search for ways to increase their numbers…